‘At various moments, the traveller always has a direction in mind, as if heading toward a conclusion, and as if there were something to conclude’. ― G. Celati, Verso la foce. Reportage per un amico fotografo

‘I don’t have any authority behind me: except that which paradoxically comes from not having it and not wanting it; from having put myself in the position of having nothing to lose, and therefore of not being faithful to any pact other than that with a reader who I consider worthy of any more scandalous research’. ― P.P. Pasolini, Scritti corsari

‘Our admiration for this splendid man is accompanied by another feeling of admiration and reverence, the object of which is no man but the mysterious harmony of nature into which we are born. As far back as ancient times people devised the lines exhibiting the simplest conceivable form of regularity. Among these, next to the straight line and the circle, the most important were the ellipse and the hyperbola. We see the last two embodied – at least very nearly so – in the orbits of the heavenly bodies. It seems that the human mind has first to construct forms independently before we can find them in things’. ― A. Einstein, The World as I see it

In the silence of the Urbino countryside, a house stands on a hill, built above an old cellar. Inside, in two small cloistered, twin, and mirrored rooms, there are two beds over which loom skylights for gazing at the night sky or the clear heavens. Transparent plexiglass walls support a series of golden rooms – a sequence of domes and bell towers ‘that ascends and descends, that pierces the sky and anchors itself to the earth’: this is the model for a new yet ancient architecture for a museum in Salzburg that will never be built. A yellowed sheet, preserved in the Archivio Progetti of Università Iuav di Venezia, recounts, through a constellation of star diagrams, some of the results from interviews used to draw up a plan for the Bulgarian city of Plovdiv. These images alone, of a house in the countryside, a maquette now found in Paris, or an aged sheet of paper preserved in a lagoon city, trace discordant trajectories. These trajectories can be pursued to imagine future destinations or modified to impose changes of direction.
In 2005, Giancarlo De Carlo (henceforth GDC) passed away. A naval officer, architect, engineer, professor, member of Team 10, founder of the International Laboratory of Architecture & Urban Design (ILA&UD), director of the magazine “Spazio e Società” and the editorial series “Struttura e forma urbana”, he was the author of numerous realised plans and projects, alongside proposals and architecture projects that remained on paper, as well as books and writings. He was, above all, allergic to labels and manifestos.
Twenty years after his death, it is possible to examine in detail the many enduring directions this architect left behind. Simultaneously, one may observe the multiplication of trajectories as an approach. For Franco Rella, the narrative has the role of revealing change and is, therefore, the space where a trajectory is built. For Jacques Derrida, however, one must search within ‘bits and pieces of movements, without any links’ for the formation of a broader, continuous gesture. Here, the co-presence of trajectories is sought as a modus operandi – a posture, a figure that releases discordant energies. This stellar imagery is based on actions such as: severing ties with the past, changing one’s mind, swimming against the current, relaunching towards the future, writing about doubts and failures, leaving incomplete traces for others to interpret, and, above all, remaining on the journey.
Certainly, the aim is to celebrate an author but also, by starting from the constellation of trajectories that he outlined, to reflect on the possibility of relaunching a vision of the project that is wide-ranging, multifaceted, and realised using diverse tools in various fields. GDC’s work thus becomes a mutable map: under one light, it recounts concrete events, apparent stories, and shadowy spaces yet to be illuminated through new research. From another angle, it emerges as an abstract device to write further essays and explorations.
In navigating this map, one changes course to avoid limiting definitions and the crystallisation of sterile identities, building aesthetics without manifestos, intercepting non-evident trajectories. In a document entitled La traiettoria alternativa, GDC establishes ‘five points of reference’ which, when connected, outline the intended direction. In this essay, five scenes unfold, involving journeys, books, photographs, authors, texts, and reality to sketch an alternative path for the project. This is an attempt to lend a narrative to that which has not taken form – to that which, precisely because of its non-linearity, has not been brought into focus, and to that which might only now be glimpsed more clearly. Yet, the image of ‘trajectories’ here is not authorial: it coincides instead with the movements of society – neither chaotic nor uniform, and difficult to delineate except through techniques that embrace contradictions and change over time, namely those that focus on ‘use’ rather than the simplistic label of ‘function’.
