Architect and planner, educator and editor, writer and speaker, thinker and innovator, Giancarlo De Carlo is well known in his native Italy and abroad as a founder of Team X and as a pioneer in participatory architecture. Born in Genoa, the son of a naval engineer, he studied structural engineering at Milan Polytechnic from 1939 to 1943. On graduation, he was called for naval service to Greece. In Milan from 1943 to 1945, De Carlo was active in the Resistance movement and in anti-Fascist circles together with Giuseppi Pagano, Franco Albini, and other members of the Movimento di Unità Proletaria. At the same time, his interest in architecture was stimulated by Le Corbusier’s Oeuvre complete and Alfred Roth’s Die Neue Architektur. Following the end of World War II, De Carlo published critical works on Le Corbusier and William Morris. From 1948 to 1949, De Carlo studied at the Venice School of Architecture and collaborated with Albini on the development plan for Reggio Emilia.

De Carlo’s career in both architecture and city planning was launched in the 1950s, together with his expanding intellectual circles, the latter including Carlo Doglio, Delfino Insolera, and Italo Calvino. In addition, he was briefly a member of the editorial board of bella. A participant in CIAM (Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne), De Carlo became known as a modernist who honored the heritage of the past.

Few architects who emerged in the generation following World War II have been as prescient in perceiving the problems and possible solutions in contemporary architecture and urbanism. Both part of and counter to the mainstream, De Carlo has succeeded because of his deeply embedded historical consciousness and his total immersion in the problems of contemporary society. A master craftsman, De Carlo harbors enormous respect for technological inventions and the design principles of modernism, including its Utopian goals. Nonetheless, he has protested against the rigidity of the Modern movement and the International Style. In his multifaceted career, however, his name will inevitably be linked with Urbino, the hill town in the Marches, where Renaissance architecture reached its summit in Federigo da Montefelto’s Ducal Palace. His work in Urbino is ongoing, beginning with his master plan and now clearly visible in his buildings for the University of Urbino.

When international modernism was at its zenith, De Carlo condemned the preoccupation with style divorced from the social realities of the day. While remaining open to the enriched possibilities of Postmodernism, he decried its superficiality, even frivolity. In fact, he believed that architecture was too important to be limited to the narrow domain of architects. Rather, it is the architect’s “responsibility” to humanity that constitutes the basis of their life and work. Evidence of this creed is found in De Carlo’s housing complexes, where he encourages participation between architect and users, a type of collaborative planning fully cognizant of the needs of inhabitants. Mindful of the inhumanity—and severe lack—of postwar housing, with its disregard for scale, social realities, and historical circumstances, he challenged the idea of “minimum living standard” as set forth at the CIAM conference in Frankfort (1929). Instead, De Carlo advocated an architecture based on current problems, one that considered the urban context as the primary force.

Still, a paradigm for architect/client collaboration is the Village Matteotti (1969–74) in the industrial town of Terni, 60 miles northeast of Rome. Meetings with the steelworkers and their families led to a continuous partnership in planning with the architect, who assumed the role of educator as well as designer and builder. Here, every phase of the project was considered in conjunction with the users, who were directly involved in all phases of construction. When completed, the Village Matteotti raised the standard for workers’ housing. Unlike Terni, the housing at Mazzorbo, begun in 1950 on an island in the Venetian lagoon, focused primarily on morphological considerations. Because of the distinct identity of Mazzorbo’s residents, De Carlo emphasized the unique setting and a strong vernacular tradition in his effort to design new forms that evoke the past by articulating it and enriching it with the use of local color and variety in building types and plans.

Beginning with his town plan (1958–64), De Carlo’s work in Urbino continues to this day. It was the Collegio del Colle, the dormitories for the University of Urbino (1962– 66), that initiated the dialogue between the old city and its surroundings. Additions to the college from 1973 created patterns that conform to the topography of the landscape, always simulating the memory of earlier times and fostering a greater sense of community among the students.

Many of De Carlo’s proposals have since come to fruition: restoring the Mercatale, reviving the old approach from Rome, and providing access to students and tourists along Francesco di Giorgio’s 15th-century ramp (discovered while restoring the 19th-century theater) leading to the Ducal Palace. Abandoned buildings have been rehabilitated and converted to modern facilities. Brilliant insertions in the town fabric are demonstrated by the glass-enclosed hemicycle of the School of Education, which seems to be carved from the surrounding walls, and the courtyard of the Law School, its domes illuminating the spaces below. Contradictions between inside and outside contribute to the continuity between old and new.

