Why Do Architects Wear Black?

An industry manager who left his white-blue, silver-shimmering world of car bodywork and dove into the pitch-black, mysterious world of architecture for the first time during a competition asked me one day: "Ms Rau, why do architects actually wear black?" Although I was wearing black and I am an architect I didn't have a spontaneous answer, so I responded: "Ask the other architects!" That was in 2001, and it is why this small book came to be. I have asked the question at an international level and whenever it seems appropriate ever since. The sometimes amusing and other times programmatic or hair-splitting answers I have received over the last seven years are listed chronologically in this little black volume. Read, and please, don't ask me why architects wear black!