Giancarlo De Research Articles

The After Image Phenomenon between Immaterial and Hyper-Material Architectures: Hypothesis on the Influence of Italian Architecture at the Time of the Cold War

The Cold War was not only a political-military confrontation but also a way of life, an atmosphere that enveloped and influenced society in all its dimensions. Through the two key concepts of "anarchic architecture" and "interrupted sign" the paper analyses the design processes theorized and experimented by Giancarlo De Carlo within the complex and articulated historical-cultural context of the Cold War. From this analysis, the research highlights both the conscious and unconscious origins of a complex process of dematerialization that has characterized some more recent architectures, oriented towards the rejection of compositional processes based on the composition of forms, instead privileging abstract design concepts more closely linked to the user's emotional and perceptual sphere. Finally, the research refers to the phenomenon of the After Image defined by Biraghi as a possible orientation towards an "after contemporary architecture".

“Architectural Acupuncture” in Urban Morphology Studies

This paper aims to track the evolution of urban morphology studies, focusing on a graphical understanding of transformation phenomena in historical and contemporary city fabrics. It points out similarities in urban morphology studies by authors like Aldo Rossi, Carlo Oswald W. Ungers, Hans Kollhoff, Saverio Muratori, Gianfranco Caniggia, and Giancarlo de Carlo. These studies developed within a supportive cultural environment, aligning with analogical procedures and anticipating the contemporary concept of urban acupuncture. Urban acupuncture denotes episodic and locally impactful interventions countering grand, self-celebratory architectural projects. These interventions are promoted both by liberal and capitalist culture as well as by socialist-inspired culture. Lastly, these interventions, promoted by various cultural backgrounds, highlight the multi-scale nature of urban morphology studies and urban acupuncture projects. Each change in form corresponds to a morphological adaptation and a redefinition of urban rules and grammar usable in projects with territorial significance. Today, enhanced by digital tools, these studies confirm insights and syntheses, presenting urban acupuncture interventions in real-time socio-economic flows and dynamics.

Giancarlo De Carlo’s Realistic Utopia

To seek a possible means to navigate the apparent divergence between participation and criticality in architecture, this paper returns to the notion of the “realistic utopia,” developed by one of the leading early exponents of participation, the Italian architect, urbanist, writer and educator, Giancarlo De Carlo. Through a close reading of De Carlo’s principal theoretical works on participation, in this paper it is argued that the realistic utopia offers a distinct conception of the interaction between architectural objects, the processes by which they are formed and the societal structures which frame this formation. It shows that beyond being a means to understand the multi-directional relationship between architecture and society, the realistic utopia offers a conceptual tool to aid action within the complex set of forces at work in this relationship. In this way, it locates the realistic utopia as something of importance beyond an assessment of the work of De Carlo, or even the broader project of participation he fostered, and is here opened up for renewed use by practitioners today.

Tools or Tokenism? Participative Design Strategies in the International Laboratory for Architecture & Urban Design (1976-1978)

This paper compares three projects presented at the International Laboratory for Architecture & Urban Design (ILA&UD, 1976-2015) that focused on increasing user participation. ILA&UD was an experimental educational platform that uniquely operated in the crevices of architecture, urban design, and planning. Established by Giancarlo de Carlo in 1976, it was one of many networks emerging in Europe centered on urban form after the post-war reconstruction period. This paper focuses on the formative ILA&UD years (1976-1978), in which the notions of participation and reuse were central. ILA&UD is a discursive site to study debates on participation before they even involved the “user” and before they were carved in stone. By contrasting De Carlo’s studio briefs with three illustrative urban design projects presented by participants from KU Leuven, MIT and ETH Zürich, this paper aims to highlight that the ongoing search for urban design tools and methodologies was indecisively teetering between autonomous and heteronomous approaches to urban form. The three projects explore a range of attitudes, from confirming the power of inhabitation to designing with users. By focusing on ambivalences in the discourse, the paper hopes to nuance the dominant perception that participation entailed, as Kenny Cupers observed, “a straightforward course of empowerment for those involved.”

