"it's not enough for God to be with the poor on some reflections and experiences of the Egyptian architect Hassan Fathi" "among the so-called contemporary things very little merits to dure and age" "the least expensive architecture, economically speaking isn't the the architecture that is poorest in art each material has its own specific demands mud, wood marble, stone cannot be classified along an esthetic hierarchy" "one must begin to construct with local materials and not stubbornly insist to import them otherwise one would only enrich the universal production cycle ?" "songs:" "Sayd Darwich, Cheikh Imam, Hassan Abouleila sung by Leila Chahid, Hadi Guella" "Change is implicit, it's a sign of life;" "and if it's not for the better, it's for the worse, and each plan must be executed for the better." "The poor countries depend on the rich countries." "Thus, for their development, they find themselves torn between occidental modernism and a modernity, dominated by national values, based on a scientific spirit and a real trust in the people's potential." "Egypt, Arab country of the "Third World", illustrates very well this contradiction." "With her prestigious heritage of more than 5000 years of civilization and her actual political situation." "HASSAN FATHI" "In the domain of architecture and urbanism, Hassan FATHI, Arab Egyptian architect, born with the century, has been able to define clearly this contradiction." "Of the two roads, he has choses the road of Arab Modernity." "This is the traditional Fatimid Cairo extending before you horizontally, with minarets jutting, aspiring towards the Divine and the citys joins Heaven with the appeal "God is great"" "on the other hand, over there, the modern city congested and confuse, which joins Heaven with what?" "with offices, dining rooms and bathrooms." "Hassan Fathi, who are you?" "I'm an architect who has lost all points of reference in his Arab society" "I'm an Arab architect who has lost all points of reference in his Arab society who has lost his "Arabness"" "and I'm in the process of searching anew in architecture and urbanism," "to find again, to regain my lost "Arabness"" "Hassan Fathi, how did you arrive at architecture?" "When I think back it now seems to have been a predestination because when I left my secondary school" "I thought of entering the Agricultural School" "I used to love the countryside, and I still do and I chose the Agricultural School thinking I'd live in the country, next to nature nothing that shocks, everything beautiful, God's creations which are all beautiful, a landscape, the mountains," "the trees, the clouds, everything in perfect harmony thank you" "?" "but unfortunately or not," "I wasn't admitted into the school because there was an entry examn and so I enrolled at the Polytechnic School and there I chose architecture" "You're living in an Arab house right now." "Have you lived in other houses besides, in Cairo?" "I've lived in different houses in Cairo and surroundings." "But I admit that I didn't feel much at ease in those houses, as I do in this Arab house." "Because here the void expresses itself, the void isn't just an empty space." "A habitation is nothing else but an ensemble of empty volumes, separated by walls." "The empty spaces of an Arab house correspond to man's desires." "They harmonize with the shapes and spaces to which man aspires." "That's why I feel totally at ease here, much more than in any other house." "In an Arab house each room is given its appropriate dimensions: height, length, width etc." "because this is a question of a certain rythmn." "When I enter a room and find that its height doesn't correspond with its width, say, when the ceiling is lower, as we can see in many of today's houses, each time I look at it I have the impulse to push it up, because it seems to fall down on my head." "I push it up, it comes down again, I push it up, and I'm suffering, psychologically speaking, without knowing, unconsciously." "The Arab house is introvert." "And as soon as you enter an Arab house, avec le magage ?" "the entrance at an angle one is entirely cut off from the city." "# ?" "Arab song lyrics" "The 3 functions of the window 1. to let the light enter then the air, and finally, to be able to look outside those functions, in Europe they're combined in the window." "Whereas in the Arab house, the three functions are separate from each other ventilation, the movement of air, this is obtained with the malqaf (wind-catcher)" "and also with the mashrabiya." "Thermic comfort depends also on the movement of air the more you can have of an air draught inside the better but when you have great apertures and if you allow hot air to enter, and you'll also get the reverberation" "the reflection from the other buildings which let the heat enter so the solution is to put up the mashrabiya, even over the entire façade of the room you'll have augmented the ventilated surface and you have wood, an organic fibre" "has a hydrometric value and absorbs humidity the air passes first and will be de-hymidified and the absorption of the air's humidity at the same time, it re-evaporates with the movement of air, and ?" "it's the heat, the tent ?" "also, it tames the light it distributes the luminosity around in such a way so that the contrast between dark and light isn't very great." "?" "fortunately you can see this in an extraordinay fashion in the House of Suhaymi where you have a mashrabiya covering the entire façade of the room looking out onto the garden" "# ?" "song lyrics" "concerning thermic comfort with