The Legacy of Hassan Fathy

Inventing Tradition and the Paradox of Continuity

I'd like to take a historical view. We start in the period from the 1940's to the 1960's, when the project of modernity and modern architecture, which had been developing since the 1920's, reached the developing world. We, in what was then named the Third World, were coming out of colonization and into independence and beginning a search for new national identities, aspiring to be part of a modern community of emerging nations. There was a great deal of poverty in our countries, with people coming into the cities in unprecedented migrations. There were new symbols of modernity from the West, with new buildings in the international style, and new materials, such as concrete and steel. The race for modern development was in full swing.

Fathy, on the other hand, was producing an alternative model for us. He was drawing from two strands: the vernacular and the historical. The vernacular meant the contemporary indigenous, and the historical was that which belonged to the local or regional cultural roots. Most of the great political leaders of that time, Gandhi and others, were similarly looking at their precolonial local history and drawing from it. In Egypt, you looked back to the pharaonic or the Mamluk. In India you looked back to the Mughal or the Hindu. In order to understand Fathy and his impact, and to assess the significance of his great successes and failures, this is important.

I feel that the words I am going to say now are perhaps less adulatory, but I also realize that Fathy is a great enough, fine enough and big enough figure to withstand this more critical look at his life and work. I believe he deserves that from us.