Giancarlo De Carlo: Participation Depends

Abstract

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 His experiences and their contexts are explored through unpublished archival materials, professional magazines, contemporaneous coverage and debate published in newspapers, and the scholarship realised on this theme to date.

Keywords:

• Post-war architecture
• Giancarlo De Carlo
• participation
• housing
• welfare state

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 This research is the result of a long maturation of ideas that started during my doctoral studies, which I devoted to the study of the Villaggio Matteotti by Giancarlo De Carlo, with the collaboration of the architects Fausto Colombo and Valeria Fossati Bellani, and the structural engineer Vittorio Korach. The published version of that dissertation is Alberto Franchini, Il Villaggio Matteotti a Terni. Giancarlo De Carlo e l’abitare collettivo (Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 2020). Another important step in this research has been the editing of an anthology of texts written by De Carlo, which was developed with Luka Skansi (my PhD supervisor) and published as Giancarlo De Carlo, O participativnoj arhitekturi, ed. Alberto Franchini and Luka Skansi (Pula: DAI-SAI, 2022). This paper is a reworked, adapted and updated version of the introduction to that book, with additions accounting for later findings. New archival research is linked to my current research project, Participation Makes Architecture, funded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and aiming at reconstructing the heated debate around this new professional tool in the 1960s and 1970s.

2 Paolo Portoghesi, “Architetti sotto vuoto,” La Repubblica, October 9, 1979 (Historical Archive of Contemporary Arts (ASAC), La Biennale, Venice).

3 Cesare de Seta, “Giancarlo De Carlo da Urbino a Terni,” in La civiltà architettonica: dal 1945 a oggi (Milan: Longanesi, 2017), 144. Further: observed Cesare De Seta in pers. corr. with the author, September 13, 2017: “Not sharing the demagogic way of De Carlo, who presented himself as the defender of the workers against the company, I told Osti and Bizzarri that I did not agree with this way of proceeding. But now there was no turning back: the car had started. I stood aside, while my friend De Masi decided to continue the collaboration […]. Considering my exit from the scene Osti asked me what I wanted to design for the Matteotti Village for which I had worked so hard without being a demagogue. I asked to design only the street furniture and graphics. De Carlo refused!” Unless otherwise indicated, all translations into English of Italian sources are my own.

4 Kenneth Frampton, Modern Architecture: A Critical History, 5th ed. (London: Thames & Hudson, 2018), 289–90.

5 Hermann Schlimme, “The Mediterranean Hill Town: A Travel Paradigm,” in Travel, Space, Architecture, ed. Jilly Traganou and Miodrag Mitrasinovic (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), 161.

6 De Carlo’s network benefited, although not exclusively, from his assiduous participation at important national and international events (the Milan Triennale and Venice Biennale), affiliation with prestegious institutions (CIAM, the Movimento di studi per l’architettura [MSA], the Istituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia [IUAV], Yale, MIT, UCLA, Cornell, the American Institute of Architects, the Royal Institute of British Architects, etc.), participation in transnational architecture groups (especially Team X) and collaborations with widespread magazine (such as Casabella).

7 Colin Ward, Talking to Architects (London: Freedom Press 1996), 24–30.

8 See Franchini, Il Villaggio Matteotti a Terni, 405–18.

9 Giancarlo De Carlo, “Il problema della casa,” Volontà 10–11 (1948): 41–49. First translated into English as “The Housing Problem in Italy,” Freedom, June 12, 1948, 2; and “The Housing Problem & Planning,” Freedom, June 26, 1948, 2. The Italian edition was reprinted in Giancarlo De Carlo, Gli spiriti dell’architettura, ed. Livio Sichirollo (Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1992), 55–64.

10 De Carlo, “Il problema della casa,” 47.

11 De Carlo, “Il problema della casa,” 47.

12 De Carlo, “Il problema della casa,” 47.

13 De Carlo, “Il problema della casa,” 48.

14 De Carlo, “Il problema della casa,” 49.

15 Colin Ward, “L’importante è partecipare,” A rivista anarchica 161 (February 1989): 25–29.

16 Letter from De Carlo to the FAI (Italian Anarchist Federation), December 6, 1958 (Fondo Giancarlo De Carlo, Archivio Progetti, IUAV, Venice).