movement of air" "Ever since antiquity we have examples of capturing air, the malqafs in the tomb of Nebamun there's a drawing of Nebamun's house that has a double malqaf one directed towards North from where the wind blows and the other one to evacuate it" "this system has been employed by everybody with the malqaf you have today a practical problem because the surface of a malqaf is minimal compared to the surface of the entire house which obstructs the wind for another building so you have things buried like the minaret here" "and that works much better but an interesting thing:" "you'll find the surface of the malqaf differs in different countries here we have it big, in Egypt because the air temperature at the higher levels is much less than close to the ground it might differ by 10 degrees" "keeping its freshness but in Iraq the air temperature, even at higher levels, is immense you might have 45° C and if you have a malqaf to get some air you're about to let in hot air, and that isn't a good idea" "so they make their malqafs very small, very narrow like an organic exchange take, for instance, the Africans the temperature is about 37° C and the humidity is great it's like their body temperature, that's why they have large nostrils" "whereas in Europe, if you let air enter to the same extent as in Africa, you'll get bronchitis at once because the air is minus 2° C and that's why people in Europe have smaller nostrils" "?" "# song lyrics" "most Arab houses, aristocratic and bourgeois, degrade themselves only a few have been restored and are open to the public, as museums admired by the tourists, they are ignored by the people the inhabitant of the quarter walks past these constructions" "without even suspecting their existence." "but it's here where he could discover the riches of his heritage" "1889: opening of the Suez Canal" "From then on the Khedive Ismail inaugurates the era of hegemony of the Occident" "Cairo becomes a copy of a European city" "The British Embassy" "Hotel Parliament" "From then on, national power is seconded by colonial power" "a French mansion in classical style" "Neo-Renaissance, Italian style a villa of the Garden City" "the Post Office there is one point one must mention:" "when people turned towards the West we became Europeanized and when they drew up the new plan of Cairo at the beginning of the century they drew the plan of the new Cairo as if it were a plan for the underground, the métro" "and the city which continues to spread out towards the West whereas it should normally spread out towards the North and the East it's as if somebody had a stiff neck at the time" "aspects of modern Cairo" "the Rihani troupe:" "Mignonne doesn't play with fire" "today you have air condition air condition demands very narrow rooms very low ceilings and when it's out of order one suffocates inside modern buildings, like asphalt roads they are covered with tarmac, that's part of the car industry" "Arab enterprises:" "Osman Ahmad Osman today one builds on purpose rooms with low ceilings and narrow rooms because architecture has joined ranks with the air condition industry because we must, with our monetary system, pay for everything, even for air" "they make us pay for water, they make us pay for air not everybody has the money to pay, but the untouchables, economically speaking untouchables, who suffer with every new invention and it's the rich minorities who benefit" "and the masses suffer all the more and the gap between the rich and the poor is about to widen, instead of closing in" "I've never seen a single building designed and constructed by a European in the Orient which can be considered accomplished, in the Orient not a single one and the same thing applies for us too, if I were asked to construct a building in Switzerland" "my rythm is very different from the rythm of a Swiss one must understand those things" "those gentlemen, they are called for:" "Le Corbusier for Chandigarh, Louis Kahn for Dacca so there's no longer the tradition which conserves the esthetic values and the functional values today, that is lost one must replace it by discrimination, and know-how but that know-how is denied, even to our local architects" "because they've cut themselves off from their tradition and the knowledge they might have through their heritage they depend solely on the Occident where they went to university" "Two modern Cairos a modern Cairo which is rich a modern Cairo which is poor" "# the flowers of the garden have grown # they give off different perfumes" "# yet, the plants grow from a single soil" "# and the sown grains are watered with the same water" "# I'm astonished" "# I'm astonished" "# I'm astonished" "# I'm astonished" "# I'm astonished" "# I'm astonished how two branches # born of the same shoot # one of them crawls down and buries itself" "# and the other one raises itself and spreads out the people themselves decide on their sacred space" "the Mosque of Ibn Tulun masterpiece of equilibrum and rythm and rich in symbols that mosque dating from the 9th century is still intact and yet, it's abandoned" "# God, the living # the supporter" "# the creator # the all-powerful" "# the all-knowing # the just" "# the merciful" "the Mosque of Sayyid Al-Husseyin, contemporary imitation of neo-gothic and build on the public square here, the bad architectural taste annihilates the sacred function of the place the faithful arrive in masses and aren't bothered by esthetics" "# call to prayer" "# God is greatest" "# there is only one God" "# the unique, the great, the living # may God