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The heat doesn’t just make you sweat: it also changes the way you behave. think, sleep and even relate. For decades we have responded to that problem by filling houses air conditioning. However, long before that was the solution, an Egyptian architect came to a very different conclusion: if heat alters our well-being, perhaps the first thing to change is not the machine, but the building. Thus was born an architecture that seemed to “sweat” to stay cool. The “great” discovery. The life of Hassan Fathy changed in 1941 during a visit to a small Nubian village in the Upper Nile. There he found something that modern architecture had forgotten: houses built with mud that seemed to emerge from the landscape itself and maintained a pleasant temperature even under the scorching Egyptian sun. While the rest of the world associated progress with concrete, steel and glass, Fathy began to wonder why those humble buildings managed to coexist with the climate. far better than modern buildings. Heat is a psychological problem. Fathy understood something that today science relates to heat waves: an uncomfortable home not only consumes more energy, it also affects to rest, to humor and the quality of life. His obsession was never to build spectacular buildings, but rather spaces where the air itself will work in favor of those who lived inside. To achieve recovered centuries of forgotten knowledge: interior patios, narrow streets, lattices, thick adobe walls and systems capable of moving air naturally without the need for engines. Hassan Fathy Buildings that seem to sweat. One of the most striking elements of his designs were wind catchers and evaporative cooling systems. In some buildings he carefully oriented the homes with respect to the sun and the prevailing winds to guide the air inside. In others it made that current pass on wet coal or wet surfaces, causing cooling by evaporation very similar to human sweat. Just as our body uses water to dissipate heat, Fathy’s architecture used mud, humidity and circulation of air to reduce the interior temperature without wasting electricity. Roof and dome of the Kourna Mosque seen from the minaret The modern takes another path. While Fathy advocated mud, adobe and local solutions, much of the Middle East began to copy western models designed for very different climates. From Baghdad to Benghazi, large concrete blocks, wide avenues and glass facades appeared that eliminated shadow and trapped heat. For Fathy that was a misconception: It made no sense to build buildings that first generated a thermal problem and then solved it by installing air conditioning. New Gourna City The best example: an entire city. This is how we arrive at what was his great laboratory: New Gournaa town built near Luxor during the 1940s to relocate hundreds of families. There he applied all your ideas: adobe houses, private patios, winding streets, Nubian vaults, wind collectors and spaces designed according to the path of the sun during the year. Its objective was not only to make housing cheaper for the poorest, but to demonstrate that it was possible to build entire communities. adapted to the climate and not the other way around. New Gourna The problem was never the architecture. Nueva Gourna ended up becoming one of the great paradoxes of the 20th century. Many neighbors covered the wind collectors, closed the patios and replaced the adobe vaults with reinforced concrete because that seemed “more modern” to them. The result was exactly the opposite what they were looking for: homes that are hotter in summer, colder in winter and much more dependent on mechanical systems. Fathy had anticipated it years before: when prosperity comes, the poor tend to imitate the houses of the rich, even if those houses perform worse in their own climate. The New Gourna Mosque The man who was ahead of his time. While his colleagues were building Western-inspired glass skyscrapers, Fathy was seen in Egypt as little less than like an eccentric determined to return the country to the past. However, outside its borders it began to gain recognition as a pioneer of sustainable architecture and received some of the profession’s highest international awards. As time goes by, your ideas they ended up influencing in universities, international organizations and entire generations of architects interested in bioclimatic construction. The answers from 80 years ago. Today, with cities increasingly hit by heat waves, many of the solutions that good Hassan Fathy defended are once again in the spotlight. the center of the debate architectural. Natural materials, passive ventilation, patios, lattices or wind collectors reappear in projects that seek reduce energy consumption without giving up comfort. Even UNESCO works to restore part of New Gourna and preserve its legacy. Not because it represents a historical curiosity, but because it contains a surprisingly current idea: perhaps the most intelligent building is not the one that incorporates the most technology, but the one that makes the heat never comes to become an enemy. Image | Nasrollah koohkanDimitri Papadimos, Marc Ryckaert, Marc Ryckaert In Xataka | In 1970 Japan built homes of the future where each capsule would be replaceable. Half a century later he discovered that no one knew how to repair them In Xataka | The incredible story of the tallest building on the planet that ended up becoming the largest swimming pool in the Soviet Union