Egypt Vernacular Architecture

College of Engineering - Architectural Programme
Course: Vernacular Architecture

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Lecturer :Associate Prof . Dr . Sherif Khashaba
Vernacular Architecture
in Egypt
Dr. Sherif Khashaba
ARCHITECTURE DEPARTMENT
FACULTY OF ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY
ROYAL UNIVERSITY FOR WOMEN
Associate Prof. Dr. Sherif Khashaba
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VERNACULAR ARCHITECTURE
Rethinking the Vernacular Architecture

Desert architecture: Egypt
Since the days of the Pharoah’s rule, Egypt
chose earth to render homes until they reached
the sophistication of manifesting their living
conditions with attempts to upgrade. The
houses stood squeezed, surrounding either an
oasis or flourishing along the trail of river Nile.
The compaction between the Egyptian housing
allowed narrow alleys which were self-shaded
by the adjacent structures or preferably covered
by their habitats. Wind towers and atriums are
salient features of Egyptian houses—the fewer
openings, the better to prevent sand and
exposure to direct radiations. The roof is
prepared from palm or olive trees, their ribs,
and reeds made into terraces to facilitate sleep
during summers Associate Prof. Dr. Sherif Khashaba
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Rethinking the Vernacular Architecture
The intuitive Egyptians

encountered a native soil at
the edge of the saline water
bodies of the desert, a soil
worthy of craftsmanship
satiating their survival in the
arid desert of the African
continent. The locals
transferred the tacit
knowledge , . The sand and
dehydrated salt from the
water bodies unified to
produce a building material in
Ancient mud house near Siwa Oasis in
the form of unfired bricks to
Egypt’s western desert
construct shelter against the
harsh weather settings.
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13th Century Vernacular Earth Town

Shali is an organic mud-brick
fortress of the 13th century,
built from the local dehydrated
mud bricks from the saline soil
of the Siwa lake outside the
labyrinths of the ancient city .
The 1926 rainstorm in the
desert gushed the people out
of the limits of the clustered
fortress to build newer
dwellings with electricity and
running water. attempt but is
still ongoing.
Following thunderstorms in 1930, 1970, and 1985 forced the remaining inhabitants into
satellite settlements outside the concentrated city center. Restoration of the vernacular
structure has been a successful

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13th Century Vernacular Earth Town
Mosque built with Kershef in 1203

restored post several rainstorms
The earth town Shali laps a pyramid of dwellings, some as high as
five-storey. The narrow paths aim at the oldest Mosque that has a
chimney-shaped minaret. Every part involved in the building is
bonded with ‘Tlakh’, a fermented mud mix to allow the load-
bearing structure to soar that high.
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Hassan Fathy, born in 1900 in Alexandria, Egypt, was an Egyptian

architect, artist, and poet who had a lifelong commitment to architecture
in the Muslim world. He was a cosmopolitan intellectual, with knowledge
of Western and Eastern literature and philosophy, absorbing the
influences of very different traditions. He used his knowledge of
mathematics and music investing them in simple domestic constructions
with the dignity of harmonic proportions.
Hassan Fathy, Egyptian Architect devoted himself to housing the poor in
developing nations and deserves to be studied by anyone involved in
rural improvement. He worked to create an indigenous environment at a
minimal cost, and by doing so, to improve the economy and the standard
of living in rural areas. In his works, Fathy wanted to pay tribute to nature,
traditions, and man while seeking spirituality. All these qualities
distinguish him from the traditional notion of a modern architect.
In this article, we take you through a selection of 15 of the most
significant projects of Hassan Fathy, Egypt’s best-known architect since
Imhotep, and winner of both the Aga Khan Chairman’s Award for
Architecture and the Alternative Noble Prize in 1980.

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Hassan Fathy inspired architects and planners worldwide by integrating

traditional materials with modern architectural principles. He worked to
include and empower the poor through participation in design and
building processes, a main theme in his seminal publication, Architecture
for the Poor. Fathy’s innovative mixed-use plan for New Gourna, the icon
of his legacy, remains a powerful and well-preserved element of the
village. The ideas he engendered and the evolution of this community are
relevant to today’s challenges of environmental protection and urban
growth.

