THE HOUSE THAT REMEMBERS
Abdul-Wahid El-Wakil and the Soul of Islamic Architecture
Photos of the Halawa House, designed by Abdel-Wahid El-Wakil in 1975 in Agamy, Egypt.
All images courtesy of the architect.
They say modernity means progress. Straight lines, steel, glass, speed. But what if that kind of “progress” leaves you empty?
Abdul-Wahid El-Wakil didn’t buy the hype. He built mosques with mudbrick. Houses with courtyards. Spaces that breathed. Buildings that didn’t just shelter - but remembered.
This is not nostalgia. It’s resistance with geometry.
Tradition is not the opposite of change
Born in Cairo in the 1940s, El-Wakil grew up in a world obsessed with becoming Western. Revolutions promised identity but delivered imitation. Architecture followed. Bauhaus boxes in the desert. Concrete shells with no spirit.
But El-Wakil wasn’t here to copy the West’s dreams. He wanted to remember his own.
After meeting the legendary architect Hassan Fathy, El-Wakil saw what everyone else had forgotten: architecture wasn’t just technical - it was cultural memory made visible. And memory, if cared for, becomes continuity.
“Change without tradition is not progress. It’s erosion.”
He began to design buildings that didn’t fight their environment but flowed with it. Vaults and domes without steel. Courtyards that became lungs of the home. Homes that didn’t perform, they prayed.
The courtyard is a soul
In El-Wakil’s world, architecture was never about showing off. It was about showing reverence. His houses are not loud. They’re grounded. Quietly dignified. Always with a courtyard in the middle - a place not just for shade or privacy, but for presence.
A house without a courtyard, he said, is like a body without a soul.
“You place God’s creation at the center. The garden. The sky. The light. You orbit around what gives life - not what consumes it.”
Modernism made architecture into an ego trip. El-Wakil pulled it back into community. He believed buildings had a role: to carry the sacred, to cradle memory, to teach love. Yes - love. He said buildings must be loved, or they will never last.
And you feel it. His spaces don’t just house you - they hold you.
Spiritual architecture is not a style
El-Wakil wasn’t trying to build “Islamic-looking” structures. He built within an Islamic worldview. There’s a difference.
Domes, arches, proportions - they weren’t decorations. They were metaphysical. Rooted in cosmology. Symbols of order.
To him, copying was not failure. It was fidelity. In tradition, imitation isn’t laziness - it’s love. You don’t design to impress. You design to belong.
That’s why his mosques - from Saudi Arabia to Qatar - don’t scream for attention. They whisper permanence. And unlike most modern projects, they age with grace.
Against the death of meaning
Modern architecture, he said, lacks love. It’s made to be sold, not to be lived in. It flirts. But it doesn’t stay.
El-Wakil’s buildings stay.
They invite you to pause. To breathe. To remember the wisdom that came before Google. The shade of a fig tree. The curve of a dome. The silence between prayers.
In a time when we build faster than we think, El-Wakil reminds us:
Maybe slowness isn’t a flaw. Maybe tradition isn’t a cage.
Maybe the future isn’t new. Maybe it’s remembered.
For the architecture that doesn’t shout. But stays.
For further information read on here or watch the video below:
https://easteast.world/posts/504
