Aga
Khan Award for Architecture
The
First Award Cycle, 1978-1980
Lifetime Achievements of Hassan
Fathy
Chairman's Awards
The Chairman's
Award was established to honour special achievements.
The first
Chairman's Award was given in 1980 to Hassan Fathy,
an Egyptian architect, artist and poet in acknowledgement
of his lifelong commitment to architecture in
the Muslim world. Early in his career he began
to study the pre-industrial building systems of
Egypt to understand their aesthetic qualities,
to learn what they had to teach about climate
control and economical construction techniques
and to find ways to put them to contemporary use.
Two such systems dominated his thinking: the climatically
efficient houses of Mamluk and Ottoman Cairo,
ingeniously shaded and ventilated by means of
their two-storey halls, mashrabiyyas and courtyards;
and the indigenous mud brick construction still
to be found in rural areas. The latter consists
of inclined arches and vaults, built without shuttering,
domes on squinches built over square rooms in
a continuing spiral, semi-domed alcoves and other
related forms. The urban housing forms of Cairo
could not serve Fathy directly as a replicable
source because of the disappearance of the building
traditions that created them. These fine old houses
enriched his imagination, however, and were to
become models for later large-scale work. The
ancient mud brick forms, in contrast, were still
being produced by rural masons unchanged. Stimulated
by what he had learned, Fathy had what was then
a revolutionary idea. He perceived that a connection
could be made between the continuing viability
of mud brick construction and the desperate need
of Egypt's poor to be taught once again to build
shelter for themselves. In his lifetime he designed
more than thirty projects including several villages
for the poor. Experimental and unorthodox as his
ideas were, more than two-thirds of his projects
were either partially or completely realised.
Still in use, and well cared for, are a series
of modest private residences shaped by his profound
understanding of vernacular design.
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