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Akil Sami House in Dahshur, Egypt by Hassan Fathy

This house, and several
others that followed it in the
same area, were built in local
limestone because of a
governmental ban on the
use of mud-brick following
the construction of the high
dam, as well as
unsatisfactory test results
for the structural strength of
the soil in this area, first
confirmed in the Fouad Riad
project. The Takhtabush and
courtyard area of the house
with wooden pergola, recall
the latticework notably used
in the Moastirli residence in
1950 also by him.
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Abd al-Rahman Nassif House in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia

The house was built with
a stone block recovered
from the demolition of
the traditional tower
houses in the old city,
which the client
unsuccessfully tried to
save. Rather than using
the familiar dome over
the majlis here, the
architect felt that an
octagonal shukshieka
would be more regionally
appropriate, and the use
of this particular element
carries over into a larger
house designed in Tabuk
soon afterward.
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New Gourna Village

The village of New
Gourna, which was
partially built
between 1945 and
1948, is possibly
the most well
known of all of
Fathy’s projects
because of the
international
popularity of his
book, “Architecture
for the Poor“,
published nearly twenty years after the experience and concentrating primarily
on the ultimately tragic history of this single village. While the architect’s
explanations offered in the book are extremely compelling and ultimately
persuasive, New Gourna is still most significant for the questions it raises rather
than the problems it tried to solve, and these questions still await a thorough,
objective analysis.
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New Gourna Village

Hassan Fathy inspired
architects and planners
worldwide by
integrating traditional
materials with modern
architectural principles.
He worked to include
and empower the poor
through participation in
design and building
processes, a main
theme in his seminal
publication,
Architecture for the Poor. Fathy’s innovative mixed-use plan for New Gourna, the icon of his
legacy, remains a powerful and well-preserved element of the village. The ideas he
engendered and the evolution of this community are relevant to today’s challenges of
environmental protection and urban growth.
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New Gourna Village

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New Gourna Village

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Hamdi Seif al-Nasr House in Fayum, Egypt

The Hamdi Seif AI-Nasr rest house
is sited on a long thin peninsula of
land projecting into Lake Fayum
and was intended to be used
during the landlord’s periodic visits
to his estate there. The design as
documented represents an
ambitious first interpretation of
the client’s requirements, resulting
in a solution that is quite large in
both plan and vertical section.
Raised on
a man-made podium to protect it from flooding, the house plan revolves around
the interplay between an arcaded square exterior courtyard and the high
formal vertical dome to which it is connected by a deep window and malkaf
above. The various other spaces of the house are all related in one way or another
to the linear axis set up between these two elements and fall on either one side or
the other of the line that they create, depending upon the level of privacy required.
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New Baris Village in Kharga, Egypt

No other project
dominates this mature
phase of the
architect’s work as much
as the village of New
Baris, in a way that is
comparable to the
notoriety of New Gourna
twenty years before. This
remote and forbidding
wilderness outpost
designed by him, which is
almost in the
geographical center of Egypt, was planned to initially house 250 families, of
which more than half were intended to be farmers and the remainder to be
service personnel. His previous experience with such a project, and particularly
his ability to build it inexpensively, made Fathy the logical choice as the architect
for New Baris.
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Andreoli Residence in Cairo, Egypt
Andreoli Residence,
1984, Fayyum was
built for Katarina
and Gerry Andreoli,
who lived in Cairo
during the 1980s,
the house was
located in the
vicinity of Tunis al-
Gabal village in
Fayyum.

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Shahira Mehrez Apartment in Cairo, Egypt

The first of
Fathy’s residential projects
upon his return to Egypt is
small in scale but has a
combined effect that far
exceeds the physical size of the
area concerned. In order to
personalize her apartment on
the sixth floor of a building
designed by another architect,
Shahira Mehrez asked Fathy to
try to work within the existing
framework to create a more
varied and individual series of
spaces for her.

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Ceramics Factory in Qina, Egypt

A second community-oriented
project that followed New
Gourna at this time was a
Jesuit based crafts center
located at Garagos, which was
intended to improve the
standard of living of the
people in the village there.
The plan for a ceramics
factory while deceptively “low-
tech” in appearance,
represents an extremely
logical and efficient
production diagram for the
The workshop interior
manufacture of pottery.

