Architecture Book – Why Do Architects Wear Black?

Remember my previous post on architect’s dress code? Was it a coincident or an urban myth that architects prefer black? Cordula Rau has the answer in her little black book titled ‘Why Do Architects Wear Black?’

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Source photos © Dimitrios Tsatsas, Stylepark

And the respond from 100 contemporary architects:

• “Because they believe they need to stand out from the bourgeois society whence they come if they are to be real ‘artists’.”
• “Because they wish to appear interesting + appear to be Existentialists.”
• “Black means you can’t really go wrong and you don’t have to change that often,”

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! – Cordula Rau, 22. 02. 2008

This is not serious journalism, if you happened to have a friend, partner or family members who’s an architect then by all means get them this great book, it’s a bit overpriced for the content but it is fun reading! If you’re a bookworm, here is another great book – ‘101 Thing I Learned in Architecture School’