Bergamo’s CIAM 7 (July 24-30, 1949) is often remembered as “the ‘grid’ congress.” ¹ After seventy years, much historiographical research has been produced on post-war CIAMs leading to the conclusion that CIAM 7, more than any other post-war congress, was “a failure.” ² In particular, the research produced by Eric Mumford ³ and by Annie Pedret ⁴ not only demonstrated the profound contradictions between the intentions and the results but also between the conclusions expressed in the official reports and the contents of the debates that took place in Bergamo.⁵

The facts regarding the preparation of CIAM 7 are well known. At CIAM 6 in Bridgwater (September 7-14,1947), the first post-war congress after a 10-year interruption, the organization of the subsequent congress was discussed in a commission led by Le Corbusier, which included several members of the French group (ASCORAL) and the English group (MARS). It was decided that in order to favor “a concise comparative analysis of the various problems in each country” a “standard method of graphic presentation for this purpose” ⁶ should be developed. Subsequently, ASCORAL took charge not only of the “CIAM Grid” as a unified framework for the presentation ⁷ of urban planning projects “in application of the Athens Charter,” but also of the CIAM 7 final program organization. After several months of elaboration,⁸ this Grid was approved in March 1948 by the CIAM Council, and subsequently published in a booklet, printed in French and English by L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui,⁹ and sent to all CIAM members as an official invitation to a “Working Congress” whose venue and dates had not yet been determined.¹⁰ (Fig. 1)

Through a comparison between the ambitious program expressed in the pre-published booklet and the results of CIAM 7, this section provides a thorough examination of the deep contradictions that led to three different orders of failure. Firstly, the number of urban projects exhibited in Bergamo was lower than expected.¹¹ With a marked absence not only from countries represented with official delegates such as the United States, Algeria, Belgium, Denmark, Czechoslovakia, Uruguay, Japan, Norway, and Poland, but also from other countries not yet officially in the CIAM, but who had been invited to participate with town planning projects in order to confirm the desired enlargement of the CIAM as an international group.¹² These countries include the USSR, Turkey, Finland, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Palestine, Tunisia, Australia, and Mexico. It is quite difficult to specify the exact number of projects actually exhibited and discussed in Bergamo due to conflicting data emerging from archival documents. At the congress opening on July 24, 1949, Le Corbusier presented the extensive work-in-progress on the Grid as a success, given that twenty-eight grids had arrived in Bergamo.¹³ However, based on the ETH Zurich’s CIAM Archive, Eric Mumford enlists thirty projects,¹⁴ while other documents in Nino Zucchelli’s Archive, preserved at the Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea (GAMEC) of Bergamo,¹⁵ indicate that at least four other projects were exhibited in Bergamo.¹⁶ The displayed projects could, therefore, have been thirty-four instead of twenty-eight even if the layout drawings designed by Franco Albini and Nestorio Sacchi ¹⁷ (Fig. 2) show an arrangement of fourteen long wooden panels (dimensions 1,36 x 9,62 m - 55 in. x 3 ft. 6 in.) hanging by tie-rods from the chains of the great trusses of the historic Palazzo della Ragione in Bergamo, which effectively allowed twenty-eight grids to be exhibited.¹⁸

However, the criticism of the Grid was not only related to ideological or doctrinal issues, but also to evident difficulties of interpretation and application. Rereading the extensively detailed instructions contained in the 1948 publication today, it is possible to understand the reasons why the author of a town plan, not necessarily drawn up according to the principles of the Athens Charter, could be lost in the face of the obligation to choose the intersection box between the four functions (horizontally) and the twelve themes (vertically), in order to insert drawings, photographs and texts.²⁶ 