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Khalil al-Talhuni House in Shuna Janubiyya, Jordan

This house is an
unusually fine
example of Hassan
Fathy’s consistent care
for residential space
used for hospitality.
The outside area,
enclosed by arcades,
is primarily given over
to this function and
balances well with the
more private
character of the
interior.

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Dar Al Islam in New Mexico, USA

The last community
project undertaken by
him was Dar al-Islam,
a nonprofit
educational
organization
established in
Abiquiu, New Mexico.
Nuridin Durkee, an
American Muslim
Scholar and Sahl
Kabbani, a Saudi
businessman, co-
founded the project in
1979 with backing
from the family of
King Khalid ibn Abdul
Aziz of Saudi Arabia.
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Beit ar-Rihan in Kuwait City, Kuwait by Hassan Fathy

A private residence for the
al-Sabah family, entirely
constructed in brick and
completed during 1981.
Some of the arches
appeared to have failed,
and in 1988, the Jordanian
architect Badi al-Abed
undertook their restoration
and completion of the
residence according to
Fathy’s designs

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Hamed Said’s Studio in Cairo, Egypt

The Hamid Said house in
the al-Marg area of Cairo
represents an important
project among all Fathy’s
projects because it is the
first documented
application of mud-
brick construction, and
is still standing. The first
phase, which was built
in 1942, was simply a
studio and sleeping
space for the
artist and his wife, incorporating a large vaulted loggia as an open exterior sitting
area from which to appreciate the seemingly endless green palm grove
surrounding the property. The construction of the house coincided with a climate
of concern among Egypt’s intellectual community at that time about the
detrimental effects of industrialization on the traditional cultures of the world
and the need for a search for Egyptian origins in the face of the threat
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Sadat Resthouse in Garf Hoseyn, Egypt
Intended as a rest
house to be used
on official trips to
the isolated area
around Lake
Nasser in Nubia,
the residence is
actually made up of
three separate
buildings
sequentially
organized
according to the
status of each

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Casaroni House in Giza, Egypt

The Casaroni residence,
or “Mit Rehan” as it has
been called by its
owners, is very near the
Greiss house on the
Shabramant Road and
is one of the most
elegant of Fathy’s
residential works yet to
be built. Construction
was once again
overseen by the client
rather than the
architect, specifically
the client who saw to its
timely completion

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The Fathy House in Sidi Krier, Egypt

In the house designed for
himself in Egypt, the use of
typologies and traditional
forms is combined with
influences from other
cultures, transforming
them in his style. The
design of the house has
noble sobriety and a
human size and all the
pieces have been designed
according to a symphony
of forms and ideas but
also moods and materials.
Fathy wanted the house to
be a successful prototype
of a low-cost structure, all
beautiful, but also a model
for tourist unit
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Dar Wanis (The House of Sun & Wind) by Adel Fahmy , Fayoum , Egypt:
After spending 17 years abroad in Germany, Adel Fahmy came

back to Egypt and decided to build his own house. He chose to
build it on lake Quaroon. He wanted to work with local non-
professional masons. Hence, he provided practical training to
whoever interested to participate. Then, they started using natural
stone from the site and used traditional building techniques.
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Dar Wanis (The House of Sun & Wind) by Adel Fahmy , Fayoum , Egypt:

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Pottery House in Tunis Village ,Fayoum Egypt

In 1980s, the Swiss
female potter, Evelyn
Porret came to
Fayoum with her
Egyptian friends.
Soon, the magic of
the place captured
her, and she decided
to have a house
there. She had a
dream to turn the
house to a pottery
school. The house
has a dome ceiling
and is built with
natural materials.
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Pottery House in Tunis Village ,Fayoum Egypt
Evelyn Porret

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Nubian Village , Aswan , Egypt
area of Nubia. It has also included some useful information about the Nubians social
traditions, customs, religion and economy. This is an extremely informative summary
of the region. There are three distinct ethnic groups of Nubia; the Kanzis, Arabs and
the Mahas. Since the passing strangers were welcomed in Nubia, they were provided
with shelter at guesthouses.. Associate Prof. Dr. Sherif Khashaba
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Cultural children park, Saida Zeinab , Cairo, Egypt

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Cultural children park, Saida Zeinab,