Taking stock is like returning to the ‘scene of the crime’ beyond the sacred conclusion of a completed work, to verify how life flows within it. For GDC, the balance sheet is a working tool: revisiting one’s own works in use is part of the extended design process he champions in many of his essays. For him, architecture is an expanded field of ideas and actions, one that should not evaporate but rather extend before and after construction, broadening its responsibilities alongside its tasks. Many conclusions GDC drew from his experiences were bitter, yet some of his trajectories are more alive today than they were back then – perhaps re-emerging from positions of minority at the time. In 1954, he published Intenzioni e risultati della mostra di urbanistica in the magazine “Casabella Continuità”, reflecting on the outcomes of the “Urban Planning Exhibition” at the X Milan Triennale, and where he acknowledged the partial failure of his own work. While the exhibition’s argument resonated with specialists, ‘the message addressed to the audience was not as effective. While the short films had an immediate impact – which will certainly reach a broader audience when screened in regular circuits – the exhibition remained challenging and, in some instances, inaccessible’.
To look at the world is to travel through it, glimpsing realities to learn from cities and to search for images, landscapes, or situations that enrich the archive of experience. In his book Nelle città del mondo, he collected writings without imposing a cohesive form, presenting them instead as notes and fragments. The title refers to Le città del mondo, a novel by Elio Vittorini, whose presence recurs throughout GDC’s life and work. Yet, once again, the trajectories diverge: while Vittorini observes cities ‘from the outside’, De Carlo immerses himself within them. ‘The title I proposed for this collection of my writings thus reuses the one given to Vittorini’s book. Only one preposition was added, to clarify that its meaning is entirely different: my view is from within’.
In the cities of the world, one also listens to the spirits that inhabit them, as reiterated by GDC in the essay Gli spiriti del Palazzo Ducale and in the collection of essays Gli spiriti dell’architettura, edited by Livio Sichirollo. These spirits, along with architects who shaped the architecture of places over centuries, build challenges that transcend the boundaries of time. ‘But I still wish to thank, by name, Francesco di Giorgio Martini, for hosting me in this Palace and, especially, in this room where Federico received ambassadors, artists, and honoured citizens on days of great joy. Today, more than ever, I feel I have known Francesco di Giorgio’s torments and passions; and this morning, as I entered this space once again to be celebrated, I rediscovered the doubt that likely gripped us both throughout our lives: whether it is better to celebrate architecture by expanding its dimensions or densifying its meanings; as he himself did, with great success, working on a smaller scale, a little further on, in the Torricini study’.
To multiply trajectories is to reject singular masters or points of reference, embrace adversaries for every season, or cultivate many masters, while nurturing students who chart independent paths. This narrative is evident across all disciplines: the Hegelian seminars Alexandre Kojève held in the 1930s in Paris ‘nourished’ figures like Lacan, Bataille, Merleau-Ponty, and Queneau. Similarly, Enric Miralles described himself as a pupil of the ILA&UD – where he was first a student and a few years later a teacher – yet he followed a research trajectory distant from GDC’s. Yet the common ground between them, traceable over time, lies in an expanded idea of place, one that encompasses both material and intangible aspects, as well as major and minor histories.
Space and society form a unicum to be understood by listening to voices and dismantling clichés. Evidence of this lies in GDC’s projects for Matera: the lost competition for the Spine Bianche neighbourhood, the built project presented at the final CIAM, and, earlier still, the participatory investigative process aimed at understanding the images shaping desires. ‘I did not use horizontal windows, flat roofs, or pilotis. I gave the house a portico, a large pitched roof, and vertical windows: because, in Matera, the landscape is perceived through transverse cuts […]. The inhabitants of the Sassi did not want new Sassi with added bathrooms, kitchens, and heating, as the neorealist architects and sociologists believed. In reality, the model that the inhabitants of the Sassi looked up to was that of the cathedral and the archbishopric, which stand above, overlooking the deep chasms of the two Sassi’.
However, the principles outlined here, divorced from the methods that translated them into reality at the time and that can still pave the way today, might appear as convex, inaccessible forms or unattainable ideals. The primary approach is always to be found within the metaphor of the ship (remember Moby-Dick), not to translate it into a form, but to best describe its research process: hypothesising territories, moving in multiple directions, setting goals – even unfulfilled ones – working in groups, and allowing others to take different paths. GDC operated both within institutions and on their fringes, creating internal and parallel realities in which he navigated his own courses. The journal he directed, “Spazio e società”, was an open platform for all cultures, voices, and projects from different parts of the world: by breaking down boundaries and hierarchies, it sought to critically connect the Italian architectural discourse to perspectives that, only over time, became evident. Indeed, many alliances are needed to build multiple trajectories with and for the many, which is not the mass, but the sum of distinct singularities. The narrative, as Rella reminds us – writing, speaking, imagining, drawing, showing, discussing, realising, returning to evaluate what has been achieved, and planning one’s legacy – always tells change. And it is through a narrative that past and future trajectories come into focus.