In the face of Egypt’s pressing problems in the 1940s-50s, a new generation of Egyptian architects sought to develop a local modern movement as the appropriate architectural orientation providing the answers to the country’s socio-political and economic challenges. These architects envisioned several modernist schemes that went beyond mere stylistic imitations and instead engaged with the principles of the Modern Movement, as they developed in Europe and elsewhere. Primarily among the latter were the issues of town planning and collective housing. In addition, and in what was perhaps unique to the Egyptian context, planning and housing concerns encompassed more than urban dwellings. The particularly devastated rural condition of the Egyptian countryside constituted a primary site of visionary inversion for many of these local modernists.