Giancarlo De Carlo (1919−2005) was an Italian architect and anarchist.[1] He was a member of the Congrès Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne (CIAM) and became closely linked to Urbino as its town planner and creator of its master plan. Throughout his architecture career he advocated for the consideration of human, physical, cultural, and historical forces in design.
Giancarlo De Carlo was born in Genoa, Liguria in 1919 of a Tunisian father and Chilean mother.[2] He enrolled at the Polytechnic University of Milan in 1939 and graduated with a degree in engineering in 1943. He then enlisted as a naval officer in World War II and served on a submarine support ship in the Mediterranean Sea.[3] Following Italy's surrender to the Allied forces on September 8, 1943, he went into hiding, participating in the Italian Resistance through the Movement of Proletarian Unity alongside other Milanese architects such as Franco Albini. Later, De Carlo and fellow architect Giuseppe Pagano organized an anarchist-libertarian partisan group in Milan, the Matteotti Brigades.
In 1948, De Carlo resumed his studies at the Istituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia (Università Iuav di Venezia) where he received his degree in architecture August 1, 1949.[4][5]
In 1956, as an Italian member of the Congrès Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne (CIAM), De Carlo presented his own project for a housing complex in Matera in which all the principles of le Corbusier are ignored at the expense of specific attention to the geographical, social and climatic context of the region. His ideas broke from the old generation of architects and the international architectural model. In 1956, the current CIAM congress concluded and Team 10 began, bringing together a new generation of architects (including De Carlo, Alison and Peter Smithson, Aldo van Eyck, and Jacob "Jaap" Bakema) to conceive a new type of architecture, one which was better suited to local social and environmental conditions and where the man "is not reduced to an abstract figure".[6]
De Carlo became closely linked with Urbino, becoming its town planner in 1958 and creating a master plan for the city.[7]
Libertarian socialism was the underlying force for all of De Carlo's planning and design. He saw architecture as a consensus-based activity: his designs were generated as an expression of the forces that operate in a given context, including human, physical, cultural, and historical forces. His ideas linked the CIAM ideals with the late twentieth-century reality.[6]
In 1976, De Carlo founded the ILAUD (International Laboratory of Architecture & Urban Design), based on the principles of Team 10, which took place every summer in Italy for 27 years, engaging in continuous research in the evolution of architecture. In 1978, he founded and directed the magazine Space and Society to maintain the Team 10 network and guarantee an alternative and independent voice in the European architectural sphere for the next 20 years.[6][8]
Several times he was invited to universities around the world for conferences and meetings, receiving numerous awards and recognitions. De Carlo received an Honorary Doctorate from Heriot-Watt University in 1995.[10]
Miller, Naomi (2005). "Review of Giancarlo De Carlo. Des lieux, des hommes exhibition". Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. 64 (3): 364–367. doi:10.2307/25068170. ISSN0037-9808. JSTOR25068170.
Benedict Zucchi (1992) Giancarlo De Carlo, Oxford: Butterworth Architecture ISBN978-0-7506-1275-3
Miller, Naomi (1995). "Review of Giancarlo de Carlo". Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. 54 (2): 251–253. doi:10.2307/990979. ISSN0037-9808. JSTOR990979.
John McKean 'Il Magistero: De Carlo's dialogue with historical forms', Places (California/Cambridge Mass) Vol 16, No 1, Fall 2003 ISSN0731-0455
John McKean, Giancarlo De Carlo, Layered Places, Stuttgart and Paris (2004), published in English by Menges (Stuttgart) and in French by Centre Pompidou as "Giancarlo De Carlo: Des Lieux, Des Hommes". ISBN978-3-932565-12-0
John McKean, “Giancarlo De Carlo et l’experience politique de la participation”, in 'La Modernite Critique, autour du CIAM 9, d’Aix-en-Provence – 1953', ed. Bonillo, Massu & Pinson, Marseille: editions Imberton, 2006
Alberto Franchini (2020) Il Villaggio Matteotti a Terni. Giancarlo De Carlo e l'abitare collettivo, Roma: L'Erma di Bretschneider ISBN9788891320469[1]Archived 18 January 2021 at the Wayback Machine
Raman, P.G. (1998). "Libertarian themes in the work of Giancarlo De Carlo". Ekistics. 65 (391/392/393): 192–206. ISSN0013-2942. JSTOR43623304.