grant the praying man's wishes" "# God is greatest" "# God is greatest" "# in the name of God, the lenient, the merciful, # praised be God, master of the resurrection" "# who loves the Prophet and has faith # who is generous towards the weak # blessed are they who love the Prophet # blessed are they who are generous towards the weak" "only 15 piastres, brother the most beautiful gifts from the Prophet's quarter" "10 piastres, little one attention!" "3 piastres, that's enough" "# support us, oh messenger from God" "# oh our lord Husseyin" "aspects of the old city of Cairo" "the dilapidated aspect of the old Cairo doesn't date from today it's due to a secular mentality which abhorrs restoration that mentality prepares the terrain for the HLM (cheap rent apartment buildings) response of the inhabitants" "my child is dead stung by beasts people have fallen they have brought down the mosque upon our heads" " the mosque?" " yes, this is a mosque" "Here we sit, abandoned and it's freezing outside we have babies but we're crying out loud in the desert there are many empty buildings, but we must live in the streets" " and the Imam?" " he keeps silent. he's afraid." "we are numerous" " what did you do?" " we forced in the entrance door if he had opposed us we would have struck him down." " why did you chose this mosque?" " it's in our quarter each occupies his own mosque." "one doesn't invade elsewhere the mosque of others" "Any mosque or medrese in your quarter:" "occupy them!" "Yes. the Socialist Union told us so." "Newspapers and magazines took our photographs when we did our washing we've been living here for a year now" " How many are you?" " 22 families" "# why, oh violet, do you marvel?" "# since you're a sad flower" "the village installing itself on the city's roofs the logical answer of the peasant who came to look for work in a city of 7 million inhabitants which can only give shelter for 3 million" "a shelter is as necessary to man as a shell is to an egg thus, the wild occupation of space becomes a vital necessity one settles down where one can one requsitions and one moves house, even if necessary, to the cemetry, to live there" "here, in the city of the dead it is here, among the rich mausoleums of the Sultans and the modest tombs of the common man that a population of several tens of thousands finds refuge" "these are the inhabitants of the necropolis thrown at the desert's doorstep" "In Egypt, there's always behind the cemetery the desert" "one has always pretended that Egypt was a gift from the Nile one must rectify this:" "Egypt is a gift from the peasant of the Nile he's the principal driving engine of the country guardian of the traditions, he also holds the secret of the millenial détage ?" "the rural architecture" "Since ages, the Niles has served as means of communication between the Lower and Upper Egypt" "the products of industry, one must aquire them with money one enters the monetary system but money ?" "doesn't existe with most of the people the annual per-capita income in the Third World varies between 20 et 30 pounds and those are the people we want to serve and for whom we want to construct homes, they are your clients, Mister Architect" "if those gentlemen ... would continue to live in the ancient system they would be able to help each other but they've cut themselves off from the benefices of the traditional co-operative system and at the same time they have no money and I call them the untouchables, economically speaking" "this is what we must bear in mind and the architect, and the engineer must subjugate technology and modern sciences in the service of those poor devils anyway, they aren't at all customers for the products of industry" "and the secret of the success of the traditional co-operative system is this:" "one man cannot construct a house but 100 men can easily construct 100 houses an example: there's a village called Djena ?" "at the Kharga Oasis that village was submerged by moving sands." "the mayor of that villages showed me his buried village and the new village they built themselves within an enclosure ?" "among themselves they all went to live in the new village except a single house where an old man lived who cherished his house, he didn't want to leave with the others even though half of his house was submerged, he was left with two rooms" "so I asked him:" ""Mr. Mayor, what can one do, that poor man will be buried with his two rooms soon"" ""don't worry, we've already built him his own house over here"" "when there's the tradition of co-operation even without the guy asking for it they took him into consideration but if ever they introduced the monetary system nobody would have looked him in the face those poor peasants, what they built for themselves" "doesn't that have a monetary value?" "they have satisfied all their needs in their habitations, without circulation a penny among them what are we doing to ourselves, I wonder when one has this potential but doen't use it and for the Third World, believe me, there is no hope at all" "except to go back and modernize the traditional co-operative system and to revive it today under non-traditional conditions which rule the contemporary society" "# ?" "song lyrics" "daybreak on the Nile life is resumed the same as 5000 years ago" "the child at his birth already finds this water wheel" "How old are you?" "I?" "50 ... 55 ..., say, 60 years old and this wheel?" "Before my father was born, it was already here." " the same wood - yes, the same" " what material - sycamore" " who's the owner of the wheel?" " the collective 5. 