ABSTRACT
In the previous four chapters I considered the utopianism of Modernist architecture and planning in the twentieth century; the moment of the Summer of Love and growth of intentional communities in the 1960s; approaches to environmentalism; and the growth of environmental activism and ecovillage living in the 1990s. I noted the importance of grassroots activism in the non-affluent world in Chapter Six, and turn now to focus on the non-affluent world in this chapter and Chapter Nine. In this chapter I investigate the work of Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy, looking mainly at two pilot projects using mud-brick building: the village of New Gourna (1945-9) and the cooperative settlement of New Baris (1965-7). I situate Fathy’s work in relation to traditionalism and nationalism, and argue that it constitutes an alternative Modernism as utopian as Western Modernism. I ask next whether Fathy’s utopianism is also a form of social engineering, and whether the fusion of design and construction, and the potential participation of dwellers in the making of mudbrick buildings, offers precedents from which the affluent world might learn today. Finally, widening the chapter’s geographical scope, I cite a small number of housing projects in the non-affluent world including Balkrishna Doshi’s work at Aranya, India in the 1980s. In Chapter Nine, I turn to the work of the Social Work Research Centre, a rural campus at Tilonia, Rajasthan, known as the Barefoot College.
