Mostafavi considers architecture's connection with the colour by considering parallel developments in global art practices - with references ranging from Japanese screens to Rothko, Georgia O'Keefe to Kara Walker, Peter Celsing to Derek Jarman. Alongside these renowned touchpoints, he draws on Raphael's little-known and highly distinctive text The Color Black: On the Material Constitution of Form, based on a selection of old master paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.