It has been said that one can find some of architecture’s meaning by looking not at what architects do, but at what they refuse to do.

For Leon Battista Alberti – no gothic cathedrals, no castles, no arches on columns, no complicated decorative patterns, no irregular plans, no urban fantasies, no architectural illiteracy, no building spontaneity, no vernacular, no world beyond our world.

For Etienne Louis Boullèe – no baroque, no rococò, no architectural orders on the facade, no social orders, no capriccios, no pastiches, no antiquities, no frescos, no statue, no princes, no complicated forms, no aristocracy, no asymmetry, no history, no decorative excess, no elitism, no hidden mechanisms.

For Jean-Nicholas-Louis Durand – no pochè, no complicated shapes, no value-free-composition, no improvisation, no complicated spaces, no complicated buildings, no decoration at all, no creativity-for-the-sake-of-creativity, no absurdities, no picturesque, no surprise, no social hierarchies, no archaeology, no representation, no figuration, no negation, no authorship, no meaning.

For Ludwig Mies van der Rohe – no expressionism, no irrationalism, no cubism, no surrealism, no futurism, no functionalism, no organicism, no spiritual-anxiety-manifested-with-spiritual anxiety, no personality, no protest, no celebration, no martini-like-building, no-new-architecture-invented-every-Monday-morning, no fashions, no personal creation, no obsessions, no Jeu savant, no pouring-concrete-in-whatever-shape, no symbolism, no rhetoric, no-salvation-of-the-world-with-architecture, no merzbau, no un-speakable spaces, no excitement, no enthusiasm, no imagination-free-from-constrains, no Alpine Architektur, no utopia, no planning-of-cities-as-a-whole, no technological acrobatics, no differences-for-the-sake-of-differences, no formal-variations-for-the-sake-of-formal-variations, no figurative architecture, no chaos, no omnipotence, no arrogance, no modesty, no screaming, no manifesting anything, no value-free availability, no anything goes, no more.

And today some architects like us refuse to be involved in some ideas. For us no complexities, no contradictions, no learning-from-Las-Vegas, no collage cities, no diagrams, no icons, no data, no programs, no mapping, no statistics, no content, no research, no branding, no blobs, no parametric formalism, no icons, no iconic buildings, no networks, no logos, no blogs, no form-Z, no 3-D-MAX, no maya, no catia, no biomorphic design, no shapes, no non-standard-architecture, no high rise, no guggenheims, no archistars, no avant-garde, no neo-avant-garde, no new-neo-avant-garde, no anti-avant-garde, no think-thanks, no biennale-activism, no fake-bottom-up-we-work-for-the-people, no architects-as-social-entrepreneur, no architect-as-social-opinionist, no-architect-as-cultural-opinionist, no architects-as-biennale-monkeys, no architecture-as-art, no architect-as-artist, no artists-as-architect, no art-as-architecture, no architect-as-expert-on-everything, no architect-as-journalist, no rhomboid-like-facade-pattern, no circular-holes-in-the-facade, no cantilevering boxes, no green-grass-on-the-roof, no titanium-on-the-facade, no colourful architecture, no twisted shapes, no strange shapes, no strangeness, no drama, no uniqueness, no originality, no novelty, no newness, no nostalgia, no sixties, no utopia, no nature-mending, no fake-interactivity, no irresponsibility, no life-mirroring, no information, no communication, no coercion, no confusing architecture with everything that is not architecture; no confusing life with everything that is not LIFE.

Questo manifesto è una rielaborazione e rimanipolazione da Ad Reinhardt, Abstract Art Refuses, 1953.