Languages

Mnaber   »   Architects (individuals)   ›   Hassan Fathy

Hassan Fathy

MN_EG_005.jpg
Contact Type Architects (individuals)
Category Civil/Structure Engineers
Telephone
Email
Website
References
https://www.bibalex.org/attachments/publications/files/hassan_fathy.pdf
https://www.archnet.org/collections/2303

The Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy was born to a wealthy family on the 23 March 1900 in Alexandria.When he was eight years old, he moved to Cairo with his family and settled in Helwan. He was talented indrawing which was to stand him in good stead when he joined the King Fuad I University (presently CairoUniversity) to study architecture.
Fathy graduated in 1926 and took a job as an engineer in the General Administration of Schools affiliatedto the Local Councils. In 1930 he was appointed as instructor at the Faculty of Fine Arts where he remaineduntil 1946.
Fathy designed what was to become his flawed masterpiece, the village of new Gourna: an architecturalmasterpiece beset by socio-economic issues beyond the control of the architect. In March 1947 it wasapplauded in a popular British weekly, half a year later in a British professional journal, and praise fromSpanish professionals followed the next year. A year of silence (1949, when Fathy published a literary fable)was followed by attention in one French and two Dutch periodicals, one of which made it the lead story.
Between 1949 and 1952, he was appointed Director of the Educational Buildings Department of theMinistry of Education, and in 1953 Hassan Fathy became the Head of the Architecture Department at theFaculty of Fine Arts of Cairo University until the late fifties. He was recognized by State Awards, but wasincreasingly out of step with the modernist trends ruling supreme in the architecture schools of those days.In 1959, he left Egypt to work for the Doxiadis Organization in Greece for two years, but returned to Egyptand resumed his activities. His long career continued, but he was marginalized by his peers as he remainedtrue to his vision with dogged determination.
He wrote about his experience in a book thąt was to make him famous “Gourna: the Tale of two Cities”,which when re-issued in the west as “Architecture for the poor” would become a major text for all architectural

Involved With