From Norms to Controversial 1من   اصل2

In Architecture
PROF. DR. AL Y RAAFAT
Professor and Previous Head of the Department of Architecture Cairo
University Architecture Nile Award-winner
one walks for days by unnoticed normal buildings creating street borders.
They c follow strictly municipal regulations of heights, fenestrations, bow
window, balcony projections and generally prevailing styles. “They all, by
necessity, abide by functional allocation of floors. Stores are on ground
level, with entrances in the middle. Each building has four or five stories of
apartments. Service rooms are on the roofs. After every five or six
buildings, there is a perpendicular street interrupting – he monotony of the
walk ups.
the situation is more depressing with terrace duplexes like in the 3ritish city of
Bath’s Millions of walk ups and elevated blocks of flats present prevailing
lining of gridiron street pattern of 19 th and 20 th century, of most western
dull cities.
On the other hand, the uncontrolled cities of the Middle East left free the
site, size and directions of two- or three-story housing units. Filling left over
spaces was controlled only by the right of privacy passage of loaded camels
and horses in zig-zag   haros . The sorne freedom and absence of rules were
practiced in Mediterranean French, Italian and North African villages.
This brought Romantic. picturesque , deconstructed quality to vernacular
housing. Lack of discipline isdis put able between Romantics and
Rationalists of the modern movement.
Such disputes stir stagnant water with each group pulling the modern
movement to its shore, with everyday normal architecture out of this fight.
Hassan Fat-hy came to light with his appropriate technological approach,
building with local materials and methods of construction out of the
international norms.