Hassan FATHY, by Sonia Leglise

Hassan Fathy was born in Alexandria, Egypt in 1900. Educated in Cairo by a British educational system he practiced mostly in Egypt, although his work became more international by the end of his life in 1989. Paradoxically, he moved to Athens to collaborate with international planners under the direction of Constantinos Doxiadis when his country was completely freed from British military occupation. He returned five years later and taught architecture at Cairo University. He occupied few government positions in Egypt and created the Institute for Appropriate Technology in 1977. Fathy’s uniqueness resides in the fact that he has been trained in an occupied Egypt. This contrasts to most of the preeminent Asian or Middle Eastern architects from the beginning of the Century who studied in Europe while their country recovered from colonial occupation. Fathy never intended to bridge the gap between him and his Western contemporaries, figures of Modernism such as Le Corbusier or the members of the CIAM. Throughout his life he contrasted his work to their ideologies. Differing from the modernist 1

principles, he aimed to convey that breaking with tradition is equivalent to a “cultural murder” . 1

Hassan Fathy, Architecture for the poor (Chicago and London: The university of Chicago Press, 1973) “Tradition’s Role” p24.

A quick historical background of Egypt’s history helps us understand the cultural oppression against which Fathy always stood. Napoleon Egyptian campaign (1798-1801) was one of many European invasions. Even if it failed, it is considered to be the foundation for a 2

particular process of objectification of the Middle Eastern culture, Orientalism . More than a military operation, the campaign included scientists and artists and aimed to catalogue Egyptian culture through its representation (fig.1). By the end of the nineteenth century, France and Britain developed an infrastructure and institutionalized Cairo to support their economic interests in the region. This led to cultural dominance. In 1882, French fled from the country in an unstable political context and Britain occupied the territory militarily. Hassan 3

Fathy’s adulthood started in a revolutionary atmosphere , and his Western education was balanced by the rise of nationalist and independentist voices such as Taha Husayn and Hamed Said. Fathy got closer to them as his political opinions were forged. Fathy was opposed to the English occupation of his country and saw in architecture a way to give back a cultural pride that this oppression had annihilated in Egypt. This essay aims to underline the universality in Fathy’s architecture and ideology and how the role of Fathy’s work in the continuity of Islamic culture overshadowed this main campaign. In the first part, I will show how Fathy’s nationalist intentions were translated in his revivalist architecture. The Hamed Said House in Marg in 1943 will illustrate that argument. The second part is dedicated to his main project: New Gourna, in which the re-interpretation of tradition nourishes the sustainability of the design. The final part will examine an international commission and the architect’s lack of success in the implementation of his ideals in a larger context. Here, the example of the community village in New Mexico will be utilized. The literature documenting Hassan Fathy’s work and life is exhaustive. It consists of a series of monographs illustrating his whole carrier, framing him either as a pure 4

traditionalist or trying to represent him as a modernist . The Aga Khan Foundation has also acknowledged his career, and his work is illustrated in one of the famous Mimar monograph. However, he is almost marginal in the Aga Khan “family”. The foundation recognized him late in his career (1980). One of the reasons of this may be Fathy’s discretion. Unlike most Islamic architects of that period he directly addressed social issues, in particular poverty. He 6

presented this social discourse in one of his publication: Architecture for the poor . This book illustrates his architectural campaign, and stands as the manifesto for his community based development in Upper Egypt: New Gourna. The book covers social, economical and technological aspects of his project and ideologies. Fathy also always produced himself as a revivalist representing his architecture with traditional Egyptian references inspired from the Ancient Egypt era. 2

Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1978) Independentist Revolution in Egypt took place in 1919. 4 James Steele, An Architecture for people, the complete work of Hassan Fathy. (London : Thames & Hudson Ldt, 1997). 3

Ahmad Hamid, Hassan Fathy and Continuity in Islamic Arts and Architecture. The birth of a new modern. (Cairo, New York : The American university in Cairo Press, 2010) 6 First published as A tale of two villages in a limited and Egyptian edition in 1969.

