As I enter the office, I notice a faint smell of exhaust and a fresh motorcycle tire skid mark on the red epoxy floor. Bernard Khoury greets me with a warm — if overwhelmed — smile. He has just flown in from an architects’ conference in Sri Lanka and coincidentally, so have the boxes from SKIRA, his publisher in Italy. He reaches for one of the stacks of freshly bound books piled around him and hands me my copy of ‘Local Heroes.’ Small, but 400 pages thick, it fits snugly into the crook of my hand. Having contributed some text and photographs to the book, I’m more than familiar with it, but its long anticipated arrival is thrilling regardless. ‘Local Heroes’ is not a monograph, nor a manifesto, nor an architectural catalogue. Instead, the first comprehensive account of Khoury’s work reads like a pictographic novella. Sandwiched between two photo albums,