The booklet itself contained several errors in the plates’ numbering,²⁷ (Fig. 5) forcing a series of errata inserted as a bound postcard between pages 24 and 25 of the publication; this indicated how the CIAM grid authors themselves had difficulties using the instructions. Le Corbusier himself was aware of these problems to the point of stating in his opening speech, “Improve the Grid by all means, but do not smash it!” ²⁸ Originally set up to improve the Grid and prepare for the next congress, Sub-Commission 1B (President Cornelis van Eesteren), became a veritable stage of accusations, expressing radical criticisms and proposing the complete elimination of the horizontal divisions,²⁹ which were rather considered “absolutely necessary to preserve” by Le Corbusier.³⁰ However, the principle of using a grid to display a collection of projects was not abandoned. Instead, it was profoundly reformed in the subsequent CIAM 8 of Hoddesdon (1951) dedicated to the theme “The Heart of the City,” for which the organizing group prepared a new grid entitled “MARS Grid.” ³¹ (Fig. 6) Very simplified, this grid included only six columns corresponding to four horizontal fields. Unlike the CIAM Grid, the horizontal rows did not correspond to functions or themes but rather were inflected by the subject indicated in the title of each column.³² This allowed for greater simplicity and flexibility, where the MARS Grid functioned as a descriptive non-interpretative grid.

Based on Le Corbusier’s statement that the Grid was a “tool for thinking,” ⁴⁸ Annie Pedret correctly interprets the fact that “the grid functioned both as an ideological tool for the functional city and as a way of structuring knowledge and reality,” ⁴⁹ further specifying that the Grid was “an epistemological structure that would guide thinking towards implementing the functional city as theorized in the Athens Charter.” ⁵⁰ According to this interpretation, due to the close link between the dogmatic thought of the Athens Charter and the “epistemological structure” of the Grid, the criticism of functionalist urbanism by many CIAM members, particularly the younger ones, had logically led them to abandon this Grid, considered too rigid and dogmatic, and to replace it with new simplified versions. First with the “MARS Grid” presented at CIAM 8 in Hoddesdon, as already mentioned, then with the even more radical “Urban Re-Identification Grid,” proposed by Alison and Peter Smithson at CIAM 9 in Aix-en Provence (1953), which replaced the functions of the Athens Charter with the more generic categories of “house,” “street,” “district,” “city,” and “relationship.” ⁵¹ 

Consequently, following a rigorous historiographical reconstruction, the failure of the CIAM Grid must be read in relation to the emergence of the “young generation” in the post-war period and their cultural battles that led to the formation of “Team 10” and the dissolution of the CIAM in 1959. 

However, if we carefully reread the words used by Le Corbusier in his opening speech at the CIAM in Bergamo, we can discover some clues of a more complex and more refined thought, which questions the canonical interpretation of a “rigid and dogmatic” Grid. In a first passage, Le Corbusier declared that the Grid “let think about town planning problems … [and that it] … does not pretend to make fine town planning schemes of itself.” ⁵² With these affirmations, Le Corbusier suggests that the Grid’s epistemological role is more to ask questions than to offer answers. In some ways, this thought recalls the words that Le Corbusier had already used in 1925 to warn his audience against any overly literal interpretation of the drawings of his famous “Plan Voisin”: “The ‘Voisin Plan’ does not claim to provide the exact solution to the case of the centre of Paris. But it can serve to raise the discussion to a level appropriate to the times and to put the problem on a healthy scale.” ⁵³ Just as the radical proposal of the “Plan Voisin” could be interpreted more as a tool to “read” the urban planning problems of Paris than as a “model” of an intervention to be implemented, we could then interpret the CIAM Grid as a tool that allows us to highlight the urban planning problems, rather than offering solutions with plans and projects.

In another passage, Le Corbusier says: “Your ‘interlocutors,’ mute, are immediately before you.” ⁵⁴ What does he mean by this quite enigmatic phrase? In the appendix publication of the book The Heart of the City, Le Corbusier modifies this sentence, which becomes simpler and clearer: “Your ‘silent problems’ immediately appear manifest before the eyes.” ⁵⁵ In two other passages of the same speech, Le Corbusier once again uses the word “interlocutor,” which becomes “problem” in the version published in the 1952 book.⁵⁶ This insistence on using the word “interlocutor” does not therefore denote an inaccuracy of language, but a refinement of thought that Le Corbusier himself considered perhaps exaggerated and too cryptic, forcing to simplify the version printed in the CIAM “official” book, with the replacement of the word “interlocutor” with “problem.”