TRADITIONALISM Cultural pride and humanism

Fathy’s will to bring cultural pride to Egyptians led him to the countryside, where he expected to find an authentic culture. His parents rose from a poor social background to the middle class. As a child, Fathy was therefore isolated from the countryside by his father while his mother upheld a fantasy of the rural Egypt, romancing her childhood. He was around twenty when he visited his father’s land for the first time and he found a very poor population living in unsanitary conditions. In his eyes, the peasants had been disconnected from tradition by globalization. He wrote that this vision “haunted [him] and made [him] feel that something 7

should be done to restore to the Egyptian countryside the felicity of paradise” . Fathy’s cultural campaign naturally led him to consider the dialectics of architecture and identity. Reacting very strongly to Western oppression through the criticism of modernization and globalization, he took a step back and intended to reconnect with indigenous traditional architecture believing that “…tradition among the peasants is the only safeguard of their 8

culture” . Tradition

Fathy elaborated the ‘thesis of space’ by documenting the traditional language of indigenous architecture through field trips and research in the urban and rural environment (fig.2). This research phase took place along his early carrier, from 1926 to 1950. During a 9

time of shortage of steel and wood , his architecture was restricted to the use of mud-brick alone. Fathy found the knowledge necessary to roof, by the mean of vaults and domes, with this material in Nubia, around the Nubian craftsmen. He always respected them, considering their knowledge essential and accurate but threatened by globalisation (fig.8). Fathy struggled his entire life between his education and his origins and we notice it

Orientalism

in Architecture for the poor, when he gives us a glimpse of his trip to Nubia in 1941: “I realized that I was looking at the living survivor of traditional Egyptian architecture, at a way of building that was a natural growth in the landscape, as much a part of it as the palm tree of the district. It was like a vision of architecture before the Fall: before money, industry, greed and snobbery had severed architecture from its true roots in nature. If I was delighted, the painters who had come were in ecstasies.”

This testimony shows surprising similarities with Napoleon’s campaign. Fathy could not help but see his own culture through the scope of Orientalism. The documents that were produced during the French campaign were also his first references when he started his research for his ‘thesis of space’. Although he approached the Nubians, the masons and the poor with an almost scientific interest, he was primarily a humanist and would prove it throughout his carrier. Paradoxically, Fathy was first able to convey his cultural ideologies through traditional

Case Study I

architecture in an elite’s house in Marg near Cairo: the Hamed Said House in 1943. Even then, his architecture did not stand out in the environment and was very close to a traditional expression of the program. He observed that : 7

Fathy, Architecture, “Prelude : Dream and reality” p.2 Fathy, Architecture, “Tradition’s Role”, p.24 9 Shortage in steel and wood was due to the World War Two that affected Egypt from 1940 to 1943. 10 Fathy, Architecture, “Prelude, Dream and Reality”, p.2 8

“The architect should respect the work of its predecessors and the public sensibility by not using his architecture as a medium of personal advertisement. Indeed, no architect can avoid using the work of earlier architects; however hard he strains after originality, by far the larger part of his work will be in some tradition or other.”

A low profile architect, Fathy used traditional idioms such as courtyards, vaults and wind-catchers and repeated them so that even a house for the elite, much bigger than a traditional settlement appeared to be several juxtaposed accommodations (fig.7). The aesthetics of Fathy could be linked to a Modernist approach of the architectural domestic space. “The geometric concepts inherent in Fathy approaches led him to set the building in a cubist manner similar to many modernist structures settings like that of Le Corbusier Villa Savoye.”

