An Architecture for the People: The Complete Works of Hassan Fathy

Hassan Fathy (1900‐1989) has gained an internationally growing reputation as an architect, teacher and writer. James Steele’s An Architecture for the People: The Complete Works of Hassan Fathy is the first critical account of Fathy’s entire output, drawing on personal interviews, previously undocumented projects, notebooks and journals. With 213 illustrations, 100 in colour, this is a splendid account of an architect whose ideas prefigured our current ethos of sustainability and community. Fathy believed that architecture should reflect the personal habits and traditions of a community rather than reforming or eradicating them. It was Fathy’s interest in indigenous building materials that...