Hassan Fat'hy

One of the great Egyptian architects, Hassan Fat'hy has achieved universal recognition. His numerous honors include the International Gold Medal Award from the International Union of Architects -- an honor not only for Fat'hy in particular but also for the entire Middle East.

Fat'hy's undeviating dedication to a clear vision -- that many once branded as overly romantic -- was buttressed by deep beliefs in concepts that have become so widely accepted today that their revolutionary character is sometimes forgotten. These concepts include the importance of learning from vernacular architecture, the use of local materials, and architecture for the poor. Such concepts were not widely accepted by the international architectural establishment when originally presented by Fat'hy in the 1940s.

Hassan Fat'hy's major contribution is essentially a profound humanism that transcends the forms and methods of his buildings and opens up broad avenues of awareness in the Muslim world today. The true contributions of Fat'hy are not just the quaint mud brick structures he built with such elegance and refinement but ideas -- the idea of empowering the disenfranchised to express themselves with the architect as catalyst for the refining of local sensibility; the idea of rooting architectural expression in local and regional contexts to ensure both relevance and authenticity; the idea of using rational, scientific methods to accept or reject elements of both the old and the new; and the idea of the architect as a decoder of a past legacy and the articulator of a new, symbolically charged environment.