Introverted, the house wraps around a central courtyard (fig.4) as well as opening to the surrounding countryside by the means of mashrabya

(fig.5). The only majestic gesture

that the architect conceded to his client was a large vaulted entrance, originally intended to be an outdoor studio (fig.5). Apart from this element, the limited technology that Fathy worked with –mud brick construction- and the introversion of the Islamic domestic space allowed him to remain discrete in the context. Moreover, the clients submitted to Fathy’s revivalist architecture as they shared the same political opinions (fig.3). Hamed Said and his wife who were both Egyptian artists, and Fathy were concerned by national identity in a colonial presence. But then, was Fathy’s Architecture a tool for “nationalist propaganda”

and only

aimed to give a face to the Egyptian culture in a colonial context by the use of connotated 15

aesthetics? Was Fathy being more critical than authentic , more traditionalist that regionalist? William Curtis argues in his article “Towards an Authentic Regionalism”: “Regionalism is committed to finding unique responses to particular places, cultures and climates.”

The replica of the past does not constitute the regionalist architecture. Regionalism implies the understanding of a peculiar context (climate, culture, politics) and how it produced peculiar aesthetics. Fathy entirely revealed his regionalist attitude in New Gourna, where he also had the opportunity to bring his humanist and cultural aspirations to life. The architect’s 17

written works give us an insight of the architectural process of the construction of Gourna . This enables an understanding of the objectives that motivated Fathy, and to acknowledge the regionalism of his architecture.

Fathy, Architecture,“Tradition’s Role”, p25 Ahmad Hamid, Hassan Fathy and Continuity in Islamic Arts and Architecture. The birth of a new modern. (Cairo, New York: The american university in Cairo Press, 2010) p46 13 carved panels of wood that allow the wind to enter but not the gaze. 14 expression used by W. J. R. Curtis in his article “Towards an Authentic Regionalism” to criticize purely traditionalist architecture. 15 William J. R. Curtis, “Towards an Authentic Regionalism” in Modern Architecture since 1900, 1987. 16 Curtis, “Authentic Regionalism”, p1. 17 Hassan Fathy, Architecture for the poor, An experiment in rural Egypt. 1973. 12

REGIONALISM

New Gourna, constructed in 1947, was a community-based project aiming at relocating a village from the Valley of the King, where archeological preservation implied the

Case Study II

evacuation of the site. Fathy’s experiments with mud brick led to his being chosen by the Department of Antiquities. His architecture could provide a cheap alternative to modern architecture. Fathy saw in this commission the ability to put in practice his social and cultural ideologies through a community-based project. Fathy’s commitment to this project was controversial. Tourism, economic and political powers were the generators of the commission. Fathy presented himself as an architect concerned about the issues that the peasants were facing but could the uprooting of a community contribute to its development? Apart from that debatable point, Gourna is considered to be the apogee of Fathy’s architecture, as regionalism served the humanism of the project.

Sustainability and craftsmanship.

Firstly, New Gourna is an example of sustainable design. Nowadays, sustainability is an over-used term, often reduced to concerns about the environmental impact of the project. But the concept of sustainability also includes the economical and social aspects of the project. Fathy’s project tackled the three issues by the re-interpretation of the traditional architecture and traditional architectural process, which were linking strongly the dweller with the design of his domestic space in a self-help system. The project also aimed to create employment of the locals and included a training facility for masons. The Gournii were trained on site and then involved in the creation of their home. This is an essential part of Fathy’s ideology. Fathy could have only designed traditional volume with local materials, but he also included local crafts in the process and he tried to bridge the gap between generations and re-establish the communication of craftsmanship along the generations. If the project tackled social and economical issues by the use of mud construction, it is also designed so that its environmental impact is very little and that climate conditions are dealt with through the volumes, the openings and the orientations. By the use of natural ventilation (fig.13), and natural light, the project responded to the climate context and used very little energy. Fathy architecture is hyper-contextualised but is it sufficient to call it regionalist?

