On December 10, 2019, a symposium on Giancarlo De Carlo (GDC) was held at IUAV [Istituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia, Venice, Italy], curated by the authors. The IUAV University, the Department of Architecture and Arts, the Archivio Progetti – holder of the impressive collection relating to De Carlo’s works – the research infrastructure of IR.IDE (of the IUAV Department of Project Cultures), and the Venice chapter of the professional association of Architects, Planners, Landscape Architects, Preservationists of the Province of Venice collaborated to organize the meeting on the occasion of the centenary of the birth of the important Italian architect.

The symposium wanted to return to ongoing investigations into the work of GDC with the objective of opening up new research perspectives. De Carlo’s architecture is a multi-faceted field of work that offers today the possibility to reflect on the role of planners and on the tools at thier disposal to act in a deeply-changing reality.

The ensemble of speeches went through the detailed framework of the methods used by a difficult-to-label author who intended to promote the project as a direct expression of an idea of society. The investigations into the correspondence of GDC, on the writings, preparatory and executed material in the IUAV Archivio Progetti and in other archives, the study of the references to the root of this thought, the direct or remote comparison, carried out through the architectures (also created with other authors), draw a wide field of research. The continuous revision of the critical and design tools utilised by GDC, his communication strategies, the connections between design, teaching and publishing are objects of study and possible research tracks yet to be developed. The published and unpublished documents were material for reflection and discussion, and also the realized architecture, on which we wanted to open a debate, not only raising awareness on them, but also about their protection and preservation.

The symposium was divided into two sections: the first dedicated to the dialogues that GDC had woven into his various decades of activity with other cultural spheres involving design knowledge, such as philosophy, sociology, literature; the second dedicated to the methods and strategies of the Genoese architect and to the prospects that these may open up for contemporary design. Highlighted below are the key passages that emerged from the reports, the order of which follow that one of the presentations. 

In the late ‘70s, an extremely productive period, De Carlo began to rethink the foundations of his own language and new themes were added to his work: the idea of breaking free from the constraints of a positivist conception of the structure of a building and the pleasure of studying the effects of a more complex geometry at the basis of the project. From this new phase of his work, there were projects that bear witness, such as the staircase of the Palazzo degli Anziani in Ancona, and the Outlook Tower in Siena, and works such as Blue Moon of the Lido in Venice, and the gateways of San Marino, works on which criticism has until now been expressed with great reservations. De Carlo evoked the image of the relationship between a tree and the creeper that climbs its trunk: “I know very well that it is the tree that holds the creeper up, but you could also look at the creeper from another perspective, as if it had collaborated. And then everything changes.” ¹ De Carlo was interested in the relationship between the science and the art of construction, entropy, fractals, the theories of chaos, and on these themes the symposium was able to hear the testimony of another discussant, engineer Giuseppe Carniello, who was his collaborator in the early ‘80s on projects such as the gateways of San Marino.

Having made this long introduction, it is time to return to the theme selected for the first part of the symposium, that of dialogue and discussion, a key to the reading that was interpreted by Pogacnik through the important correspondence of the architect held at the IUAV Archivio Progetti. The epistolary dialogue documents the extensive network of friendships and relationships that Giancarlo De Carlo was able to weave during his long activity. His personal correspondence alone amounts to more than 2,000 papers, to which must be added – because they are ordered separately – the letters relating to his professional work, those written as Editor-in-Chief of Spazio e Società / Space & Society (1978-2001), and, lastly, the correspondence for ILAUD (International Laboratory of Architecture and Urban Design) - the international school which he directed from 1976 to 2003. To this already significant body of work must be added the correspondence as a member of the MSA (Movimento di Studi per l’Architettura, of which he was Director from 1955 to 1957, a period that coincides with his activity as associate editor at Casabella - Continuità) and of Team X (from the CIAM meeting in Otterlo in 1959 until its disbandment in 1981). 

Personal correspondence alone documents the exchange of letters with nearly five hundred and thirty correspondents in a time span from 1957 to 1999. The study of this material has only just begun and of this, it was only possible to give an account through a survey limited to some protagonists (Aldo Rossi, Francesco Dal Co, Denys Lasdun, Giorgio Macchi, Renzo Piano and Bruno Zevi), a survey that, in this seminar, could only briefly illustrate the last of the mentioned figures, Bruno Zevi.

