Concrete and Ink: Storytelling and the Future of Architecture

The first volume in a new series offering alternative modes through which to narrate the future of urban development

What role does storytelling play in urban imaginaries? How do these imaginaries converge or diverge from reality? Can we use stories to test ideas for future architecture? This volume brings together commissioned writing in fiction and nonfiction, graphic stories, illustrations and interviews, narratives on buildings, housing estates and cities, moving between utopias and dystopias, through imagination, dreaming, magic, games and concrete realities, across past and present, and into the future. Concrete & Ink: Storytelling and the Future of Architecture is the first volume in the series Staging Cities, presented by Theatrum Mundi, a European center for research and experimentation in the culture of cities. Borrowing from the toolbox of storytelling, choreography, and sound and lighting design, the series proposes new approaches to questions faced by city-makers. Contributors include acclaimed international writers Ben Okri, Sophie Mackintosh, Adania Shibli and Alia Trabucco Zerán.