Modernist approach

Fathy’s architectural process presented similarities with the modernist approach for several reasons. Fathy disposed of his own tabula rasa, set in the countryside. Could he ever build in a complex and pre-existing built context or are his ideologies difficult to apply to an urban palimpsest? In my opinion, this is a weakness in Fathy’s work and ideologies; it was never implemented in an urban context and this has become the challenge for a more sustainable future. Also, Fathy proved to conceive the project considering the climatic conditions in which it was set and he resolved that aspect with technology. Although those first qualities are fundamentally modern, Fathy was with no doubt at the quintessence of his regionalism. In new Gourna, traditional aesthetics had been understood and re-interpreted to suit a specific community, and surpassed the basic nationalist propaganda. Far from being only functionalist, the volumes are a compromise between function and traditional aesthetics, modest and built in mud bricks. Fathy never built artifacts but preferred working with an urban sensibility, which could be criticized as institutions and domestic pieces of the urban

assemblage could sometimes be confused, presenting to the public realm a continuous repetition of vaults, domes and mud walls. Gourna presented, in volumes and forms, an exemplary regionalist answer to a local challenge. But the consideration of the community and its social aspiration could balance this argument. Curtis argues: “At his best, regionalism penetrates to the generating principles and symbolic substructures of the past then transforms these into forms that are right for the changing social order of the present.” Aspirations and reality

We can wonder if Fathy responds to the “changing social order of the present” in New

Gourna. The project was designed for a utopian life untouched by modernization. The project didn’t incorporate the use of technologies such as modern cooking equipment or television. There was neither electricity nor running water. This can be explained by the very poorness of the community but can also be perceived as an attempt from the architect to make the Gournii subscribe to an authentic traditional living, although a modernizing environment surrounded them. Fathy had always put a distance with the peasants and he considered that the architect had the capacity to understand their problems and provide a solution, while they were too stuck in their own misery to be aware of the underlying issues. Even if this conceptualization of a lower social class can be a mis-understanding of the whole picture, Fathy was always very close to the communities he was working with. He built a field house 19

in New Gourna (fig.15), as well as in other project such as New Baris . He acknowledged the project of New Gourna to be the displacement of a complex community, with unique relations and interconnectivity between families, friends and groups. He designed the whole village considering the results of his researches and his understanding of the community (fig.11). He also believed that each house should be customized to mark the individuality of each house (fig.12), this is undoubtedly a reaction to the modernist repetitive aesthetics, homogenising the individuals in a group. Fathy is definitely an ‘architect for people’, and this is when his architecture expresses its best regionalist qualities. New Gourna was never finished, because of a misevaluation of the costs, which led

Failure

the project to be stopped. After this first failure, the public reaction was a second problem. The Gournii didn’t really investigate the space designed for them, preferring to stay in the mountains, above the tombs (fig.14). Gourna was a bitter failure for Fathy, who had put all his time and conviction in its realisation.

INTERNATIONAL INFLUENCE

Gourna partly failed but it would strongly affect the representation of Fathy in his country. Vernacular architecture was for him an alternative to modernization and a desirable national architecture. This was coupled with affection for the traditional craftsmanship and the growing influence of his work was threatening the economical success of constructors who

18 19

Curtis, “Authentic Regionalism”, p1. New Baris was a village built in 1967, presenting similarities with New Gourna’s project.

subscribed to the ‘International style’ and used industrialized materials. Osman Osman

lobbied against him so that Fathy was unable to reach any influent positions in the government or in the architecture schools. Fathy was restrained to private commissions from then. For those reasons, he felt the need to leave Egypt where he was in rupture with the bureaucracy and the administration after the failure of Gourna. He moved to Athens in 1954 to work with the group Constantinos Doxiadis that shared his social aspirations. From that time, Fathy’s work became more international. This was also due to the publication of 21

Architecture for the poor , written during his exile and well received on the international scene. During the sixties and seventies, a rapid globalisation of the Middle East occurred.