The first letter preserved in the Archive dates back to 1963, the one with which Zevi took his leave from Venice to take up the Chair of History at the University of Rome. De Carlo imprinted his dialogue with his interlocutors by making use of every possible rhetorical device, from harsh accusation to an attempt at explicit seduction, and these different methods were all used in the correspondence with Zevi. Their acquaintance dated back to the years in which the MSA collaborated with the APAO (Associazione per l’architettura organica – Association for Organic Architecture) in an attempt to address the architectural debate that was then developed in magazines such as Metron, Comunità, Casabella and then L’architettura. De Carlo saw in Zevi the figure of a protagonist capable of exercising considerable power thanks to his international relations (with America, UNESCO, and other academic institutions) as well as his position in Italy - Secretary of the INU (Istituto Nazionale di Urbanistica – National Institute for Urbanism), strong relationships with the publishing world, and jury member in many architectural design competitions. Their epistolary relationship – one of the longest and most consistent, with almost sixty letters written from 1963 until 1999 – was characterized by a great asymmetry, in that Zevi (through his magazine L’architettura and other editorial projects) continued his attempts to engage, whereas De Carlo always responded by avoiding to binding a commitment. De Carlo had no confidence in Zevi, and to this, he added a grievance towards him for having hindered him (according to De Carlo) in both his academic career and design competitions. But their distance became profound after the publication of Zevi’s Il linguaggio moderno dell’architettura (1973), in which Zevi attempted to define an anticlassical code of stylistic matrix, as far as possible from De Carlo’s stance, that was based on the idea of complete designer freedom in the field of design research. Nevertheless, through writing and letter correspondence, both seemed wanting to remedy mutual anxieties that converged on a single point: the perception of their progressive isolation in a cultural landscape increasingly linked to the spectacularization of an architecture that is almost exclusively paper-based.

The few surveys that have been carried out on the ample correspondence indicate promising research prospects, as they are not only capable of reconstructing in detail the historical context in which De Carlo’s professional career took place, but also of delineating more precisely his intellectual profile, hitherto described only through his written works.

Livio Sichirollo and GDC. Architecture and Philosophy

Stefano Azzarà, Professor of History of Philosophy at the University of Urbino, underlined how much the experience of De Carlo in Urbino was marked by meeting and collaborating with the philosopher Livio Sichirollo, who in addition to being a professor at the University of Urbino, was also the City Councillor for Urban Planning.

Trained in the climate of Italian neo-idealism, in the cultural ferment and the anxiety of post-WWII renewal, Sichirollo quickly turned to Marxism. It was a peculiar Marxism, however, which according to the typical approach of Italian historical materialism, was strongly imbued with Hegelian thought, a historicist Marxism that was particularly careful to be objective in the idea of concrete civil institutions. Hence Sichirollo’s constant attention, in his studies of dialectics, to the theme of the city and its functions and transformations in the heart of human relationships, with the aim of regulating the collisions present in civil society and of helping to transform a reality in which, otherwise, spontaneity would mostly coincide with the power relations between classes. It is a problematic whose genesis will follow, starting from the thinking of Plato and Aristotle, and which will play an important role in his relationship with De Carlo, and in the common reflections of these two intellectuals on the Urbino Master Plan of 1964.

GDC and the French Urban Sociology Studies

Marius Grønning, Professor at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU) proposed as a line of research the deepening of the links between the thinking of GDC and French sociology. While the Anglo-American references of the Genoese architect are known and often highlighted, reading the magazines Espaces et sociétés and Spazio e Società allows us to reconstruct De Carlo’s relationships with French urban culture. 

A common feature of the two voices, those of Lefebvre and De Carlo, is the commitment they express in establishing the foundations of critical thought around the theme of the notion of “space”. The French magazine inspired the birth of the Italian one, even though they are based on two very different disciplinary identities. These observations insist on the theme of “spatial consciousness,” or on the strong link between strategic and political consciousness, professional responsibility and the relationship between space and society. The consultation of the Espaces et sociétés archives in Strasbourg could offer new materials and ideas to reflect on the idea of the city cultivated by De Carlo.