L’italia nello specchio del “noir”

The term “noir” is often used nowadays as a synonym to “detective story”, sometimes without a clear differentiation between the two. In fact, “noir” refers to a recent phase of the “detective, crime novel” (in Italian: “giallo”), its “tougher”, more realistic version, with contexts and situations permeated with a more modern form of violence: sometimes organized, more brutal and more cynical.Today’s “noir” can be traced back to the American “detective story” of the 1930s (that of the “hard boiled” genre) whereas the Italian “noir” finds its roots in the more modern phase of the detective literature (from the 1960s up to now), when the tale of mystery, the criminal novel, evolves in a country which, together with its development, is also developing negative features.This work examines publications that can be defined as representatives of the genres (and sub genres) of the “mystery literature” of the past years, giving an insight into the debate on the difference between the detective and the recently evolved noir literature (and on these two genres in general). It also considers the respective initiatives to publish them , their presence in the cultural pages of newspapers and media, the discussions on the characteristics and the status of the two genres, with hints to works and writers as for example, among the others, Giancarlo De Cataldo, Loriano Macchiavelli, Hans Tuzzi, Cristina Cassar Scalia, Grazia Verasani, Gianrico Carofiglio, Valerio Varesi, Alessandro Robecchi, Nino Motta (Paolo Di Stefano).

Participation and/or/ against tacit knowledge: ILAUD, 1976–1981

For several productive years from 1976 to 1981, the International Laboratory of Architecture and Urban Design (ILAUD) engaged with the issue of participation in architecture and planning in the city of Urbino. Each year, these summer workshops—founded by Giancarlo De Carlo in 1976—brought together students, educators, and prominent practitioners from across the fields of architecture, urban planning, architectural history, and art to discuss and experiment on the issue of how designers should engage with users of the built environment. In this sense, the workshop’s participants were explicitly united against what De Carlo derided as formalism, and later as eclecticism and postmodernism. At the same time, despite this broad consensus, ILAUD’s public outputs—the student work and lecture transcripts collated in the annual reports—seem to betray a set of disagreements between participants from various European and North American schools and between planners and architects. On one side, were a group of schools who argued that participation involved an analysis of the built fabric and cultural heritage of a city and its architecture; on the other, those who believed that participation required the direct involvement of future users. Yet, rather than accepting these as fundamental differences in attitude, this paper uses such apparent contradictions to argue that these various approaches were united in articulating a new, broader, and more equitable relationship between users, clients, and designers, on the cusp of postmodernity.

Nature-Based Solutions to Regenerate Mediterranean Cities: A Case Study in Catania, Sicily

This work is part of research conducted within the Di3A Landscape Design and Redevelopment Laboratory at the University of Catania. Its objective is to improve the enjoyment of public spaces through the study of landscape design in highly urbanised and historical areas. The case study used was the historical centre of the city of Catania in Sicily. This study focused on the green aspects of the redevelopment of some open spaces of the Antico Corso district using international and national thematic studies on public spaces as a reference. In particular, the research concentrated on the design of the Garden of Via Biblioteca inside the former Benedictine Monastery of San Nicolò La Rena, a UNESCO world heritage site redeveloped by the famous architect Giancarlo De Carlo. After a careful analysis of the area, we decided to use contemporary project themes with the aim of enhancing the present historical elements and nature-based solutions, which, through the introduction of carefully selected plant species, favour biodiversity in the urban environment. The method adopted was divided into three main phases: (1) spatial analysis; (2) a SWOT analysis method; and (3) the planning and design of the green redevelopment of places to be reconverted into public spaces. This methodology has already been tested on the open spaces of the former Vittorio Emanuele Hospital inside the Antico Corso District, showing how the multidisciplinary approach applied can be replicated in other urban contexts in historical centres. The results of these studies may be useful in the context of urban planning reforms envisaged by Regional Law No. 19/2020 and Regional Law 13/2015 in Sicily and to help the Superintendencies of Landscape and Cultural Heritage to preserve and to enhance historical greenery. The adopted strategies may also be useful in the application of the PUI (Integrated Urban Plan) of the Province of Catania that follows the PNRR (National Plan of Reconstruction and Resilience) parameters to provide local services to the municipalities involved. These pilot projects should be extended to bigger areas. The applicability of the methodology could be tested in other parts of the Municipality of Catania with a particular focus on run-down areas, followed by further testing on territorial sections of the province.

