THE VILLAGE E-Book

Abdel-moniem El-Shorbagy

• Herausgeber: BookRix
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

New Gourna village is the most famous and well-documented project designed by the late Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy. While some other villages were realised by the architect, only this work achieved immediate fame, and it has, in many respects, remained a controversial project ever since. Fathy's experiment in New Gourna village inevitably fused his architecture with the meaning of the human situation. The lessons gained from new Gourna were to be seen in its architectural vocabulary, especially in the assembly of vaults and domes. These elements demonstrated the chief virtues of mud-brick such as economy of materials and equilibrium of forms and masses. These virtues were not clear to the modern architects in Egypt who, by contrast, found them disturbing and not representing good building. New Gourna planning approach unlocked a very important door for architects and planners to create dynamic town planning elements, whose flexibility could allow a new spectrum of possibilities for living. Fathy's philosophy and the difficult questions he addressed in New Gourna provided the fundamental links between him and other modern architects as well as highlighting key aspects of his contribution to twentieth century architecture.

Leseprobe

Abdel-moniem El-Shorbagy

THE VILLAGE

THE FALL AND RISE OF NEW GOURNA

BookRix GmbH & Co. KG80331 Munich

New Gourna

THE VILLAGE

THE FALL AND RISE OF NEW GOURNA

Abdel-moniem El-Shorbagy

DEDICATION

To my wife, five children and extended family

Contents

Contents  

1. INTRODUCTION                                   

2. NEW GOURNA SETBACKS 

3. PLANNING THE VILLAGE 

3.1 Demographic factors 

3.2 Planning and Climate  

3.3 Socio-Economic Factors 

3.4 Cultural factors 

3.5 Aesthetic Factors

3.6 Spiritual Factors  

CONCLUSION 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Unless otherwise mentioned, all illustrations are credited to: (Courtesy of Aga Khan Trust for Culture)

1. INTRODUCTION

The village of Gourna (1945-1948), which New Gourna was intended to replace, is built on the site of the ancient town of Thebes (fig.1). It lies across the River Nile from Luxor, in the south of Egypt. It comprises the Valley of the Kings to the north, the Valley of the Queens to the south, and the tombs of the Nobles in the middle on the hillside. Old Gourna village is built on the site of these tombs of the Nobles and was inhabited by about seven thousands peasants whose houses are built around and over these tombs. The economy of this community was mainly based on the mining of these tombs and the selling of their priceless contents. The siting of the village presented a major problem for the preservation and scientific investigation of these major archaeological sites. Continuous tomb robbing had led the Department of Antiquities to take positive action to overcome the problem of Gourna. They asked the government to move the villagers in order to facilitate the continuity of excavations. A government commission studied the problem and decided to construct a whole new village or series of villages to accommodate the villagers.

Fig. 1. Old Gourna Village

Osman Rustum, the head of Engineering and Excavations and M. Stopplaere, the head of the Restoration Section in the Department of Antiquities, suggested to the Abbé Drioton, the director general of the department, that the Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy (1900-1989) should be asked to design the new village of Gourna. They admired Fathy’s work specifically the houses of the Royal Society of Agriculture (1941), which revealed the potential of mud-brick as a building material and the low cost of using it. Accordingly, Drioton commissioned Fathy to build New Gourna village. Fathy was an architect and a master builder, whose main aim was to establish a new approach based on a conception of interpreting forms and masses from the past (fig.2).