Housing Analysis Studio
Fall 2022
Terni, Italy
Professor Guido Zuliani
Group Project with Tina Chang, Laura Song
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Giancarlo De Carlo, a member of Team 10 and an internal critic of postwar modernism, argued in “Architecture’s Public” (1970) that the discipline’s crisis stemmed from its habit of deciding “for” people questions that belonged to them. Through a participatory design process—exhibitions, meetings, consultations with Terni residents—De Carlo set the terms of Quartiere Matteotti: outdoor space for each dwelling, separation of pedestrian from car, variation instead of repetition. While its formal language of exposed concrete frames and stepped sections draws from contemporaneous megastructural ambitions, it remains deliberately unassertive. Its strategy respects both the vernacular context and the formal modesty demanded by high-density housing. From a small set of basic unit types, rotated and recombined along a raised network of pedestrian routes, the scheme generates a communal fabric with distinct dwellings. On the micro scale, De Carlo expresses architectural agency in details, such as a twisting stair between units or a diagonal bridge between two platforms. On the urban scale, its communal tissue was to include numerous shared facilities linking the village to Terni proper, though they were never built.