Hassan Fathy (1900-1989), born in Alexandria, Egypt, became a world-renowned architect, artist and poet with a lifelong commitment to architecture devoted to building with the poor. ![]() He made his point when ridicule was the result and years before appropriate technology and housing the poor became the fashionable thing to do. His bold vision and practice pioneered the idea that the building activities of the poor and the apparently humble technologies they used, were to be learnt from and not dismissed, that rigorous scientific methodologies should serve mud as much as machines, and that the architects' role lay in villages at least as much as in villas. Known to us by his honorific title, Hassan ‘Bey’ became our mentor and offered us an approach that at last promised to marry our architecture with the concerns of the poor. ![]() For the founder members of Development Workshop, as young architectural students concerned with problems of poverty, a study trip in 1973 to Egypt gave us the opportunity to meet and subsequently to work with Hassan Fathy (1900-1989), in Egypt, and in the Lebanon and Oman.
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