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"The Oxymoron of Tradition". Architecture 1983-2013. S4L 2014.
[...] How should history be present and absent in contemporary architecture? How is it present dodging the postmodern solution that borrowed styles and referenced from the past, or absent, devoid of those symbols the unlimited growth paradigm and the third millennium economic agenda pursue within a dazzling scheme of hedonistic sustainability.
[...] acquiring a notion of non-coded sustainability, moving to a vantage standpoint that eludes a dual form of dismissive naivety: the exaltation of technology with the claim of going beyond that of which there is no longer memory, and the opposite one which is under the illusion on the capacity of man, and of those ideological constructions called "man" and " individual", to dominate and drive it.
{...] Arché, which is at the root of the word Architecture, does not involve a nihilistic idea of creation from a privileged, unchanging entity, (it is not a typology or an invariant); arché is not a mere means to an end by way of which a shift from nothing to permanent or transient is obtained, but the end and the originating cause of the becoming, and that means the greatest of all oxymorons: "The becoming of the Eternal."
Excerpt from "" The Oxymoron of Tradition" - Architecture 1983-2013. SFL 2014 
"From Palladio to the plunder of Baghdad". S4L 2012.
There are aspects of Italian culture mostly depicted in movies, that entered together with other popular icons the collective unconscious and imagination. From the most elementary and accessible way of gastronomic vernacular traditions to the "sublime" of historic architecture, these aspects, have undergone a sort of plunder, either by an “ante litteram” post-modernistic process of colonization of the economical and cultural sphere to a multinational scale, or by the local cultural establishment.
There is a linkage between the meaning of Nietzsche's second of the four "Untimely Meditations" and the almost prophetic words of "Ornament and Crime" (Adolf Loos1908). They inevitably reunite in a circle that closes on itself with the commodification of Palladio's body of work, the breaking of the looters into Baghdad national Museum, the war crime and plunder of Iraq's cultural heritage. In a system of commodities, the complementary dualism of ethic and aesthetic becomes a binary opposition that removes from the existence, along with all opposition forces seemingly antagonistic, all non-fictions: the non-beautiful, the not-good, the non-convenient, etc.. The static apparatus of legality completely replaces dynamics of legitimacy and ethics that emerge from a natural spirituality and sacredness. Many things have been disguised and the truth distorted in order to ensure a "social order". We have been expropriated from the true nature of our being, dispossessed of mankind cultural heritage through utilitarian ethics of institution and politics. Excerpt from " From Palladio to the plunder of Baghdad". S4L 2012.
"A Chicken Parmesan Piazza". Andrea Palladio exhibit at the UofM. "Sezione Ragionata".
Notes on a scholarly display of futile erudition. Minneapolis 2009.
 - "Algoritmi del progetto architettonico". Manuale procedure operative.
Archinova. 2006. Roma.
- "Adolf Loos e Friedrich Nietzsche - Proto-Modernità e Crepuscolo".
Auto-pubblicazione. Gennaio 2000.
- "Il mestiere e la professione". Dal tecnigrafo al computer.
In Cronostoria architettura e design.
Gurdolo. 15 ottobre 1999.
- "Il fantasma dell'architetto". Confessioni dietro al monitor.
In Cronostoria architettura e design.
Gurdolo. 15 novembre 1999.
The out of print books can be ordered by contacting the author at: info@robertofrancescocicero.com
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