One year ago "The Marriage of Reason and Squalor", an exhibition of drawings by Pier Vittorio Aureli curated by Marie Coulon, opened at Betts Project in London. As the catalogue of the exhibition was the first product of Black Square, we see that day as our birthday. So thank you all for your birthday wishes, unexpected and heartwarming. With two more projects coming out soon, a first workshop at CAMPO, and many more projects in the pipeline, it's been an exciting first 12 months. The people we should thank here are far too many (you know who you are!) but a special thought goes out to all the young architects and students who have supported us with their enthusiasm and interest. For the first time in some years, ebook sales have slowed down and physical books seem to be having a kind of comeback so the idea of printing cheap, simple, unpretentious black and white books of drawings still seems to make sense right now. We are not particularly committed to the book as an object per se, but we are committed to the book as a project that has a beginning and an end and a logic and architecture of its own. One year ago we were realized that the stream of pinterest and tumbler images we kept 'liking' and 'pinning' was boring us to death, or (on alternate days) generating a profound anxiety of the FOMO kind - as in, oh my, this image has no link, what is it? where can I find it? who did it? Nothing wrong with internet archives: we are definitely not luddites and actually a tiny bit addicted to technology. However, we felt that going back to making projects with their own narrative, sequence, and consistency was an antidote to the pervasive sense of unease we felt. So, here's where this project started.

As a side note, we never wanted to be 'called' black square. We wanted a name that was an image and a logo at the same time, universal, recognizable, and basic. The fact that this needed to be translated into two English words is just due to the need to acquire a web domain (and to register, get ISBNs, and pay taxes). However feel free to call us cherniy kvadrat, carre noir, quadrato nero, patrat negru.