Riccardo Dalisi, at the Origins of Participation

Francesca Castanò, Professor of History of Architecture at the II University of Naples, addressed the origins of participation through the dialogue between Giancarlo De Carlo and Riccardo Dalisi. The correspondence held at the IUAV Archivio Progetti reveals the dense exchanges that took place between them from 1968 to 1972. This is a central period of De Carlo’s activity, in which projects such as the Rimini Master Plan, the Rampa at Urbino, the Matteotti Village in Terni and his reflections on “participation” take shape. The theme, born from the desire to bring architecture back into the environmental scene, listening to physical and social contexts, also involved Dalisi’s research in the same years, as he had not remained idle in this field, involving urban and suburban areas of Naples and the understanding of the consciousness of all classes and ages. Between 1967 and 1970 in the CEP Traiano district, built in the western area of Naples, as part of the Coordinamento per l’Edilizia Popolare (Coordination for Affordable Housing), Dalisi defined a new methodological approach focused on the study of built form as placed in relation to the spontaneous modification of space. This was an approach for which De Carlo expressed a sincere interest. 

Among the points of attention that emerged from the epistolary documentation, there are experiments in the field of generative geometry, for which De Carlo praises the introduction of the social variable alongside the canonical spatial-temporal ones: a changed concept of landscape re-interpreted “on the basis of a very opportune demolition of old and new myths.” (Letter from De Carlo to Dalisi, Milan, April 15, 1970). Finally, is the idea of a pervasive and widespread university, or higher educational system, across the city. 

On the contrary, the concept of urban disorder, which for Dalisi acquired a metaphysical and aestheticizing value, anchored within a sphere that is still highly theoretical, represented for De Carlo the principle of an alternative creative process to traditional preordained procedures, as an inclusive and participatory design act to be selected and removed from unpredictability. Driven by these analyses, Dalisi shifted his research to an application level through the direct involvement of the children of the district, in an immersive and concrete participatory practice with many effects on the operativity and the vitality that his methods would assume. The Nursery School project that resulted from it, in the absence of conventional planning tools, without a licence, without a construction company, without an area of exact location, takes on the force of a design manifesto that led De Carlo’s “creative disorder” into the territories of utopian radicalism. In the outcome of this imaginative participatory practice, there is perhaps the greatest distance between the two architects and also the last act of their intellectual conversation.

XIV Milan Triennale, 1968. GDC between Italy and the United States

Paola Nicolin, critic, curator and Professor of History of Contemporary Art at the Bocconi University of Milan, focused her attention, through handwritten letters, on the relationships that occurred in 1967 between De Carlo and a community of international artists and architects linked to American culture. At that time, De Carlo was actively involved in the conception and realization of the international exhibition of the “Grande Numero (Big Number)” at the XIV Milan Triennale (1965-68). In relation to this project, De Carlo undertook several trips to the United States where he organized meetings and visits with some leading figures invited to participate in the event, such as Shadrach Woods, Gyorgy Kepes, Fumihiko Maki, Arata Isozaki, Hugh Hardy, Peter and Alison Smithson, George Nelson, Saul Bass, as well as a series of interlocutors linked to the national participation of that edition. In this context, the correspondence between De Carlo and the Executive Board of the Triennale is voluminous, in particular with its Secretary, Tommaso Ferraris, adding details and elements not only to understand De Carlo’s vision, but also the conflicting points of view within the Milanese working group of the exhibition project. In a crucial year for the definition of the assets of Italian institutions, also the Triennale, through this experience, was thinking about the need for a new management form and the sometimes difficult role of the Artistic Director. 

The letters are therefore proposed as having a dual role: on the one hand, as a documentary and historical research tool on the project, in support of the importance of correspondence as an element of analysis, on the other, as a chapter in the biography of the Genoese architect, in support of the importance of calligraphy – the style, the medium, the alternation between diary and essay writing, etc. – which was one of De Carlo’s talents as an architect who wrote. Through the discovery of some unpublished documents kept in the Archives of the Milan Triennale, Nicolin’s contribution focused on the reconstruction of the initial phase of the international exhibition, retracing the genealogy of relationships and exchanges that De Carlo built for the Milanese institution and that, because of his employment/occupation and its early closure, have never been made public.