Globalisation

The whole region followed a totally different route considering the development of their architectural identity, conforming to more globalized aesthetics and subscribing to the International style. Fathy strongly reacted to that globalization and expresses it in his 22

architecture, thus he was commissioned for the design of the Nasseif House , constructed in 1973 in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. This house aimed to represent the survival of tradition in a globalizing country. Its construction coincides with the OPEC crisis (fig.16), which highlights the great crusade that Fathy led. We have to acknowledge the strong dichotomy between the globalization of the Middle East and the architectural approach of Fathy, but, at that time, religion also come into the picture and occupied the front scene (fig.17). Islam tried to appropriate Fathy’s architecture and images. In spite of Fathy’s intentions, there is a shift from the Egyptian and humanist architect to an architect having to represent Islam. This shift was dangerous as it brought Fathy to neglect his first principles of humanist approach and contextual architecture. In 1980, the Aga Khan Award acknowledged Fathy’s carrier. This foundation aimed to

Islam

promote the Muslim emerging architects of the post-colonial period. Fathy was marginal in this “family” as he was the only ‘Mimar’ architect to address the issues of poverty and to react to globalization. Nonetheless, his first principles will fade in front of his celebrated role in the continuity in Islamic Arts and Architecture. Hamed Said, one of his disciples wrote: “The Muslim architect is responsible for reflecting within Islam the best of his society’s realities in built form.”

Religion is always present in Fathy’s writings and representation. Also, Fathy was often asked to write articles, introduction or prefaces in books that aim to give to Islamic culture a place on the International scene. He responded favorably to number of those, and 24

appeared more and more in popular Islamic cultural landscape . Fathy’s name is still 20

Osman Osman owned the largest construction company in Egypt at that time. Firstly edited as : Gourna : A Tale of two villages in 1957. Or Nassif House. 23 Hamid, Continuity, p111. 24 Fathy, Hassan. Introduction to Le M'Zab, une lecon d'architecture. Paris : Edition Sindbad, 1981 And Fathy, Hassan. “On the poetics of space”. In The view from within. Writers and Critics on Contemporary Arabic literature. Edited by Ferial J. Ghazoul and Barbara Harlow. Cairo : The american university in Cairo Press, 1981 reedited in 1994. 21 22

appropriated and vulgarized so that his work is blurred in a sea of luxurious mosques. How can all the underlying social and humanist discourse be understood in such context? Curtis wrote: “Through no fault of Fathy’s own, his ideas – or rather his images – have been appropriated as a sort of instant Islamic identity kit; a piece of acceptable costume to show that one is doing the right thing.”

Fathy’s work lost all its strength in this new light. Fathy was firstly an architect for

Case study III

people before being Muslim. His work would have represented the same contribution if his religion remained unknown. The case study of the mosque of Abiquiu represents this descent into the complex dialectics of architecture, identity and religion. Fathy, through the foundation for Appropriate Technology that he founded in Cairo in 1977, was asked to design the village for a Muslim community in New Mexico (fig.19), in the United States. He intended to replicate the process of research and to re-interpret indigenous traditional architecture. Fathy already presented the ability to understand other cultures and traditions in Athens, when he designed a social housing project in Iraq for Constantinos 26

Doxiadis . The duration of the project was considerable as he approached the design process as he did in Egypt, documenting and researching the qualities of the indigenous traditional architecture. The customers

refused the re-interpretation of Navajo indigenous

architecture and asked Fathy to design the village with Nubian traditional aesthetics (fig.20). This is in contradiction with his main principle : “Fathy saw the imposition of an irrelevant style of architecture as a continuation of a colonial movement that had been started in the previous Century. Fathy did not accept the idea that a monolithic style of architecture could fulfill people’s needs. He considered architecture to be a cultural expression that was the result of an interaction of people with their environment.”

As if Fathy had predicted the destiny of his own late project, this one failed. Although he was designing in the name of his foundation for Appropriate Technology, the project highly suffered through the implementation of the Nubian idioms. Egyptian traditional architecture was simply inappropriate for constructive, climatic, and legislative reasons. Its only purpose was to convey a representation. Adobe construction required plywood form (fig.21). Mud was covered with concrete to prevent the rain from deteriorating the building (fig.23) and the wind catchers were glazed (fig.22). Curtis criticized: “This travesty of his critical stance into the terminology of an easily consumable “peasantism” reminds one of the way that current fundamentalist ideologies delight in reducing mosque typology to a clichéd rendition of dome, minaret, and muqaarnas even in areas where none or all of these elements have never played a previous role; at issue once 25

Curtis, “Authentic Regionalism”, p1. Social housing project, Iraq, 1959. 27 The project was founded by a religious group from Saudi Arabia. 28 Abdel Mohsen Saleh Mito, Hassan Fathy and Balkrishna Doshi: Two regional architects in the context of modern architecture. (Atlanta : University of Georgia, 1990), p169. 26

again is the distinction between signs that have no expressive base and the genuine reinvigoration of symbols.”