With this rereading of the specific words used by Le Corbusier, however, we do not want to reach the conclusion that his original conception of the CIAM Grid was different from what facts and documents show: almost certainly Le Corbusier had conceived the Grid not only as a normative and dogmatic instrument but also as an instrument of power within the CIAM whose full ideological control he wanted to continue to guarantee. Regardless of the question of knowing what Le Corbusier’s “true thought” might have been, we are interested, with a certain interpretative forcing, in considering this surprising appearance of the word “interlocutor” as if Le Corbusier had “accidentally” used it, as if it were a “Freudian slip.” From the sequence of quotations discussed above emerges the fascinating hypothesis that the Grid itself could be interpreted as an “interlocutor”: an interlocutor who speaks to us about problems to which “we are obliged to answer,” but also a “silent” interlocutor, because they are the images that speak to us and with which we must have a dialogue.⁵⁷

Starting from the question of the critical legacy of the CIAM Grid, we propose seventy years later to go beyond the failure of CIAM 7 and to start again from this vision of a Grid as an “interlocutor,” as a character who “takes part in a conversation, a dialogue, a discussion.” ⁵⁸ At the invitation of the Order of Architects of Bergamo who had planned a series of celebratory events for the CIAM of 1949, we have elaborated with a working group of the Politecnico in Milan ⁵⁹ a “new Grid” conceived no longer as an instrument of dogmatic and normative thought, but as an instrument of dialogical criticism.⁶⁰

Quite differently from the historical context of 1949, which gave priority to the reconstruction of destroyed cities and the construction of “new towns” in a phase of significant urban expansion, we decided to limit the scope of application to projects and interventions to modify the existing, according to the paradigm of the “second life” of buildings and urban spaces.⁶¹ Consequently, our Second Life Grid is no longer based on the intersection of themes and functions, but on a scale of five proportional values that measure the critical tension between the existing and the new intervention. No longer a rigid normative instrument, it is conceived as a critical evaluation tool that takes up in certain aspects the idea of “measurement” used by Le Corbusier in describing the CIAM Grid as an “attempt to give town planning a measuring instrument ... real ‘metrology’!” ⁶² While in the CIAM Grid only the first theme – le milieu - concerned the context (“natural conditions, geographic, and demographic data”) while the other eight themes were declined to describe the new urban intervention in positivist terms, in the Second Life Grid the context is at the center of attention, because we apply a scale of values to four groups of questions (What? Who? How much? How?) that aim to measure the quality of the dialogical relationship between the context and the new intervention.

The application of the Second Life Grid took place in the form of a call for projects, based on the dedicated website produced by the Ordine degli Architetti [Professional Association Chapter] of Bergamo.⁶³ At the end of the call period, a group of projects was selected and their authors were invited to the final conference held October 25-26, 2019 at the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo. The conference was structured in seven sessions, each of which conceived as a dialogue between three to six architects, and based on a critical comparison of their projects. The event, therefore, did not take place in the form of a collection of individual lectures, but rather as a critical seminar to reflect together on common themes, recalling in a certain sense the CIAM working method. During the conference, the function of the Second Life Grid was positively tested and confirmed as a critical tool that allows the evaluation of both the choices and the design outcomes. Its function is to deconstruct the unity of the project and then reassemble it, analyzing the conditions of possibility of the project and their consequences according to the existing, including the social and economic conditions, the natural and the geographic, the anthropological, and the cultural. The Grid, therefore, explicitly describes the authors’ acts and practices, and also the creative process as a way of interpretation.

