Architect and teacher, Egypt More than any other 20th-century architect, Hassan Fathy raised the status of earth building among architects worldwide. Building in earth—adobe or pis é—has a long and honorable history, and in those parts of the world where stone and timber are scarce and expensive, earth has remained the most economical and widely used building material. Encyclopedia of 20th-century architecture 838 This is certainly true in Egypt and most Arab countries. But even there, as in most of Europe, earth, at the turn of the 20th century, had come to be identified with poverty and backwardness, and earthen building materials were increasingly perceived by architects and the professional middle classes in general to be old fashioned and impermanent. A handful of architectural devotees of earth building advocated and promoted its use, but by and large, commercial vested interests in the brick, cement, steel, and asbestos industries almost completely sidelined earthen building mat...