17 See Pietro Adamo, “Chi era Cesare Zaccaria,” Libertaria 2 (2000): 90–95.

18 Giò Ponti, “Interni della turbonave Lucania,” Domus 287 (1953): 17–26.

19 See Alberto Franchini, “Un tipo particolare di committente. Zigaina e l’architettura domestica,” in Si inizia sempre così, ed. Francesca Agostinelli and Vania Gransinigh (Udine: Udine Academy of Sciences, Letters and Arts, 2018), 105–30.

20 See Franchini, Il Villaggio Matteotti a Terni, 146–55.

21 Giancarlo De Carlo, “L’urbanistica è nata nel solco dell’architettura moderna,” Rassegna Tecnica della regione Friuli Venezia Giulia 5–6 (1955): 6–10; and Giancarlo De Carlo, “Retorica tecnicismo ambizione: i nemici della ‘vera’ urbanistica,” Rassegna Tecnica della regione Friuli Venezia Giulia 7–8 (1955): 8–9.

22 Giuseppe Samonà, “Disegno per una unità disciplinare dell’urbanistica e dell’architettura,” in Oggi l’architettura, ed. Carlo Doglio and Alberto Samonà (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1974), 25–36; Tom Avermaete and Janina Gosseye, Urban Design in the 20th Century: A History (Zurich: gta verlag, 2021), 427; Giovanni Astengo, “Urbanistica,” in Enciclopedia Universale dell’Arte, vol. 14 (Venice and Rome: Istituto per la collaborazione culturale, 1966), 541–642.

23 De Carlo, “L’urbanistica è nata nel solco dell’architettura moderna,” 6.

24 De Carlo, “L’urbanistica è nata nel solco dell’architettura moderna,” 6.

25 De Carlo, “L’urbanistica è nata nel solco dell’architettura moderna,” 7.

26 De Carlo, “L’urbanistica è nata nel solco dell’architettura moderna,” 7.

27 De Carlo, “L’urbanistica è nata nel solco dell’architettura moderna,” 7.

28 Lewis Mumford, Culture of Cities (San Diego, CA: Harcourt, Brace and company, 1938), 3–12; and The Urban Prospect (San Diego, CA: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1968), 208–26. The Italian edition of Culture of Cities was La cultura delle città (Milan: Edizioni di Comunità, 1953).

29 Marco Amati, Robert Freestone, Sarah Robertson, “‘Learning the City’: Patrick Geddes, Exhibitions, and Communicating Planning Ideas,” Landscape and Urban Planning 166 (2017): 97–105.

30 De Carlo presented Patrick Geddes’s most famous book, Cities in Evolution: An Introduction to the Town Planning Movement and to the Study of Civics (London: Williams and Norgate, 1915), for an Italian readership in the series “Spazio e forma urbana,” which he directed from 1967 to 1981 for Il Saggiatore: Patrick Geddes, Città in evoluzione, trans. Laura Nicolini (Milan: Il Saggiatore, 1970).

31 Rem Koolhaas, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Project Japan: Metabolism Talks… (Cologne: Taschen, 2011), 519. In the original drawings, the title is “Participation and Change” (Fondo Giancarlo De Carlo, Archivio Progetti, IUAV, Venice).

32 Giancarlo De Carlo, “Aiming Beyond Technology,” Approach (quarterly magazine of the Takenaka Corporation) (April 1970): 43.

33 Kishō Kurokawa, Giancarlo De Carlo, “Conversazione tra un architetto giapponese e un architetto italiano,” Notiziario dell"istituto giapponese di cultura (1968), 9. The Japanese version appeared under the title “Kenchiku, gakusei undō, bunka kakumei,” Dezain hihyō 7 (October 1968): 76–90.