To illustrate the critical and no longer ideological role of the Grid, we conclude with a dialogue between some examples, articulated on the three main categories.

What?

The first pair of projects (Fig. 9) is about the “what?” (program) category, illustrated using the project by Gianluca Frediani (“frediani+gasser architettura,” Klagenfurt, Austria) for the Haus der Technik in Klagenfurt and Vincenzo Corvino’s (Corvino and Multari, Naples, Italy) Covered Market Insula in Reggio Emilia: both are examples of a commercial building conversion in the context of a city center with a major issue being their permeability to the historical context. It is interesting to note how different the degrees of transformation assigned by the architects to the interpretation of their project are: a prevalent replacement of the program for Frediani, and a prevalence of conservation for Corvino. In fact, although Corvino partially maintains the original commercial function of the building, in both cases we are faced with an interesting intervention in which new functions and new connections give a new role to the architecture in the historical center of the town.

In Joseph Munggenast’s baroque design of Altenburg Abbey, the main façade was balanced by wide open spaces, which offered a pleasant view of the surrounding countryside and a good vantage point from which to observe the imposing volume of the abbey. Its structural foundation consisted of a raised embankment above part of the medieval abbey. 

In the 1990s, the weight of the embankment increasingly threatened the stability of the retaining walls. To relieve the pressure on existing structures and ensure the safety of the building, the embankment was excavated, and several layers of medieval remains came to light. To shelter the remains, a terrace was once again installed at the same level as the adjoining baroque courtyards, so that these medieval areas are now used as museum spaces forming a coherent extension of the exhibition areas already established in the main complex. 

The Machado de Castro National Museum is located at the Alta de Coimbra (Portugal), whose history dates back to more than two thousand years. The core of this place of intense sedimentation and historical superimposition is the Roman cryptoporticus, built to contain the central forum at the end of the first century BC. The forum, placed as usual at the confluence of the cardo and decumanus as an administrative, political, and religious center was demolished at the time, but the cryptoporticus remained almost intact in its tectonics hosting, among other things, the Romanesque church of São João de Almedin (since the end of the twelfth century) and the loggia of Filippo Terzi. Due to the complex nature of the historical remains, and especially of the cryptoporticus, careful demolition and new construction work carried out to achieve a sustainable balance between the different systems of construction and to reduce their impact on this basis. New structures were designed not only to support new buildings but also to show the ruins of the old ones: Byrne’s attempt was to link history by keeping all historical parts and character of the existing structures in place, hiding and minimizing the intervention on the historical structures. The lower volume adapts to the existing layout of the streets; the stone cladding is not mimetic but consistent with the solid matter of the surrounding buildings. The layout repeats the settlement solution with its morphology and hierarchy originally linked to the cryptoporticus of the Roman forum, which in turn is connected to the museum. 

How?

The last pair of projects (Fig. 11) is about “how?” (the “material” as a design strategy) category, through a dialogue between a residential extension by Maria Giuseppina Grasso Cannizzo in Modica (Sicily, Italy), and the project for the Thalia Theatre in Lisbon by Gonçalo Byrne. These two examples show how existing materials can be used as the lexicon of the dialectical relationship between transformation and conservation. In both cases, a very sophisticated approach, based on an artificial memory of the existing materials, led to refined results. While Byrne interprets his intervention in terms of a balance between conservation and replacement of materials, for Grasso Cannizzo her building denotes a prevalent discontinuity.

In conclusion, we can observe how the structure of the Grid does not claim to be exclusive nor unique. During the discussions provoked by its application, it immediately became evident that many possibilities of interpretation remain present, due to the fact that the architects themselves are the first to be encouraged to reflect on their own design choices. An initial result is to strengthen the concepts of modification, conservation, and their dialectics, trying to measure the value of adaptation (up to mimesis) or of contrast with the existing. Then, from a theoretical point of view, the Grid allows a description of the project as free as possible from any personal point of view, while imposing its flat two-dimensionality as a non-perspective description.