Cooperation and Conflict at ILA&UD: Urban design pedagogy in twentieth-century summer schools
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Author
Date
2021-11Type
- Other Conference Item
ETH Bibliography
yes
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Abstract
During the twentieth century, the international summer school assumed an important role in European urban design pedagogy. Prominent examples—such as the CIAM Summer School (1949-1956), the Sommerakademie Salzburg (1953-) and the International Laboratory of Architecture & Urban Design (ILA&UD, 1976-)—were widely advertised in architectural media, attracting participants from a variety of design schools, albeit from predominantly Western contexts. Characterised by the sustained study of urban conditions through living and working in place over a limited timeframe, such summer schools brought together students and prominent designers in intensive programs of collaborative design work, seminars and site visits. In this way, they became recurring moments of encounter, exchange and negotiation, where diverse attitudes towards urban design converged. This paper zooms into the particular case study of the first ILA&UD residential workshop in Urbino, convened by Giancarlo De Carlo in 1976. Drawing on the Annual Reports and other archival holdings, it explores three facets of ILA&UD as a pedagogical project over its first decade (1976-1986), contextualised within the urban design discourse of De Carlo and the significant contributions of Team X members. First, it considers how disagreement between participating European and North-American schools revealed attitudes to urban design that remained substantially tacit within the curricula of architecture departments. Second, despite De Carlo’s commitment to accommodating multiple perspectives, it draws out ILA&UD’s own position towards urban design: anti-formalist, participatory, and contextual. Finally, it looks to the concrete pedagogical methods—from structured lectures to informal conversations—deployed at ILA&UD to bridge between these often-conflicting perspectives, synthesised through multi-authored design proposals. Ultimately, this paper frames international summer schools, such as ILA&UD, as particularly fruitful sites to trace the complexities of urban design discourse, negotiating multiple approaches towards the field’s relative autonomy. Show more
Publication status
publishedBook title
Histories of Urban Design: Global Trjectories and Local RealitiesPages / Article No.
Publisher
ETH Zurich; TU DelftEvent
Organisational unit
09643 - Avermaete, Tom / Avermaete, Tom
02655 - Netzwerk Stadt u. Landschaft ARCH u BAUG / Network City and Landscape ARCH and BAUG
Notes
Conference lecture held on November 17, 2021.More
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