[1] He was also an urban planner, best known for designing the Nasr City neighbourhood in Cairo, as well as a writer and editor producing the influential architecture magazine Majallat al-'Imarah, and authoring a number of books.
Sayed Karim received his PhD in architecture at the ETH Zurich in 1938,[2][3] while teaching there, before moving back to Egypt in 1938 and becoming a professor at Cairo University.
Karim has dealt with this question in an exhaustive and authentic way, calling on other disciplines such as sociology, psychology, but also the history of art and architecture, and holding conferences around it, including one at the Geographical Society in April 1940.
"[3] In 1965, however, the Nasser regime put him under sequestration and house arrest – a move from which the architect never recovered, prematurely curbing his career.
Largely the project of editor Sayyid Karim, Majallat al-Imarah presented contemporary architecture in pre-war and post-war Cairo.