Fathy’s growing influence prevented him from implementing his first ideologies. Icon of the Islamic Arts and Architecture, his architecture is reduced to its aesthetics and is no longer appropriated to the context. Uprooted regionalism, Fathy’s architecture became a cliché of Islamic aesthetics, alien in the American landscape.

Conclusion

Fathy achieved bridging the gap in Islamic Arts and architecture after colonization but this achievement led him to neglect the first part of his work, the most valuable one. At the mercy of his representation as a Muslim architect on the international scene, Fathy lost the track of his first principles. This is the major failure of this regionalist architect and I would argue that all the failures that he suffered from during his early carrier are part of his work, they were almost necessary as his ideologies were highly experimental. As contrary to those faults and hesitations, the descent into the blurring between religion and social campaign highly diminished his work. At his best, Fathy’s architecture was purely humanist and regionalist and was a strong reaction of globalisation through the critique of modernist principles and architecture. He always strongly opposed his ideals to the modern principles, taking the famous modernist architect Le Corbusier as a counter-example to illustrate his arguments. Notwithstanding this, his work shows similarities to this movement in the way that tradition is observed and how the plan is geometrically resolved. The climatic approach also brings him closer to the modernists. However, Fathy’s architecture can be compared to post modernism. His architectonic expression always involved references of historical elements. Although we notice that from the period of New Gourna, those references are justified by the context, the social discourse and the culture and customs he was designing for. They are more than aesthetics; they show a deep understanding of vernacular architecture. Context is also a prevalent part of his design. Yet, contrary to post modernist, Fathy tends to ignore the urban context and the city. He is more oriented towards the rural challenges of his country. But isn’t it there that we find the unresolved part of his ideology? Fathy obviously reacted to the globalization of his environment. Did he underestimate this economical and cultural force when he created his own “tabula rasa” in the countryside, where modernization was as yet not as contaminating as in the cities? When he argues that “what [the architect] does in the 30

city is another matter : there the public and the surroundings can take care of themselves.” , he neglected a whole part of the spatial Egyptian environment. Fathy argues that tradition can be reinvented and is not a fixed object, and that “ as soon as the workman decides to overcome a problem, he sets a new tradition”. 29 30

But Fathy

Curtis, “Authentic Regionalism”, p1. Fathy, Architecture, “Tradition’s Role”, p26 Fathy, Architecture, “Tradition’s Role”, p27

left us with unresolved issues regarding the implementation of his traditional and community based project in the urban context, which could be a way of dealing with the growing ‘placelessness’ of our cities as they become the predominant living space throughout the world. Observing and communicating about ancient traditions was necessary to reconnect two disjunctional pieces of a country’s history of place. No doubt his reactionary and critical behavior towards globalization and modernism was required in his campaign. Yet if we look at his disciples like Abdel Wahel el-Wakil (fig.18) who incorporates more references from the changing and globalizing environment and succeeds in implementing his ideology. We see a greater flexibility to globalization. It is a flexibility that Fathy refused to embrace.

