Abstract
Architecture is an eminently artificial human enterprise but subject to natural laws and principles residing somewhere between the mineral world and vegetation. It is eminently archaic, as the dominant epistemologies, pragmatic conditions and techniques may change, but fundamental notions, ideas and principles remain where they have been ever since the construction of the first shelter. Architecture is also eminently thingly. As a thing, every work of architecture is in opposition to our broken world of events. For better or for worse, in actual practice this opposition settles in the act of construction, as a project becomes a building: material, structure, space.
Highlights
Architecture is an eminently artificial human enterprise but subject to natural laws and principles residing somewhere between the mineral world and vegetation
The standard hand—pressed and sun—dried mud brick Hassan Fathy and his Nubian masons rescaled for the New Gourna project consists of ordinary earth from the site, sand from the desert, straw and water, the exact proportions depending on the required specific weight of the brick determined as a part of a wall, a vault or a dome
The state of the education of future architects is in the bidirectional cause—and—effect relation with the general state of architecture as a profession, discipline, venture, practice and as the actual art of building in the actual present
Summary
Architecture is an eminently artificial human enterprise but subject to natural laws and principles residing somewhere between the mineral world and vegetation. In the world of things, this connection manifests itself in a HANDPRINT that a humble craftsman leaves on a handy mud brick, the most ancient, most ordinary and most simple building material made of the same element we are made of — the earthy powder. He virtually brings things to life, chiseling shadow and light from the perfect block of Carrara marble.
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