Ramin Jahanbegloo is an Iranian-Canadian philosopher, currently vice-dean and director at the Mahatma Gandhi Centre for Peace Studies, O.P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat, India.

'The coming together of a man who has written a lot and another who has built a lot produces an oddly satisfying book on architecture. Unlike other books on the subject, 'Talking Architecture' is shorn of the glib double-spread colour photography that reduces buildings to a dream like seduction-beautifully deceptive and devoid of the messy reality of Indian life. Instead, the book poses serious questions, the sort of questions government and civic authorities should have been asking of themselves. Why are our cities so despicably ugly and inhospitable? Is there an Indian architecture?'