The village of New Baris was built in 1967. It is home to small houses built of mud bricks. The buildings are decorated with arches, domes, and openwork walls. It was designed by an Egyptian architect, Hassan Fathy. His projects were simple, practical and a tribute to the culture of the region. For years, Fathy was misunderstood and underestimated in his circles. Today, he is regarded as an icon of sustainable building.
Studies show that construction is responsible (directly or indirectly) for 40% of the greenhouse gases released worldwide. This involves the production of materials, transport, the construction process, recycling, etc. Hassan Fathy had a remedy for these ills back in the 1940s.
He decided to design houses from a raw material known to mankind as far back as ancient times – silt ceil. It was a raw material that was cheap, local, and required no processing. What’s more, its thermal mass made it possible to maintain large temperature differences between the exterior and interior of the building. Silt brick was not only cheap and practical but also perfectly in tune with the surroundings and the character of the place.
A tradition was very important to Fathy so he tried to reflect it in his designs. While still at university, he lamented the fact that a local style had not developed in his homeland and that the houses lacked character and accents associated with the native culture. Egypt, although officially independent since 1922, was still strongly influenced by Western culture, which was considered more modern and desirable.
Tradition has been lost and we have been cut off from our past since Mohammed Ali slit the throat of the last Mameluke – he wrote.
At the same time, there has been a renaissance of the rediscovery of Arab identity in artistic circles. Fathy joined them and rejected the then reigning modernism of Le Corbusier in Europe and turned to Egyptian vernacular architecture. This was a construction based on local traditions, whose creators were not metropolitan university-trained specialists, but indigenous craftsmen.
Simple, energy-efficient buildings made of kiln-dried bricks worked well in poorer, heat-prone villages. The technique was helped by Fathy to perfect the same local community for whom he was creating houses. He reckoned with their expectations and adapted the ideas to their requirements and lifestyle. The social aspect was as important to him as the cultural one. He wanted traditional construction to stop being seen as provincial and outdated and for its makers to feel a sense of pride in their skills, work, and culture.
Unfortunately, Fathy’s innovative approach was not understood by the government or the architects of the time. Traditional construction was frowned upon. In 1957, he decided to leave the country and moved to Athens. There he teamed up with Constantinos Doxiadis, a Greek architect, urban planner, and chief designer of Islamabad. Together they created housing in Pakistan and Iraq. There he promoted traditional solutions using natural energy. In 1963, he returned to Cairo where he lived for the rest of his life.
Over time, Hassan Fathy’s ideas gained popularity. The climate crisis has made us realize that fundamental changes are needed in many areas. Including the construction industry. Hassan Fathy seems to be the ideal patron for these changes. In Europe, which once marginalized traditional construction in favor of lavish steel and glass skyscrapers, there is now a clay building movement and successive European architects are paying tribute to the Egyptian visionary. In 2008, the international association ‘Save the Heritage of Hassan Fathy’ was founded in Geneva.
