This chapter re-positions the work of Hassan Fathy’s “architecture of the poor” at the intersection of global–local flows of design elements and hygienic concepts drawn from Cairo, Tokyo, and Austria to constitute the newly-settled community of New Gourna near Luxor. During the 1940s, rural villages faced serious challenges with regard to Bilharzia, Malaria and other diseases. By focusing on three spatial configurations: (1) hierarchy of street network, (2) dwelling unit, and (3) purification lake, the chapter presents a transnational history of environmental constructs drawn together as problem-based solutions from distant geographies and retooled as design assemblages from the East and West to be re-made in the Global South. The transnational assemblage of hygienic dispositions of Fathy is often overlooked as a result of the project’s political underpinning. While acknowledging the forced evictions of villagers during colonial time, the chapter portrays a more complex narrative of un-making and re-making New Gourna.