1. Hassan Fathy was a noted Egyptian architect who pioneered appropriate technology for building in Egypt, especially by working to reestablish the use of adobe and traditional mud construction as opposed to western building designs, material configurations, and lay-outs.
Hassan Fathy was born in Alexandria to a Middle Class Upper Egyptian family.
Hassan Fathy studied and trained as an architect in Egypt, graduating in 1926 from the King Fuad University.
Hassan Fathy was influenced by Upper Egyptian and simple rural architecture, he designed a villa with the southern style for his wife along the Nile in Maadi, which was later destroyed to make way for the new corniche.
Hassan Fathy designed her brother's mausoleum, along Salah Salem, in Neo-Mamluk style.
Hassan Fathy was a cosmopolitan trilingual professor-engineer-architect, amateur musician, dramatist, and inventor.
Hassan Fathy designed nearly 160 separate projects, from modest country retreats to fully planned communities with police, fire, and medical services, markets, schools, theatres, and places for worship and recreation.
Hassan Fathy utilized ancient design methods and materials, as well as knowledge of the rural Egyptian economic situation with a wide knowledge of ancient architectural and town design techniques.
Hassan Fathy trained local inhabitants to make their own materials and build their own buildings.
Hassan Fathy began teaching at the College of Fine Arts in 1930 and designed his first adobe buildings in the late 1930s.
Hassan Fathy gained international critical acclaim for his involvement in the construction of New Gourna, located on Luxor's West Bank, built to resettle the village of Gourna, which fell within the archaeological areas of the Valley of the Kings and the Valley of the Queens.
Hassan Fathy's plan devised groundbreaking approaches to economic, social, and aesthetic issues that typically impact the construction of low-cost housing.
Hassan Fathy further describes the sense of failure that due to the village not being completed and the construction being halted, the theory of mud brick construction was seen even more cranky and impractical.
Hassan Fathy served as the advocate of traditional natural-energy solutions in major community projects for Iraq and Pakistan and undertook extended travel and research for the "Cities of the Future" program in Africa.
Hassan Fathy was a man with a riveting message in an era searching for alternatives in fuel, personal interactions, and economic supports.
Hassan Fathy left his first major international position, at the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston, in 1969 to complete multiple trips per year as a leading critical member of the architectural profession.
Hassan Fathy began to serve on the steering committee for the nascent Aga Khan Award for Architecture and he founded and set guiding principles for his Institute of Appropriate Technology.
Hassan Fathy was part in 1979 of a colloquium entitled in his honour 'Architecture for the Poor' in Corsica Alzipratu.
Hassan Fathy designed the mosque and madrasa, constructed with adobe, at Dar al-Islam, an educational center near Abiquiu, New Mexico, US.
Hassan Fathy died of natural causes on November 30,1989, at his home in Cairo, Egypt.
Hassan Fathy is renowned for having revived the traditional Nubian vault.
Hassan Fathy made use of windcatchers and other passive cooling and passive ventilation methods from traditional architecture.
Hassan Fathy is featured in the documentary Il ne suffit pas que dieu soit avec les pauvres by Borhane Alaouie and Lotfi Thabet.