Who Can Afford to Live in Your Dream?

Reviewing a house design in his New York office, an architect sees that every revision has made the façade more beautiful and the house further beyond its owner's means, and that night he imagines Hassan Fathy sitting across from him and shows him the cost instead of the drawing. Fathy sends him back to the beginning, since money is a condition of architecture from the start, and asks him what he will remove and what he will keep: light, air, privacy and good construction. The questions move to the sun and the hottest hours of the day, to glass, shading and air conditioning, and to building with earth, which Fathy answers by asking about the site, the climate, the regulations and who can build and maintain the house. The curved staircase the narrator calls the most beautiful part of the project is a stair the elderly father can climb only with difficulty, and when he asks how to keep his own character in the design, Fathy points to his name at the bottom of the sheet and asks where the owner is. The meeting ends with notes on the drawing about the budget, sun and shade, a room for the father, maintenance and a meeting with the family, and with the question he will put to the owner: how do you want to live here?