In general, the editorial production on and by De Carlo reflects his erratic and transversal trajectory, i.e. not only and not so many large Milanese publishing houses, but also publishers from many parts of Italy, often the same ones that have witnessed his activity during his long career, such as in the Marche and Sicily. In short, the transversality of De Carlian thought, which will emerge even more powerfully with the publication of his unpublished diaries, is a consequence of his being a maverick (also for personality traits) at the helm of two organizations unfettered by statute, such as ILAUD and Spazio e Società. In short, his nature reflects his geographic itinerary without a real centre, although Milan has been more like a centre of gravity among other equally significant cities (Venice, Urbino, Genoa), albeit with thoughts always projected towards a more distant and intimate horizon: Greece and its archipelago full of Le Corbuserian memories and vernacular outdoor spaces, travelling every summer to a new place and in a different way, in the footsteps of the ghosts of the WWII who right there had irreparably marked his young, restless, libertarian, shadowy personality.

Blue Moon at the Lido Between Awareness and Protection

Francesco Trovò, Superintendent for Archeology, Fine Arts and Landscape, for the City of Venice and its Lagoon, delivered a paper on Blue Moon (Lido di Venezia, 2002): a work on which critics have repeatedly expressed a unanimous reserved judgement. The critical findings were fuelled, as also in case of the gateways to San Marino, particularly by the unexpected linguistic innovations introduced by De Carlo and despite those architectures being the expression of a proven design methodology, founded on the reading and morphology of the site. Starting from these considerations, the analysis of the building was conducted starting from a reading of the photographic documents that described the permanence on that site of a collective history linked to the relationship with the sea and the theme of bathing as a collective activity. The Lido is not only a physical place, but above all a literary place, and De Carlo proved to be particularly sensitive to its fascination. Seaside architecture is made up of ephemeral yet evocative images and Blue Moon remains faithful to this model, in which De Carlo tried to capture the visions of movie director Luchino Visconti, the colours of Oskar Kokoschka and Canaletto, the prose of Lord Byron and Henry James.

The regulatory layout of the complex highlights De Carlo’s approach aimed at combining the area access system, the garden towards the road, the volumes intended for the various accommodation functions, the curve of the shore and the momentum in the same gesture of the pier towards the sea. The articulated complex of the beach resort has arcades on the ground floor with windows protected by wooden slats to filter out the harsh summer light. The upper terraces are dominated by the presence of an ephemeral metallic dome from which soars like fireworks a mast that supports a crow’s nest, elements of a maritime landscape that transform the buildings into as many vessels stranded on the beach. Finally, towards the beach, on the terrace curved towards the sea, four domes rest to form a quincunx, reminiscent of the ancient Byzantine domes belonging to the first St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice. From the terraces, a slender metal pier, originally conceived as a walkway that went into the sea, leads guests as far as the shoreline, stopping on the line that separates land from sea. 

At the end of the two symposium sessions, a round table was opened, whose participants comprised: engineer Giuseppe Carniello, who had collaborated with GDC on the drafting of some projects, including a futuristic parking lot for the city of Trento; Francesco Ceccarelli, who remembered the house in Bologna designed by GDC in which he grew up; Alberto Cecchetto, who reflected on the reasons behind the project, the realization and the life that flows today in the housing district built in Mazzorbo, in the Venice Lagoon; Leonardo Ciacci, who addressed the methods and experience of GDC as professor at IUAV; Chiara Ferro, who highlighted problems and prospects for the protection of modern works today in Venice; and finally, Franco Mancuso, who rendered the picture of a complex personality, of a multi-faceted and manifold activity, underlining all the connections between his work and current issues. 

In closing, the stages of the project for the celebrations of the centenary of De Carlo’s birth scheduled for 2020 were illustrated. During the year, it is planned the organization of a meeting for dialogue and discussion between those architects and architectural critics who saw De Carlo as a crucial point of reference for the architectural debate in Italy in the late twentieth century. Finally, it is planned the promotion of a more assiduous protection of De Carlo’s architecture through a photographic campaign with the aim of documenting the state of conservation of his works carried out in the Venice Lagoon and in the Province of Venice: the Mazzorbo neighbourhood and gym, Blue Moon at the Lido and the hospital at Mirano. This is an activity that it is intended to take place alongside that one of enhancing De Carlo’s legacy present in the IUAV Archivio Progetti. 

A final note by the authors: new research is being developed, focusing on the architectural exhibitions curated by De Carlo, on his projects for private houses and on the reconstruction of his intellectual biography through the testimonies documented in his correspondence.