The architecture movement and Hassan Fathy

Developing technology and changing living conditions by the Industrial Revolution have changed the social structure radically. Sociocultural and technological changes have redefined the content of the architectural form. In the late 1920's, architectural development in the framework of rational, universal, and International Style rules has led to the negligence of local and traditional norms. The modern movement intended to conform the expressive systems of vernacular architecture -that was considered pointless after the technological development- to the spirit of the times, but it was insufficient. Throughout Europe and America in the 1940's and 50's, an architectural understanding that rejects the spatial and social environment, and alienates the other geographies' culture has been exported to the world. This architectural notion -that suggests a new social order that ignores the traditions and constructs parallel to the technological developments- has caused a number of identity and belongingness problems in both the European and American societies that produced this notion in them and the other societies. Some rhetoric has been developed with some application efforts that confronted this modernist and technological architecture that has emerged after World War II. These identity and belongingness problems have been criticized by sociologists and philosophers from different parts of the world. The following thesis will examine the influence of the developments in production on both modernization and locality and critical approaches on this matter. Hassan Fathy is an Egyptian architect who opposed the imposition of European values and standarts on non-European societies. He influenced architectural understanding of his period by his approaches and ideas. Hence, the essence of this thesis is to evaluate the theoretical criticism that Hassan Fathy raised against the International Style that ignores the traditional structure and identity of societies and their architecture and how this criticism is situated in front of the criticisms of modernism produced by American, European and Edward Said's perspective. In the appendix of this thesis fifty buildings -that was constructed after 1937 that Hassan Fathy's vernacular architectural approach started to form and that can represent his periodic architectural development in terms of vernacular archtitecture- are examined.