6. 7. 8. associates:" "every associate has a share according to the surface he cultivates." "to solve a problem of habitation, you need architects who know how to design using local materials which the people can obtain without spending money and then, one must use artisans, masons carpenters, the other professions who can handle those materials" "and you need engineers too who can assure us the safety in the empoy of those materials by subjecting them to the rules of modern science like soil mechanics which can give us all the qualities physical and chemical and mechanical" "of the earth and raw mud what each poor man could obtain since the earth it's beneath everybody's feet" "we know the thermic qualities of all the materials you know that the raw brick is the best isolator tour d'horizont ?" "the transfer of heat in those materials is 0,34 meaning, if you have on the surface here 10 kalories, a unit of 0,34 would traverse whereas with cement, the conductivity is 0,9 the pêcheur ?" "is minimal of cement you augment the conductivity from the outside to the inside by 9 you see, God is on the side of the poor" "an 8th century Fatimide cemetery the raw bricks still withstands" "Upper Egypt the ecological coherence is the result of the peasant's experience it's the same everywhere water precedes cultivation which precedes habitation which precedes the cemetery which precedes the desert which opens toward the sky never has the peasant disturbed that harmony" "today, the intervention of the city architect destroys that coherence" "water cultivation" "habitation the cemetary" "the desert the sky" "Gharb Assouan village constructed by the people:" "coherence # when the sun will have darkened # when the stars will be tarnished # when the mountains will move # when the female camels full with milk will be let lose # when the beasts of prey will gather in groups" "# when the seas will boil over # when the souls will couple" "Gharb Assouan, village of Lower Nubia extending over 12 km along the Nile fresh shadow precedes the habitation to the question asked of the population we were answered this house was built 35 years ago." "It's very well preserved." "on the other hand, the reinforced concrete buildings which have cost thousands of Egyptian pounds became cracked, and have many deficiencies so our brick is better than concrete" "the rooms which we call "Kaboui"" "are always open towards the South and closed against the North with just small windows for ventilation the "mandaras", oriented towards the North have apertures that are 6-7 m high and are as wide as a door those are the summer rooms." "totally open the village of Abou-Riche ?" "open towards the North, closed against the South" "a courtyard leading to another courtyard leading to the public square one is lost between the inside and the outside" "# ?" "song lyrics" "at the end of the holidays the new school year begins the children go to school, happy and content friends reunite." "every pupil greets his friends they tell each other what they did in the holidays and the school day begins we line up and the flag is raised." "we salute it and enter our classrooms" "the school is the only concrete building in the village the start of the new school year, lining up in the schoolyard, saluting the flag am I wrong to ?" "affirm that the concrete brings along an entire mental structure" "Gourna: experience of Hassan Fathi intervention of the architect in the service of the poor our problem with the habitation of the poor it isn't the walls, a wall, everyone can build it with raw bricks, with anything, earth" "with stones, anything." "but it's the roofing." "because roofing demands materials which can bear tensions flexions, ?" "efforts of sagging, like wood, iron etc." "but those materials can only be acquired with money today but the ancients have solved the problem once can make the ceiling, the roof, not with those costly materials, but give it resistance by the geometrical form, and not by the materials" "because there are codes ?" "which are called "enchained"" "if you hold a chain like this the rings pull on each other and work entirely by tension if you reverse it, put the thing on top, instead of suspending it, if can manage each element will work in compression" "you just change the tension to compression the raw brick can take compression, but it cannot take tension and thus the ancients have solved, since antiquity, we have examples since the 4th dynasty" "the Colossi of Memnon the port of ancient Thebes separates the two villages of Gourna the old Gourna covers 10 km of the important archeological sites" "The Valley of the Kings and the Valley of the Queens" "# ?" "song lyrics" "the new Gourna built by Hassan Fathi in 1948 on arable land, to re-settle the inhabitants of the old Gourna the village has been flooded three times by men unknown all the same, it resisted at the moment, it's fully inhabited" "for its construction Hassan Fathi has employed all his techniques and ideas using local materials he has undertaken to modernize the traditional to satisfy the real needs of the peasants without asking for help from outside" "the mosque of Ar-Bassouan ?" "the one of old Gourna the one of new Gourna it's in tradition that the architect looks for his models in repetition he invents" "it's the curse of the Pharaos" "which mysteriously caused the inhabited buildings to burst" "Hassan Fathi explains:" "if I haven't succeeded at Gourna it's because it was a very special project it wasn't for a rural society that needed habitation those