Chapter 1 of 24
Giancarlo de Carlo With Model Of Urbino
I am Italian and I was born in Genoa, but I lived in Genoa for a very short
time. Then I went around with my family and I went in many different towns, and
then I went in Tunisia, and then I came back to Italy. So I cannot say that I
had a home town. In a way I an! a cosmopolitan. And this is something I
complain all my life, as I wanted to belong to a place, a specific place. At
the same time, I think it was an advantage because I was always very curious of
places and I try to understand places very deeply as in a wish of appropriating
them. I didn't have a particular vocation to architecture when I was very
young. And then most of the second world war I began to be interested in
architecture, and I decided to be an architect, but at the same time there was
the war. Even though I was anti—fascist I had to go to the war.
But at the same time I became a member of the Underground organisation. As soon
as‘the war was finished and fascism fell down, I became a Partisan. I'm saying
that because I think it was important in my life, also it was important in my
life as an architect, because in the Partisan period I got accustomed to decide
upon values and especially also to know people, to know places very carefully,
because it was dangerous not knowing places. And so it was important to
understand everything, where you were and with whom you were.
Then the war was finished in '45 and I immediately began to work as an architect
and I went to other offices — as all young people do - I went in the office of
Ignazio Gardella and Franco Albini, two distinguished architects. It was a
period when to find work was very difficult and so it was a period of studies
for me, and also I began to write something in architecture.
I wrote a small book on Corbusier, a sort of collection of writings by
Corbusier, a sort of collections of writings by Corbu but very short writings
with comments. And this was a component in my formation as an architect. But
there was another component which was related to my formation again, to the
studies of that period. I wrote a small book on William Morris, and I studied
the period of William Morris and I studied also all that line of architecture
which developed in England especially; which seemed to me at that time - and I
keep considering it very important — something that was forgotten at a certain
point but very important as one of the major lives, the more fruitful lines in
architecture.
So I got familiar with Patrick Geddes and also the knowledge or the familiarity
Patrick Geddes is still important to me. I've been working in observatories,
you know, and also in an outlook tower recently for Siena which is certainly
influenced you know by the work he was>doing.in Edinburgh.