Publications of the Office of the Hungarian Cultural Counsellor in Cairo 2016-2017. Current Research of the Hassan Fathy Survey Mission in Egypt

Hassan Fathy (1900-1989) is a role model for generations of architects. Survey works on twentieth-century architecture usually discuss his work; his famous New Gourna experiment laid the foundations for community-based construction and design in the mid-1940s. Nearly one thousand monographs, articles, publications, and dissertations have been published on the Egyptian architect. His prominence and legacy drew attention not only to twentieth-century Islamic architecture and Hassan Fathy’s special place in it, but also highlighted his universal significance. The Faculty of Architecture of the Budapest University of Technology and Economics, with the help of Hungarian architects and students of architecture, launched an expedition to Egypt in the spring of 2015 to make a complete documentation of Hassan Fathy’s remaining architectural heritage. Upper Egypt (Luxor, Garagus and Fares) is predominantly emblematic of his early work, while the distorted New Baris settlement is a sad memento of monumental mudbrick architecture, while Anwar Sadat’s late presidential rest house in Gerf Hussein is a significant example of Fathy’s late work. The main drive at the early stages of the project was the speed of deterioration of these buildings, thus we aimed for the most complete documentation possible for further research. We clearly saw this as a quest to salvage valuable. This is how the Mission began, which was from the outset sensitive to other observable phenomena as well, in particular contemporary architecture and its dimensions which are often difficult to comprehend from a European perspective, especially without personal experience. Thus, in addition to documentation, we studied the current constructions trends, their changes, changes in social conditions, and their effects. The contrasts and tensions that can be felt in the relationship between the landscape and the people seemed interesting and difficult for us to understand, and it still seems to be. Our interest has thus grown well beyond the primary basic documentation objectives which we exploited in the early years of the project; field studies, historical and contemporary architectural research, and the study of relevant literature have become part of our work.