Cairo, Egypt
The design philosophy was launched mainly
from a set of questions about the different
dialectical relationships between the
elements of the project, the question was
about the dialectical relationship between
the beneficiary (children) and the site (the
garden), as well as between the history of
the site and the heritage surrounding it and
the functional elements of the project,
where the escalation was The unique
vertical spiral, which is reflected by the
minaret of the Ibn Tulun Mosque, is inspired
by a horizontal organizational architecture
that surrounds the site and its contents of
palm trees and design elements added in
the second and third dimensions.
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Cultural children park, Saida Zeinab,

Cairo, Egypt
The construction of Cultural Park for
Children faced relatively few challenges, as
the park an emphasis on the use of local
resources. The technology used in the
construction phase was sourced from the
Sayeda Zeinab area, while the building
materials were brought in from around the
site. The craftsmen component of the labor
force was sourced on the three major
communities within Sayeda Zeinab, the
Bassatine, Tulund and Darrasah. The
workers originated from Upper Egypt , and
the professionals were also exclusively
Egyptian.

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Egypt Vernacular Architecture

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College of Engineering - Architectural Programme

Course: Vernacular Architecture

Dr. Sherif Khashaba

Rethinking the Vernacular Architecture

Rethinking the Vernacular Architecture

The intuitive Egyptians

13th Century Vernacular Earth Town

Associate Prof. Dr. Sherif Khashaba

13th Century Vernacular Earth Town

Mosque built with Kershef in 1203

Associate Prof. Dr. Sherif Khashaba

Hassan Fathy, born in 1900 in Alexandria, Egypt, was an Egyptian

Associate Prof. Dr. Sherif Khashaba

Associate Prof. Dr. Sherif Khashaba

Hassan Fathy inspired architects and planners worldwide by integrating

Associate Prof. Dr. Sherif Khashaba

Associate Prof. Dr. Sherif Khashaba

Associate Prof. Dr. Sherif Khashaba

Associate Prof. Dr. Sherif Khashaba

Associate Prof. Dr. Sherif Khashaba

Associate Prof. Dr. Sherif Khashaba

Associate Prof. Dr. Sherif Khashaba

Associate Prof. Dr. Sherif Khashaba

Associate Prof. Dr. Sherif Khashaba

Associate Prof. Dr. Sherif Khashaba

Akil Sami House in Dahshur, Egypt by Hassan Fathy

Associate Prof. Dr. Sherif Khashaba

Associate Prof. Dr. Sherif Khashaba

Associate Prof. Dr. Sherif Khashaba

Abd al-Rahman Nassif House in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia

Associate Prof. Dr. Sherif Khashaba

Associate Prof. Dr. Sherif Khashaba

Associate Prof. Dr. Sherif Khashaba

New Gourna Village

New Gourna Village

New Gourna Village

Associate Prof. Dr. Sherif Khashaba

New Gourna Village

Associate Prof. Dr. Sherif Khashaba

Hamdi Seif al-Nasr House in Fayum, Egypt

New Baris Village in Kharga, Egypt

Andreoli Residence in Cairo, Egypt

Associate Prof. Dr. Sherif Khashaba

Shahira Mehrez Apartment in Cairo, Egypt

Associate Prof. Dr. Sherif Khashaba

Ceramics Factory in Qina, Egypt

Associate Prof. Dr. Sherif Khashaba

Khalil al-Talhuni House in Shuna Janubiyya, Jordan

Associate Prof. Dr. Sherif Khashaba

Dar Al Islam in New Mexico, USA

Beit ar-Rihan in Kuwait City, Kuwait by Hassan Fathy

Associate Prof. Dr. Sherif Khashaba

Hamed Said’s Studio in Cairo, Egypt

Sadat Resthouse in Garf Hoseyn, Egypt

Associate Prof. Dr. Sherif Khashaba

Casaroni House in Giza, Egypt

Associate Prof. Dr. Sherif Khashaba

The Fathy House in Sidi Krier, Egypt

Associate Prof. Dr. Sherif Khashaba

After spending 17 years abroad in Germany, Adel Fahmy came

Associate Prof. Dr. Sherif Khashaba

Pottery House in Tunis Village ,Fayoum Egypt