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 non-fiction, graphic stories, illustrations and interviews, narrating buildings, housing estates and cities, between utopias and dystopias, through imagination, dreaming, magic, games and concrete realities, across past and present, and into the future. Contributors include acclaimed international writers: Ben Okri, Sophie Mackintosh, Adania Shibli and Alia Trabucco Zerán.

Concrete & Ink: Storytelling and the Future of Architecture is the first volume in the series Staging Cities, presented by Theatrum Mundi – a European centre 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.

With contributions by: Adania Shibli, Alia Trabucco Zeran, Alison Irvine, Bedwyr Williams, Ben Okri, Crystal Bennes, Jodie Azhar, Justinien Tribbillon, Marta Michalowska, Matthew Dooley, Meghana Bisineer, Mona Kareem, Natasha Lehrer, Nina Leger, Sophie Hughes, Sophie Mackintosh  

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 non-fiction, graphic stories, illustrations and interviews, narrating buildings, housing estates and cities, between utopias and dystopias, through imagination, dreaming, magic, games and concrete realities, across past and present, and into the future. Contributors include acclaimed international writers: Ben Okri, Sophie Mackintosh, Adania Shibli and Alia Trabucco Zerán.

Concrete & Ink: Storytelling and the Future of Architecture is the first volume in the series Staging Cities, presented by Theatrum Mundi – a European centre 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.

With contributions by: Adania Shibli, Alia Trabucco Zeran, Alison Irvine, Bedwyr Williams, Ben Okri, Crystal Bennes, Jodie Azhar, Justinien Tribbillon, Marta Michalowska, Matthew Dooley, Meghana Bisineer, Mona Kareem, Natasha Lehrer, Nina Leger, Sophie Hughes, Sophie Mackintosh