34 First French edition Giancarlo De Carlo, “L’architecture est-elle trop importante pour être confiée aux architectes,” Environnement 3 (1970): 55–60. First Dutch translation: “De architectuur en haar publiek,” Streven 10 (1970): 1012–22; with another appearing as “Voor ben verantwoording van de architectuur”/“Legitimizing Architecture,” Forum 23, no. 1 (1972): 8–20. First Italian and English editions: “Il pubblico dell’architettura”/“Architecture’s Public,” Parametro 5 (1971): 4–12. An improved English translation appeared in Benedict Zucchi, Giancarlo De Carlo (Oxford: Butterworth Architecture 1992), 204–15; some extracts appear in Theories and Manifestoes of Contemporary Architecture, ed. Charles Jencks and Karl Kropf (Chichester: Academy Editions, 1997), 47–48.

35 Giancarlo De Carlo, “Architecture’s Public,” in Architecture and Participation, ed. Peter Blundell Jones, Doina Petrescu and Jeremy Till (London: Routledge, 2005), 3–21. This title invokes one of the best-known texts by De Carlo on the theme of participation. Following its presentation as a paper in Melbourne on October 18, 1971, it was first published in English as Giancarlo De Carlo, An Architecture of Participation, Melbourne Architectural Papers: Architecture in the Seventies 3 (Melbourne: Royal Australian Institute of Architects, 1972); then reprinted in Perspecta 17 (1980), 74–79; first French edition in Le Carré Bleu, 3 (1972): 8–10; first Italian edition as “L’architettura della partecipazione,” in L’architettura degli anni settanta, by James Maude Richards, Peter Blake and Giancarlo De Carlo (Milan: Il Saggiatore, 1973), 87–142; and then reprinted in Giancarlo De Carlo, L’architettura della partecipazione, ed. Sara Marini (Macerata: Quodlibet, 2013), 37–78.

36 An Italian edition was reprinted in Giancarlo De Carlo, La piramide rovesciata, ed. Filippo De Pieri (Macerata: Quodlibet, 2018), 133–72. The first German translation appeared in Architekturwissen. Grundlagentexte aus den Kulturwissenschaften, ed. Susanne Hauser, Christa Kamleithner and Roland Meyer, vol. 2 (Bielefeld: transcript 2013), 410–22; reprinted in German and English as “Die Öffentlichkeit der Architektur. Die Studentenrevolte und die Frustration an den Architekturschulen”/“Architecture’s Public: The Revolt and the Frustration of the School of Architecture,” ARCH+ 211–12 (June 2013): 86–96.

37 He also later added the scale of regional planning, although following his unsuccessful involvement in the Piano Intercomunale Milanese (1961–65) he distanced himself from this scale. Important traces of these reflections can be found in Giancarlo De Carlo, “Disordine distruttivo e disordine creativo. Colloquio con Giancarlo De Carlo,” ed. Ottavio Cecchi, Rinascita, May 17, 1974, 20–22.

38 De Carlo, “Architecture’s Public,” 9. Citations are from the Parametro (1971) edition.

39 De Carlo, “Architecture’s Public,” 9.

40 On this argument see the first Italian edition of Giancarlo De Carlo, “Note sulla incontinente ascesa della tipologia,” Casabella 509–10 (1985): 46–51; reprinted in De Carlo, Gli spiriti dell’architettura, 151–62.

41 See Avermate and Gosseye, Urban Design, 350–54.

42 De Carlo, “Architecture’s Public,” 10.

43 De Carlo, “Architecture’s Public,” 10.

44 See Luka Skansi, “Introduzione. I primi passi critici,” in Manfredo Tafuri, Dal progetto alla storia, ed. Luka Skansi (Macerata: Quodlibet, 2021), 7–42.

45 De Carlo, “Architecture’s Public,” 10–11.

46 De Carlo, “Architecture’s Public,” 11.

47 De Carlo, “Architecture’s Public,” 11.

48 De Carlo, “Architecture’s Public,” 12.

49 Special issue, Terni 10 (September 1970).

50 Special issue, Terni 17 (September 1973).

51 Gabriele Basilico, Leggere le fotografie in dodici lezioni (Milan: Rizzoli, 2012), 14. Casabella 421 (1977): 11–35.

52 See Paola Nicolin, “Protest by Design: Giancarlo De Carlo and the 14th Milan Triennale,” in Cold War Modern Design 1945–1970, ed. David Crowley and Jane Pavitt (London: V&A Publishing, 2008), 228–33.