From History‐writing to (Hi)story‐telling: Historical Novel, Alternate/Counterfactual History and Implicit Uchrony

AbstractThe main aim of this article is to reconstruct the evolutions and the political implications of the Italian historical novel between the nineteenth and twenty‐first centuries. The starting hypothesis is that the historical novel has always performed a vicarious function with respect to traditional historiography. In the Italian case, in particular, the canon of the historical novel has progressively lost the apologetic function it had during the Risorgimento, turning into an instrument of indirect criticism of Italian society after 1861. At the turn of the twentieth and twenty‐first centuries, the historical novel had a new editorial fortune, thanks to authors such as Umberto Eco, Valerio Evangelisti, Luther Blissett, Giancarlo De Cataldo, Giuseppe Genna, Tiziano Scarpa and Wu Ming, becoming a very fertile field of historical analysis on the transition from the First to the Second Republic. Finally, thanks to Antonio Scurati, the author of M. Il figlio del secolo, M. L'uomo della provvidenza, and M. Gli ultimi giorni dell'Europa, the historical‐documentary‐novel has become a perfect tool for a critical analysis of collective memory in Italy. The thesis of this article is that Scurati manages to rediscuss the ways and forms of the historical memory of fascism because he uses an innovative form of counterfactual narration: the implicit uchrony.

Giancarlo De Carlo: Participation Depends

This is a first attempt to unpack the concept of participation as developed by one of its most passionate and authoritative advocates: Giancarlo De Carlo. The narrative hinges on the analysis of a number of texts produced by the architect, spanning his entire career, in which this topic takes a prominent position. This analysis reads also the experiences in which the architect adopted this instrument to understand the friction of his ambitious intentions within social and political contexts of Italian architectural practice, which changed profoundly from the post-war period to the 1980s. This paper will argue that it is precisely in this changing context that De Carlo refines and expands his idea of “participation” both conceptually and operationally. His experiences and their contexts are explored through unpublished archival materials, professional magazines, contemporaneous coverage and debate published in newspapers, and the scholarship realised on this theme to date.

Luigi Pasinetti 1930–2023

Journal Article LUIGI PASINETTI 1930–2023 Get access Murray Milgate, Murray Milgate Queens’ College, University of Cambridge Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar John Eatwell, John Eatwell Queens’ College, University of Cambridge Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Giancarlo de Vivo Giancarlo de Vivo Università degli Studi di Napoli Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Contributions to Political Economy, bzad008, https://doi.org/10.1093/cpe/bzad008 Published: 02 May 2023 Article history Accepted: 06 April 2022 Published: 02 May 2023

Ampliare un World Heritage Site verso il passato recente. L’opera di Giancarlo De Carlo a Urbino

This paper discusses how to widen the boundaries of an existing World Heritage Site to include the heritage of the 20th century. The work by Giancarlo De Carlo in Urbino is a perfect case study since modern architecture enriches the set of values where the statement of OUV was based. Urbino undertook a process of urban rebirth in the second half of the 20th century, according to De Carlo's master plan, which promoted a harmonic continuity between modern architecture and the preservation of the historic city. As a result, the Historic Centre of Urbino was enlisted in 1988 as an outstanding example of Renaissance capital. Although the statement of OUV did not mention De Carlo's work, the site's management plan (2012-14) suggests widening the buffer zone to include modern buildings. The authors wonder how to promote such updating of the WHS towards the recent past, something that seems not to have precedent examples in the WHL.

