Centralidade do Real: onze arquitetos, onze textos, onze projetos improváveis

In the creation of this book, no nostalgic sentiment was intended, although it exists. We do not deny longing as a manifestation or testimony of our past, without feeling it signifies the constancy of absent love, as in Galician poetry, nor as in Pascoais, when he interprets it as the foundation of national rebirth, although we may, unintentionally, use both.

We believe that without the constant presence of these and other "contradictions," we could not—or would not—allow ourselves to possess grains of passion, conviction, and commitment, with deep moral dilemmas where ethics does not only act as a formal a priori, densifying the structure of the work, but permeates it entirely, constituting the condition for recognizing the real and artistically representing its social exteriority.

Thus, the centrality of the real, as a contemporary place, today implies contamination, the absence of unity, the simultaneity of yes and no, the overlap of contradictory layers, the permanent, expansive, and scattered cultural acquisition, beyond discipline.

Only in this way will we remain pure, crossing the inhabited desert of the complex world we live in—with perplexities, but without false or elementary moralism, or the greed of designing the brand that sells best, trying to imitate those who have already succeeded.