53 Pers. corr. Giancarlo De Carlo to Arata Isozaki, Milan, July 22, 1968 (Fondo Giancarlo De Carlo, Archivio Progetti, IUAV, Venice).

54 “Domanda a Gian Lupo Osti,” Casabella 421 (1977): 27.

55 On this point, see Franchini, Il Villaggio Matteotti a Terni, 89–101.

56 See Emanuele Sgroi, Partecipazione sociale e sottosviluppo urbano (Rome and Matera: Basilicata editrice, 1974), 45.

57 Fabio Tomasetti, Cambiare Rimini. De Carlo e il Piano del Nuovo Centro (1965–1975) (Santarcangelo di Romagna: Maggioli, 2012), 57.

58 Tomasetti, Cambiare Rimini, 57.

59 Tomasetti, Cambiare Rimini, 93.

60 Tomasetti, Cambiare Rimini, 58.

61 Tomasetti, Cambiare Rimini, 258.

62 Giancarlo De Carlo, “Altri appunti sulla partecipazione (con riferimento a un settore dell'architettura dove sembrerebbe più ovvia),” Parametro 52 (1976): 50–52; reprinted as “Forme e contenuti della partecipazione alla elaborazione …,” Bollettino regionale d’informazione degli architetti 51 (1977); and translated into English as “Further Notes on Participation with Reference to a Sector of Architecture Where it Would Seem Obvious,” Parametro 53 (1977): 52–54.

63 De Carlo, “Further Notes on Participation,” 52.

64 De Carlo, “Further Notes on Participation,” 52.

65 De Carlo, “Further Notes on Participation,” 52.

66 De Carlo, “Further Notes on Participation,” 52.

67 Caroline Gracie, “La partecipazione alla progettazione,” Spazio e società 2 (1978): 28–37.

68 De Carlo, “Further Notes on Participation,” 52.

69 De Carlo, “Further Notes on Participation,” 52.

70 On the occasion of the project for San Miniato in Siena (1976–79), De Carlo affirmed: “I continued to discuss the project with the board, with the city council, with the parties, with the university, sometimes with the representatives of Monte dei Paschi: in short, with the institutions. There was no way, despite my repeated and continuous requests, to discuss the project with the labour forces, the districts, the district councils, the opinion groups, the ordinary people of the city. Someone could object that no one could stop me from doing so, but that would be an inconsistent objection: in fact, it is well known that the non-institutional strata cannot be reached if there is no institution that wants to take responsibility for mediating or—in other words—for opening and keep channels of communication open.” Aurora Meniconi, “Sí, per San Miniato sono irritato,” Il nuovo corriere senese, October 15, 1986 (Biblioteca civica d’arte Luigi Poletti, Institutional Laboratory of Architecture and Urban Design [ILAUD] Archive, Modena).

71 De Carlo, “Altri appunti sulla partecipazione,” 52, trans. Stuart Wilson.

72 Sherry Arnstein, “A Ladder of Citizen Participation,” Journal of the American Planning Association 35 (1969): 216–24.

73 De Carlo, “Further Notes on Participation,” 53.

74 Giancarlo De Carlo, “Reflections on the Present State of Architecture,” Architectural Association Quarterly (AAQ) 10, no. 2 (1978): 28–40; translated into Italian as “Riflessioni sullo stato presente dell’architettura,” in Architettura Città Università. Disegni, by Giancarlo De Carlo (Florence: Alinea, 1982), 11–24; and reprinted in De Carlo, Gli spiriti dell’architettura, 123–50.

75 De Carlo, “Reflections on the Present State of Architecture,” 29, 33.

76 The editor of AAQ, Dennis Sharp, noted in his editorial: “One of the surprising aspects of Giancarlo De Carlo’s Lecture … was its freedom from political themes. A number of us had suspected it might include some of that public participatory Italian so-called ‘Marxist’ theorising that throws English Liberals into utter confusion.”—AAQ 10, no. 2 (1978): 2.

77 De Carlo’s italics.

78 Richard Hatch, “Urban Renewal in Harlem,” Zodiac: Revue internationale d’architecture contemporaine 17 (September 1967): 196–98.

