Architectural Fiction / Satirical Literary Fiction
Architectural Conspiracy
A novel that puts starchitects, city planners, and the whole cult of Modernism on the drafting table and starts sketching over it.
About the Book
A city that was never supposed to make sense.
Somewhere on a barren stretch of Mediterranean coastline, a government has commissioned the impossible: a Metropolis for the twenty-first century, and the world's most famous architects have been flown in to draw it.
Our narrator is the project leader nobody asked for an opinion — the person standing between the sketchbooks of visionaries and the spreadsheets of the people paying for them. Through his eyes, Architectural Conspiracy follows the design of a city meant to embody a century of theory: Modernism's white boxes, Postmodernism's irony, Deconstructivism's tilted glass, and every "ism" invented to explain why a building looks the way it does.
It is a novel built the way its subject is built: in plans, elevations, and a running argument about what a city owes the people who have to live in it. Real movements, real debates, and a wink at the profession's biggest names collide with a plot that gets stranger — and funnier — the closer the city gets to being real.
True to its subject, the book carries its own architectural device: a hand-drawn sketch runs along the foot of every page, translating the text above it into the language the narrator trusts most.
True to its subject, the book carries its own architectural device: a hand-drawn sketch runs along the foot of every page, translating the text above it into the language the narrator trusts most.
"Human beings live in cities. Therefore, the task of an architect or engineer is to make urban living as pleasant as possible. In doing so, they have always sought to impose their own ideas and insights through their creations."
Architectural Conspiracy — Prologue
Read an Excerpt
Chapter I begins on a square at the end of the world.
Chapter I — The Site
A square stretching all the way to the end of the world. Not a soul in sight. Well, three people are present. What on earth are they doing here, in the middle of nowhere? Did their wives throw them out of the house because they had begun displaying an excess of macho behavior? No, in fact, they were invited by the Lebanese government. They have been asked to carry out a major operation.
Right then, here we are, yes… we: Arch. Oscar Niemeyer, Arch. Rem Koolhaas and I, standing in an open space enclosed by natural elements. A very simple space that nonetheless radiates a powerful feeling. Even a blind man without a cane or guide dog could describe the site in Braille.
Behind me rise the mountains, snow-covered all year round. In front of me lies the Mediterranean, magnificent. People… could a metropolis truly belong here, right in the middle of this delightful play of sculptural forms? That is without reckoning with our architect friends.
About Bobby Fogel
Author of Architectural Conspiracy
Bobby Fogel writes from the inside of a profession he clearly can't stop arguing with. Architectural Conspiracy is his first novel, and it grew out of years spent in and around architectural practice, watching how buildings get made, debated, and more often than anyone in the industry likes to admit misunderstood.
He treats a construction site the way a satirist treats a dinner party: as the best possible vantage point. The result is a novel that takes Modernism and Postmodernism seriously enough to explain them, and lightly enough to laugh at them footnotes, sketches, and all.
Advance Praise
Early readers on Architectural Conspiracy.
A novel that actually explains what Modernism and Postmodernism mean — and makes you laugh while it's doing it. By the time the jury shows up, you're rooting for the building.
Early Reader
Advance copy, 2026
Fogel writes about architecture the way a good critic writes about food: with real expertise, and no patience for pretension.
Advance Reviewer
Publication TBD
Sharp, strange, and oddly moving. Turning a duel between two architects into an actual page-turner should not have worked this well.
Early Reader
Advance copy, 2026