Hassan Fathy

el-Wakil, Leïla
Leïla el-Wakil is professor of the history of architecture and architectural conservation at the University of Geneva, Switzerland.

This fully illustrated volume represents the most comprehensive examination yet of the life and work of the great Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy (1900-89), and the regional and international significance of his contribution to the lived environment. Eleven Egyptian and international scholars reveal the man, his milieu, his goals and his passions, his concept of social living and his fight for a humane model for affordable housing in tune with the environment, the application of these concepts in his numerous plans and buildings, his relations with the establishment, the extent of his influence, and the lasting legacy of his completed projects. Generously illustrated with archival and color photographs and the architect's own distinctive and beautifully decorated gouache plans and elevations, many never previously published.
Contributors: Leila el-Wakil, Camille Abele, Jo Abram, Rémi Baudou, Ahmad Hamid, Nadia Radwan, Samir Radwan, Ola Seif, Jessica Stevens-Campos, Mercedes Volait, Nicholas Warner.

A beautifully illustrated study of the life and times of the legendary Egyptian architect

Introduction by Leïla el-Wakil
From 'sidereal emptiness' to fertile ground: an 'appropriate' architect'Guru' and polymath
The right critical distance
The state of the matter
Multiple authors throwing light on Hassan Fathy
1. Education and training by Leïla el-Wakil
The apogee of studies the Western way
2. A family passion for music by Jessica Stevens-Campos
Fathy, the musician and music lover
Muhammad Fathy and oriental music
Architecture through the prism of Western classical music
3. The first commissions by Leïla el-Wakil
The Talkha school project (1928)
The early years, in collaboration with Ahmad Hosni Omar
Project for the Azmi Building in Zamalek
The Bosphore Casino
Project for Hassan Pasha Madkour (1934)
An exhibition pavilion for a tobacco company (1937)
The other modern houses
From the Hayat Muhammad Villa (1938) to the Hussein Farid izba (1941)
4. The early steps of a 'romantic' in a liberal Egypt by Mercedes Volait
The first drawings
Egyptian modernism
Revolutionising rural architecture
5. The qa'a and the Arab house by Leïla el-Wakil
The shift towards the 'inward-looking' house: the qa'a, the centrepiece of the typology
Fathy's art de vivre: refined ambiguity
Cairo houses in the years around 1950
The Neo-Mamluk house of Tusun Abu Gabal
Two villas for Aziza Hassanein (1938 and 1949)
Compositional eclecticism
6. The arts and craftsmanship by Nadia Radwan
Hassan Fathy: an 'artist'?
Fathy and Habib Gorgi: architecture without architects and schools without teachers
Fathy and Ramses Wissa Wassef: art and craft at the heart of the model village
The 'Friends of Art and Life' and Hamed Saïd's 'eco-studio'
From Gourna to the 'House of the Arts': Fathy among Artists
7. Colourful reveries by Ola Seif
The pre-Gourna phase
The Gourna phase
Post-Gourna
The paintings of a fantasist visionary, an architect or a dreamer?
8. Envisioning architecture by Ahmad Hamid
9. The great transformation of the Egyptian peasantry by Samir Radwan
10. The model izba by Leïla el-Wakil
Literary renewal
Architectural renewal and model villages
The Fathy family farms (late 1930s)
Mud brick : the modern invention of a 'heaven-sent' material
The model farm experiments at Bahtim
The Anhouri farm project at Mazghouna
The writings of Mirrit Boutros-Ghali
A model farm for the Fayoum Real Estate Corporation (1943)
Izbat al-Basri (1945)
Hafiz Afifi and Lulu'at al-Sahara (1950)
11. New Gourna by Leïla el-Wakil
The tools of the model village's invention
New Gourna: the African Hellerau
Using tradition to build the present
The project's launch and failure
The projects to save Gourna
12. A narrative in the form of a sonata by Jessica Stevens-Campos
Prelude: Dream and Reality
Chorale: Man, Society, and Technology
Fugue: Architect, Peasant, and Bureaucrat
Finale: Gourna Dormant
13. The villages of the fellahs by Leïla el-Wakil
Plans for an Institute for Ruralism
The Kom Ombo rehousing project
Harraniya: from the Ramses Wissa Wassef Art Centre (begun 1952) to Fathy's renovation project for the village (1964)
New Bariz, the masterpiece brought down by the Six-Day War
An attempted collaboration with the United Nations: the development of the oasis of Dar'iya
The concept of the vegetable-garden village for Sohar
The Sadat Village in Aswan
14. Choisy / Fathy: from constructive rationalism to bioclimatic architecture by Joseph Abram
Tradition/Construction
Physical environment / Materials
Solar protection / Ventilation
15. Clarke / Fathy: reviving traditions by Nicholas Warner
The antiquarian and preservationist
The influence of Coptic architecture
The Use of Mud Brick
Buildings for archaeologists
A new vernacular architecture?
16. Doxiadis Associates: the nerve centre by Camille Abele
First encounters and exchanges
The Doxiadis Associates firm
Two characters face to face
Greater Mussayib
Residential blocks and a neighbourhood for New Baghdad (1959)
Korangi: a model extension