people were living on looting and raiding and in each house where there were one to three tombs" "Pharaonic what Hassan Fatih considers as failure is simply the intervention of the peasant inhabitant who readjusted according to his needs his inhabited space the local materials used permitted adjustments at leisure" "Thank God, I've been able to, after all, despite my practical failures but I've obtained results almost certain certain about many directions, many things for example, the formation of masons one master-builder has formed 46 boys" "who used to beg in the street and they became master-builders within 3 months and once they realized ..." "today a mason earns 2-4 pounds a day they've trained among themselves, and they've become 80" "I'm Hassan Mohamad, mason" "We used to work with Hassan Fathi in the model village" "We started out as apprentices of the master-builders." "then we learned the trade and we became master-builders the masons of Nubia and Mahamid have taught me the trade" "While building with them" "Later I've built on my own exactly like any other mason" "Those men, like father like son, used to deal with antiques" "They excavated and found all sorts of things but today, surveillance is very strict there are search-lights, they're very precise there are patrols at night who arrest every prowler and shoot at those who are likely to excavate" "So the old methods are finished today, they all want to live here the visitors say "what a marvel"" "the houses and the village are beautiful there's plenty of water, whereas over there, they had neither water nor even a door" "# oh man of grapes # my shirt comes from Suez my underpants come from Suez" "# Attention, my stomach, oh man of grapes # oh seller of grapes # my stomach # don't make me abort when I'm with child # his name will be Abdel Samed." "He'll go to school" "These habitations are comfortable but their only fault is that most of them are very dark the inhabitants are farmers they're dealing with breeding" "Well, the house consists of a living room and of bedrooms there's no place for the animals at night, people are forced to leave the animals outside" "Hassan Fathi, could he be the ideal architect for the poor peasants?" "anyway, his experience has taught us that it's the architect who has most to learn from the peasant, and not vice-versa in his architectural research Hassan Fathi has striven to liberate the Egyptian peasant from a dependance on materials and a technique" "foreign to his environment to his culture and to his rythm of living he has thus laboured in the sense of an autonomy of the Egyptian peasant and for the safe-guarding of his heritage but the autonomy of the peasant, isn't it itself the tributary for the countryside's dependance of the city" "or the periphery's to the centre?" "Kom-Ombo the intervention of the exterior: incoherence" "Arab enterprises Osman A. Osman" "in '33, Nubia was inundated for the 2nd time the government gave as compensation for damages to the Nubians only 750 pounds all together and they rebuilt in a single year the entire region" "I think 43 villages in a single year but each new village has its cachet, its character and each house is more beautiful than its neighbour never has anything equal been done it was a miracle in our century, but nobody noticed it" "we built half of those houses in '65 for 28 million pounds under the so-called modern system using reinforced concrete, and those houses aren't habitable at all" "Kom-Ombo: several villages built at a distance from the Nile for the population chased from Lower Nubia because of the inondation caused by construction of the Assouan hydro-dam in 1956" "an inhabitant explains:" "we came here, to this place known only by God our ancestors didn't live here, our children won't live here we don't know where we are there's vermin, sickness nothing compared to the harvest, the produce in our old place" "a farm used to cultivate 60 different kinds of grain all sorts of harvests here, there's nothing but the wind sweeping over us now we all go to the hospital we get injections in our old place, there were neither injections nor doctors" "our doctor, that was a root we chewed in our old place, our houses were very beautiful and the wind agreeable we could build our houses as we liked the chicken run on one side, the kitchen on another" "the salon separate the bedrooms separate here, we're squeezed into three rooms, like in a hen-house as to the property, I myself have been a land owner since 14 years, 2 plots of land they told us: "for one plot over there you'll get one plot here"" ""for one house over there, you'll get one house here"" "we came here and nothing!" "neither plots of land, nor houses it was just charlatanism" "God shall judge them" "This here is stone, true but the houses in our old place were made of bricks half of stone, half of solid bricks the roof shaped like a vault like the cuppola of a mausoleum" " forgive the comparison - so when it rained nothing bad could happen:" "the water just ran down the walls whereas here, the rain water stagnates and stays on the roof before, we could sleep peacefully now life has become dreadful" " conclusion?" " what conclusion?" "there isn't one!" "as long as you can move your tongue, you'll have speech a bird settled on a rock in the sea a wave came, it flew up, then it settled down again" "You." "Bedouin." "perpetual migrator equip yourself before you start out for the great desert with a drop of water." "Muzaffar Al-Nawab [Iraqi poet, born 1934]" "Engl. subtitles: serdar202@KG 2017"