Shiraz Janjua

Architecture, as a discipline, can itself be used to tell stories. In fact, some of the most interesting student work today comes complete with elaborate plots and story lines, supplied for no other reason than to explain why a particular building should exist or require designing. These stories very often exceed today’s mass-market fiction in imaginative strength—to such a degree that I might suggest, only half-jokingly, that the reason fiction sells so badly in the United States today is because all of the people with real ideas have moved on to study architecture or urban design. American fiction has been left languishing in the hands of people at summer workshops in Iowa, obsessed with the morality of suburban fatherhood.

–Geoff Manaugh, from The BLDGBLOG Book.