New Gourna Village, Egypt, Africa
Year 1946 latitude: ° 0' longitude: ° 0' Period Initiator(s) Egyptian Department of Antiquities Planning organization Nationality initiator(s) Designer(s) / Architect(s) Hassan Fathy Design organization Inhabitants Target population 6,300 Town website Town related links http://archnet.org/library/sites/one-site.jsp?site_id=156 http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/newgourna.htm Literature - M. Berger (ed.) the new metropolis in the arab world, congress for cultural freedom, New York 1963 - J. Steele, an architecture for people. the complete works of Hassan Fathy, New York 1997 type of New Town: > scale of autonomy New-Town-in-Town Satellite New Town Company Town > client Private Corporation Public Corporation > policy Capital Decentralization Industrialization Resettlement Economic
Archnet: "The new village is build between 1945-48 and is the best know example of Fathy's projects as it was followed by his book 'Architecture for the Poor' published 20 years after the construction of the village. The village was build after request from the Egyptian Department of Antiquities as a solution to the problem of relocating an entire community of entrepreneurial excavators that had established itself over the necropolis if Luxor. The village was mean as a prototype. However Fathy's idea was that each family should have an individual house to meet their demands and dreams. Despite the good intentions the project turned out to be fatal as the families sabotaged the project itself. They wanted to stay in their old settlements and saw no reason to be happy about the planning of a new village. This resulted in a general disregard for architectural programs that considered individual needs. It is only half a century later that these concerns have once again surfaced in planning entire neighborhoods." Interesting aspects: -anti-western, anti-technological, anti-modernist, anti-industrial -ten years before Fathy went to Doxiadis Ass. -free 'entrepreneurs' robbing the antique graves were supposed to restart as craftsmen and farmers -return to muslim values in housing and planning, introvert and private houses, courtyard and squares, communal wells, no running water (to not disturb existing social patterns), the arab feeling for space in building' -authentic way of livin and building meant tp attract tourists and project the ideal unspoiled egyptian village with market, crafts, theatre -no standardization of housing types -use of age old nubian dometechniques -hands on approach -houses were extremely cheap -individual houses rather than mass-housing source:
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