79 See Lorenzo Mingardi, “La suggestione della similitudine. Giancarlo De Carlo a Mazzorbo,” Venezia e il moderno, ed. Maria Bonaiti and Cecilia Rostagni (Macerata: Quodlibet, 2016), 160.

80 The first study on this built heritage was conducted by Egle Renata Trincanato, who taught at IUAV at the same time of De Carlo, and published for the first time in 1948. Egle Renata Trincanato, Venezia minore (Caselle: Cierre edizioni, 2008).

81 Giancarlo De Carlo, Tra acqua e aria. Un progetto per l’isola di Mazzorbo nella laguna veneta, ed. Etra Connie Occhialini (Genoa: Sagep, 1989), 49.

82 De Carlo, Tra acqua e aria, 49.

83 See Gianni Silei, “Espansioni e crisi: le politiche di welfare in Italia tra gli anni Settanta e Ottanta,” in Momenti del welfare in Italia, ed. Paolo Mattera (Rome: Viella, 2012), 121–56.

84 Roberto Guiducci, Un mondo senza tetto (Bari: Laterza, 1980), 118–19.

85 Tom Avermaete and Cathelijne Nuijsink, “Architectural Contact Zones: Another Way to Write Global Histories of the Post-War Period?” Architectural Theory Review 25, no. 3 (2021): 350–61.

86 The “Struttura e forma urbana” series includes a total of twenty-four volumes, among which the translations of some cornerstones of modern planning like Urbanism by Le Corbusier, Linear City by Arturo Soria y Mata, and The Nature of Cities by Ludwig Hilberseimer. Many volumes are translations of important American authors who substantially contributed to the renovation of the planning culture as, for instance, Notes on the Synthesis of Form by Christopher Alexander, and Community and Privacy by Serge Chermayeff with Alexander. Other important books in this series that are strictly connected to participation are Cities in Evolution by Petrick Geddes (mentioned above), Supports: An Alternative to Mass Housing by N. John Habraken, and Freedom to Build by John Turner and Robert Fichter.

87 See Tom Avermaete and Merlin Hurx, “The Tools of the Architect: Towards a New Historiography, Following the EAHN’s Fifth Thematic Conference (Delft/Rotterdam 22–24 November 2017),” Architectural Histories 7, no. 1 (2019): 1–5, http://doi.org/10.5334/ah.338. The most recent outcomes of the ongoing research by Fabiane Regina Savino on the “Third World” in Spazio e società are: Fabiane R. Savino, “Terceiro mundo na revista italiana Spazio e Società: o lugar da América Latina,” in Encontro da Associação Nacional de Pesquisa e Pós-Graduação em Arquitetura e Urbanismo (Brasília: FAU-UnB, 2021), 433–45; and: Fabiane R. Savino, “O olhar do outro para o Terceiro Mundo: o debate na revista italiana Spazio e Società” (master’s diss., Universidade de São Paulo, 2023).

88 Franco Bunčuga and Giancarlo De Carlo, Conversazioni su architettura e libertà (Milan: Eleuthera, 2014), 216–17.

89 John McKean, Giancarlo De Carlo. Des lieux, des hommes (Paris: Centre Pompidou, 2004), 56–57.

90 Mirko Zardini, “From Team X to Team x”/“Dal Team X al Team x: Ilaud,” Lotus 95 (1997): 76–97.

91 Bunčuga and De Carlo, Conversazioni, 217.

92 See John McKean, “Domestic Action: Living in a House for Jumpers Giancarlo De Carlo’s House for Sichirollo: Ca’ Romanino,” Histories of Postwar Architecture 2, no. 5 (2019): 13–48.

Additional information

Funding

Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung.

Notes on contributors

Alberto Franchini

Alberto Franchini is currently an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow at the Technical University of Munich, where he researches the debate on participation in architecture in the international network involving ILAUD and the magazine Spazio e società. From 2019 to 2021 he was a postdoctoral researcher at the Academy of Architecture in Mendrisio (USI), and from 2020 to 2022 has lectured at the Politecnico di Milano. He obtained a PhD in the History of Architecture and Urban Planning from the University of Venice IUAV in 2019 with a dissertation on Giancarlo De Carlo (awarded with L’ERMA-C Prize and published in 2020).