New Gourna

New Gourna (also spelled New Qurna) is a planned village on the west bank of the Nile at Luxor, designed by the Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy and built between 1946 and 1952. It is a widely cited modern attempt to roof an entire community with earth, using mud-brick vaults and domes in place of timber, steel or concrete.

Purpose

The village was built to rehouse the community of Old Gourna, whose houses stood on top of the ancient Theban tombs. Moving residents was intended to reduce damage to the tombs.

Roofs

Earth was the main construction material. Fathy used mud brick and Nubian-inspired forms: rooms roofed with barrel vaults and domes built without formwork, enclosed courtyards and thick walls for passive cooling (see Nubian vault and Hassan Fathy). Public buildings included a khan and a market.

Outcome

Many intended residents did not settle in the village, and Fathy himself later described the experiment as a failure. Around 40% of the original buildings had been lost when the site was placed on the World Monuments Watch in 2010.

Safeguarding

UNESCO launched a safeguarding project for New Gourna in 2009, in consultation with Egypt's Ministry of Culture and the Luxor Governorate. Surveys ran in 2010 and a first scientific committee met in October 2010. UNESCO identified these threats:

• lack of maintenance, with major buildings collapsing;
• a falling number of original mud-brick houses;
• collapse of public buildings, including the khan and market;
• encroachment on open spaces;
• inadequate infrastructure;
• reinforced-concrete buildings out of scale with the village.

The village's condition illustrates a recurring issue with earth roofs: they depend on regular maintenance, and the spread of concrete buildings is listed among the threats to it.