L’influenza della Guerra fredda sull’architettura italiana. Due Maestri a confronto: Giancarlo De Carlo e Vittoriano Viganò

In 2019, during the centenary of De Carlo’s birth, Massimo Cacciari spoke about immaterial architecture as a possible new frontier of architectural research of our time. During the Cold War, new networks were created in Italy, beyond national borders, based on international dialogues and artistic collaborations. After the analysis of some phenomena that characterized the Cold War and the creative processes of architectural production in the twentieth century, this research describes some projects and writings of Giancarlo De Carlo and Vittoriano Viganò. The contribution outlines the influence of Cold War policies on the works of these Masters under the banner of two slogans: “Anarchist Architecture” and “Interrupted Sign”. According to these aspects, it is possible to emphasize the presence of a root of architectural design that tends to the formal disintegration of architecture.

Review: Balkrishna Doshi: Writings on Architecture and Identity and One Continuous Line: Art, Architecture and Urbanism of Aditya Prakash

Review: <i>Balkrishna Doshi: Writings on Architecture and Identity</i> and <i>One Continuous Line: Art, Architecture and Urbanism of Aditya Prakash</i>

Playing within De Carlo’s Field

The paper takes the New Villaggio Matteotti in Terni, a housing complex designed by Giancarlo De Carlo in the early 1970s, as an observation point from which to measure some of the competences and tools that architectural historians of late modernism have often mobilized. The analysis of the existing literature on the Villaggio brings to identify at least three recurrent ways of understanding the role of the historian. First, the historian as an intellectual exposing the contradictions behind architectural practice. Second, the historian as a philologist and a specialist in the treatment of dedicated archival sources. Third, the historian as a specialist in the study of architectural forms. The analysis suggests that, at least in this case, historians have firmly situated themselves within definitions and ways of understanding the architectural object that had been initially codified by the designer. This raises questions concerning the capacity of architectural history to contribute to radical changes in the interpretation of the built environment.

Revisiting Giancarlo De Carlo’s Participatory Design Approach: From the Representation of Designers to the Representation of Users

The article examines the principles of Giancarlo De Carlo’s design approach. It pays special attention to his critique of the modernist functionalist logic, which was based on a simplified understanding of users. De Carlo′s participatory design approach was related to his intention to replace of the linear design process characterising the modernist approaches with a non-hierarchical model. Such a non-hierarchical model was applied to the design of the Nuovo Villaggio Matteotti in Terni among other projects. A characteristic of the design approach applied in the case of the Nuovo Villaggio Matteotti is the attention paid to the role of inhabitants during the different phases of the design process. The article explores how De Carlo’s “participatory design” criticised the functionalist approaches of pre-war modernist architects. It analyses De Carlo’s theory and describes how it was made manifest in his architectural practice—particularly in the design for the Nuovo Villaggio Matteotti and the master plan for Urbino—in his teaching and exhibition activities, and in the manner his buildings were photographs and represented through drawings and sketches. The work of Giancarlo De Carlo and, especially, his design methods in the case of the Nuovo Villaggio Matteotti can help us reveal the myths of participatory design approaches within the framework of their endeavour to replace the representation of designers by a representation of users. The article relates the potentials and limits of De Carlo’s participatory design approach to more contemporary concepts such as “negotiated planning”, “co-production”, and “crossbenching”. The article also intends to explore whether there is consistency between De Carlo’s theory of participation and its application.

