Hassan Fathy is Egypt's best-known 20th-century architect. He was also a man of contradictions. He came from a wealthy background and had a western-style training. Yet he embraced traditional, vernacular forms, techniques, and materials and throughout his career promoted their use as part of a campaign to improve the conditions of Egypt's rural poor.

Earth & Utopia chronicles this lifelong commitment through personal interviews conducted by the author, photographs, and drawings from the Hassan Fathy archives, and Fathy's own writings on the subject, many of which are published for the first time. This beautiful, fascinating, and scholarly book will be essential reading for students, academics, and general readers interested in Fathy, and the development of Arab and vernacular architecture, earth construction, architecture for the poor, and sustainability. 

Salma Samar Damluji is an architect who worked with Fathy. Her publications include The Architecture of Yemen (2007) and Al Diwan Al Amiri, Doha (2011), and has curated a number of exhibitions in London, Paris and Madrid. She was elected Member of the Académie d'Architecture (2017), received the Académie d'Architecture's Restoration Award in 2015 and The Global Award for Sustainable Architecture in 2012. She is Professor of the BinLadin Chair for Architecture in the Islamic World, at the American University in Beirut since 2013.

Viola Bertini is an architect who gained her PhD on Fathy at IUAV Venice.