BIBLIOGRAPHY :

- Durand, Jean Nicolas Louis, Précis of the lectures on architecture. Los Angeles, CA: Getty Research Institute, 2000. - Chris Abel, Architecture and identity: responses to cultural and technological change. Oxford: Architectural, 1999. - Cole, Juan, Napoléon's Egypt: invading the Middle East. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. - Curtis, William J. R., Balkrishna Doshi : an architecture for India. New York : Rizzoli, 1988. - Curtis, William J. R., Modern architecture since 1900. Oxford: Phaidon, 1987. - Fathy, Hassan. Architecture for the poor, an experiment in rural Egypt. Chicago and London: The university of Chicago Press, 1973. - Fathy, Hassan. Natural energy and vernacular architecture : principles and examples with reference to hot arid climates. Chicago : Published for the United Nations University by the University of Chicago Press, 1986. - Fathy, Hassan. Introduction to Le M'Zab, une lecon d'architecture. Paris: Edition Sindbad, 1981. - Fathy, Hassan. “On the poetics of space”. In The view from within. Writers and Critics on Contemporary Arabic literature. Edited by Ferial J. Ghazoul and Barbara Harlow. Cairo: The american university in Cairo Press, 1981 reedited in 1994. - Herrle, Peter, Stephanus Schmitz, Constructing Identity in Contemporary Architecture: Case Studies from the South. Berlin: Lit, 2009. - Herrle, Peter, Erik Wegerhoff, Architecture and identity. Berlin: Lit, 2008. - Hamid, Ahmad. Hassan Fathy and Continuity in Islamic Arts and Architecture. The birth of a new modern. Cairo, New York: The american university in Cairo Press, 2010. - Mito, Abdel Mohsen Saleh, Hassan Fathy and Balkrishna Doshi: Two regional architects in the context of modern architecture. Atlanta : University of Georgia, 1990. - Richards, J. M. and Ismail Serageldin and Darl Rastorfer. Hassan Fathy. Singapore: Concept Media / Aga Khan Trust for Culture, 1985. (note : a Mimar book.) - Rudofsky, Bernard, An Architecture without Architect, A Short Introduction to Non-pedigreed Architecture. New York: Doubleday, 1964. - Said, Edward, Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books, 1978. - Steele, James. An Architecture for people, the complete work of Hassan Fathy. London: Thames & Hudson Ldt, 1997.

Internet : - Archnet, “Hassan Fathy Archives”. Last modified in October, 2011, https://archnet.org/ - Archnet, “Abdel-Wahed El-Wakil Archives”. Last modified in October, 2011, https://archnet.org/ -O’ Connel, Kim A. , “Building Islamic Tradition”, Last modified in February 2010. http://www.traditional-building.com/Previous-Issues-10/FebruaryProfile10.html - Raouf, Amr, “Hassan Fathy, Architecture for the poor”, Last modified in 2004. http://www.hassanfathy.webs.com/ - The right livehood award, “Hassan Fathy”, Last modified in 2006. http://www.rightlivelihood.org/fathy.pdf - Wilkins, Oliver, “Hassan Fathy's New Gourna”. Last modified in December, 2010, http://vimeo.com/15514401 (1 year ago) - Wikipedia, “Egypt”. Last modified in November, 2011, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egypt - Youtube, “Channel for Hassan Fathy”. Last modified in December 2010, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJDGIaumVFM&feature=BFa&list=PLCB4115B52367CC2 4&lf=results_main - Keegan, Edward, “Abdel-Wahed El-Wakil Wins 2009 Driehaus Prize”, Last modified in November 2008, http://www.architectmagazine.com/educational-projects/abdel-wahed-elwakil-wins-2009-driehaus-prize.aspx

IMAGES REFERENCES: The images are extracted from : Steele, James. An Architecture for people, the complete work of Hassan Fathy apart from those specified below. Fig. 1: http://www.library.tudelft.nl/en/news/article/napoleon-comes-to-delft/ Fig. 9: Fathy, Hassan. Natural energy and vernacular architecture: principles and examples with reference to hot arid climates. p87. Fig. 14: Fathy, Hassan. Architecture for the poor, An experiment in rural Egypt. p145. Fig. 16: http://sx62ugo.edu.glogster.com/opec/ Fig. 17: Hamid, Ahmad. Hassan Fathy and Continuity in Islamic Arts and Architecture. p10. Fig. 18: http://www.architectmagazine.com/educational-projects/abdel-wahed-el-wakil-wins2009-driehaus-prize.aspx