The architecture of differences

The architecture of differences

Heteronomy of architecture

I’m not calling today about the competition we are holding for Reinventing Cities here in Lambrate - I am calling to ask you if you would like it if we had a dialogue together on the Heteronomy of Architecture.&#x0D; Benedetta Tagliabue: Hello Matteo! Don’t even talk about it, everything is so sad. You know just how important it is for me to travel and meet people all the time... in person.&#x0D; Dialogue? Absolutely! But... what is this “heteronomy”? You don’t mean it’s something that excludes someone? You know I don’t like it...&#x0D; &#x0D; M.R. Come on, we’ve known each other for years! Look, it’s exactly the opposite. A very interesting concept which Giancarlo De Carlo summed up well in a sentence I am going to read to you. «As you can tell as you listen, one cannot help but think of your way of knowing, investigating and reading the places and cities in which you design. It is also impossible not to think of how you live together with others, and how this has always been the way you live architecture on a daily basis, and how you know how to transmit it and build it together with all the people you meet: collaborators, citizens, users, clients, politicians, artists, producers of materials, craftsmen, friends, etc. [...]».&#x0D; B.T. Oh well... I was actually joking a bit, you know it amuses me. I remembered this idea of Giancarlo’s from when I was studying at the Faculty of Architecture in Venice, and I was struck by his strength and energy in knowing how to interpret it at its best and translate it into splendid practice on many occasions.&#x0D; Thank you also for your kind words, it was so kind of you to have thought of me. It certainly is an interesting theme to delve into in a monographic issue of a magazine, and I would like to congratulate those who thought of it.&#x0D; So... Yes, I like it: let’s dialogue!&#x0D; You already know that we’ll have to talk again a few times.&#x0D; M.R. Of course I know... it’s always a great pleasure!

Forgoing the architect’s vision: American home economists as pioneers of participatory design, 1930–60

The phenomenon of participatory architectural design is thought to have emerged in the late 1960s and 1970s in Europe. In 1969, Giancarlo De Carlo, one of its main advocates, presented a manifesto in which he asserted that ‘architecture is too important to be left to architects’, criticised architectural practice as a relationship of ‘the intrinsic aggressiveness of architecture and the forced passivity of the user’, and called for establishing ‘a condition of creative and decisional equivalence’ between the architect and the user, so that in fact both the architect and the user take on the architect’s role. He also argued for the ‘discovery of users’ needs’ and envisioned the process of designing as planning ‘with’ the users instead of planning ‘for’ the users.1 In the same year, De Carlo began working on a housing estate in Terni, Italy that involved future dwellers in design decisions. Among other participatory projects carried out around that time were Lucien Kroll’s medical faculty building for the University de Louvain (1970–6) and Ottaker Uhl‘s Fesstgasse Housing, a multi-storey apartment block in Vienna (1979).

The ideal Benedictine Monastery: From the Saint Gall map to ontologies

We present an OWL 2 ontology, called SaintGall, representing the Saint Gall plan, one of the most ancient documents arrived intact to us. The Saint Gall plan describes the ideal model of a Benedictine monastic complex that inspired the design of many European monasteries. The structural, functional, and architectural specification of an ideal Benedectine monastery is modeled by the SaintGall ontology, which allows one to analyse and model the Monastery architectural type. This work started with the purpose of relating Catania’s San Nicolò l’Arena Benedectine Monastery with the abstract notion of Benedectine monastery, in the ambit of an ontological model based on the renovation works carried out by the architect Giancarlo De Carlo and developed by the same authors. The SaintGall ontology opens a research path aiming at comparing different monastic architectures that can be useful in any intervention of refurbishment or design for a monastery.

The “Greater Number” participates in the city 50 years later?

This discussion paper deals with the participation in the exhibition entitled The “Greater Number”. This exhibition was the ghost stage of the Milan Triennale XIV in 1968. A scenario that could be perceived as an inverted “amarcord” today. The exhibition was organized with the Italian architect Giancarlo De Carlo in a leading role. The “Greater Number” defined the construction details, invited prestigious speakers, attracted international participants, designed the physical space, and called on the media. However, it did not take place. It was absent and occupied, a priori, by a citizen’s movement, by a generalized and crystalline discontent on an international scale. In the face of the tangible crisis of May 1968, we now find the “intangible” one of May 2020. This is when the debate on The “Greater Number” and “participation” in the city arose again 50 years later.