Aside from appointments as visiting professor at Yale University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cornell University, and the University of California at Berkeley, De Carlo was professor in the schools of architecture at the Universities of Venice and Genoa. In 1976 he founded the ILAUD (International Laboratory for Architecture and Urban Design). This forum of international students meets annually in an Italian city, such as Urbino or Siena, to develop projects for the adaptive reuse of old buildings, such as the Hospital of Santa Maria della Scala in Siena, the renewal of industrial areas in Genoa, or new interventions in the Arsenal in Venice. In addition to these pursuits, De Carlo, always a prolific writer, founded Space and Society, an Italian/English quarterly journal that addresses global architectural topics.

Since 1995 De Carlo has entered competitions for the School of Architecture in Venice and for the redesign of three piazzas in Trieste. Recent projects include university facilities, civic works, and conversions in Pavia, Siena, Catania, the Republic of San Marino, Lastre a Signe, Pistoia, Venice Lido, and Urbino. The latter includes the “Data of Francesco di Giorgio,” and the restoration and transformation of a city observatory into a multimedia center. It is little wonder that De Carlo has been made an honorary citizen of Urbino and that, on the occasion of his 80th birthday in 1999, he was given the key to the city of Venice.

A CIAM delegate from 1952 to 1959, a member of Team X, and an honorary member of the American Institute of Architects from 1975, the American Academy for Arts and Sciences from 1978, and the Royal Institute of British Architects from 1981, De Carlo has been the recipient of prestigious awards, including the Patrick Abercrombie Prize (1963), the Wolf Prize (1988), the Gold Medal of the City of Milan (1995), and the Grand Prix “A/mbiente” in Buenos Aires (1999). In addition, De Carlo has been awarded the doctor honoris causa from the Oslo School of Architecture, the Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, the Université Catholique-Louvain, the Université de Genève, the Buenos Aires School of Architecture, and the Faculty of Humanities in Catania. On the occasion of receiving the Royal Gold Medal of the RIBA (1993), De Carlo spoke of “promising signs …emerging from our present state of confusion.” Proving to be both realist and idealist, he hopes that “perhaps organizing and giving form to the three-dimensional physical space will become architecture’s raison d’être once more.”

NAOMI MILLER

Sennott R.S. Encyclopedia of twentieth century architecture, Vol.1 (A-F). Fitzroy Dearborn., 2005. 

12 December 1919 Born in Genoa, Italy;

1943 Studied structural engineering, Milan Polytechnic; degree in engineering ;

1948–49 attended the Institute of Architecture, Venice;

1949 degree in architecture, the Institute of Architecture, Venice;

from 1950 Private practice, Milan ;

1952–59 member, Team X ;

1952–59 member, Italian Group of CIAM ;

1954–56 assistant editor, Casabella magazine;

from 1955 director, Spazio e Società, Milan; director, ILAUD. Professor of urban design, Institute of Architecture, Venice ;

from 1966 to mid1970s and visiting professor, Yale University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cornell University, and the University of California ;

1975 founder, ILAUD (International Laboratory of Architecture and Urban Design) ;

from 1975 honorary member , American Institute of Architects;

from 1978 honorary member, American Academy of Arts and Sciences ;

from 1981 Fellow, Royal Institute of British Architects;

from 1983 professor of architectural composition, University of Genoa;

1993 member, National Academy of San Luca, Rome. Royal Gold Medal, Royal Institute of British Architects ;

June 4, 2005 died in Milan, Italy.

De Carlo is a prolific writer, and important accounts of his work appear in books that he authored or edited. Numerous articles are found in architectural periodicals from 1977 on and in annual ILAUD (International Laboratory for Architecture and Urban Design) reports. The only monograph in English is that by Benedict Zucchi.

Brunetti, Fabrizio, and Fabrizio Gesi, Giancarlo De Carlo, Florence: Alinea, 1981

De Carlo, Giancarlo, “Legitimizing Architecture: The Revolt and Frustration of the School of Architecture,” Forum 23, no. 1 (1972)

Mioni, Angela, and Etra Connie Occhialini (editors), Giancarlo De Carlo: immagini e fram menti, Milan: Electa, 1995

Rossi, Lamberto, Giancarlo De Carlo: architetture, Milan: Mondadori, 1988

Zucchi, Benedict, Giancarlo De Carlo, Oxford and Boston: Butterworth Architecture, 1992

Selected Publications

Questioni di architettura e urbanistica, 1965

Urbino: la storia di una città e il piano delta sua evoluzione urbanistica, 1966; as Urbino: The History of a City and Plans for Its Development, translated by Loretta Schaeffer Guarda, 1970

An Architecture of Participation, 1972

Gli spiriti dell ’ architettura, 1992; 2nd edition, 1999

Nelle città del mondo, 2nd edition, 1998

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