One Man's Mud-Brick Paradise

the roof of New Gourna's mosque

It was a happily circuitous route that led me to Hassan Fathy (1900-1989), the Egyptian architect who wrote ~ and constructed ~ Architecture for the Poor and who is considered by many to be one of the first designers of locally sourced, sustainable buildings. A fascinating, multi-talented man, he saw the squalor in which many of his compatriots (and so many of the world's poor) lived and vowed to do something about it. He discovered that the key to creating affordable yet safe and comfortable housing lay in his country's past and in its land. From the peasants, he borrowed his basic building material, the mud brick, and from the ancient Nubians, the concept of domes and vaults. These he expanded from individual houses to an entire village in Luxor, called New Gourna, training local craftsmen in the process. Now uninhabited, the village was added to the World Monuments Watch List of Most Endangered Sites in 2010. "Fathy’s innovative mixed-use plan for New Gourna, the icon of his legacy, remains a powerful and well-preserved element of the village," according to the World Monuments Fund website. "The ideas he engendered and the evolution of this community are relevant to today’s challenges of environmental protection and urban growth" (slideshow): http://www.slideshare.net/anikets1234/hassan-fathys-vernacular-architecture?next_slideshow=2
   Fathy engagingly recounts his own circuitous route in Architecture for the Poor: http://www.arvindguptatoys.com/arvindgupta/fathy.pdf