«I believe that this invention of ‘modernism’, as applied to architecture, is a critical distortion related to a certain time in the history of architecture. Does one still ask oneself in painting, literature or the cinema if a work of art is modern? (…) In architecture, however, this absurd question is still of importance. Does a patient ask himself if his doctor is modern or not? It is more important to establish that a contemporary doctor practices modern medicine and can naturally prefer certain methods of healing to others. When I answered that I cannot be postmodern because I was never modern, I simply wished to state that I was simply an architect and practiced this profession, just as architects have always done.
(…) In actual fact, the disease of modernism (or at least one of its diseases, resulting in the ruin of large areas of our cities) is its moralizing, that is to say the intrusion of the question of morality into the architectural debate. Regrettably, we still suffer from this disease today. When I say that I am not modern I am declaring my refection of moralizing in architecture, a moralizing that rages like this in no other artistic discipline. (…) Yet a supposedly democratic Europe regards an architectural style as democratic (and it is moreover hideous), simply because it made use of glass and built roofs that have regular, flat roofs sloping towards all sides!»
Aldo Rossi, A Conversation with Bernard Huet, «Aldo Rossi Architect», Academy Editions, 1994.