Kharga Market: Hassan Fathy

Abstract Beyond the common discourse of regionalism as an academic construct, and seeking a grounded architecture, as a social and cultural practicum, the phenomenon of Hassan Fathy and his legacy in contemporizing the vernacular is of twofold importance: first, in terms of how to dismantle the myth of contextualism as a community‐based building and design process; and second in terms of how to anchor architectural permanency through local know‐how. Hassan Fathy (1900–89), was a key architect in the Middle East, mainly Egypt, who attempted to counterbalance the machinery of modernism, which was explored then by bureaucrats as an alibi for a “progressive architecture,” in order to build with the local community. In order to elucidate what Fathy embarked upon in terms of launching what I term a “constructive regionalism” for his peculiar milieu, this chapter sets a conceptual framework for his discourse and practice vis‐à‐vis mainstream regionalist approaches. The Kharga Market located in the newly designed village of New Bariz (1963) by Hassan Fathy is taken herein as an example to discuss the above questions. Exploring both theoretical and practical reflection on Hassan Fathy's chef‐oeuvre will enable the reader to grasp how regionalism can be revisited so as to convey grass‐roots lessons about generating an architecture of resilience versus that of vain aesthetics of monotonous internationalism.