Town planning scheme and participation

This is the Town Planning Exhibition. We won't show you models, designs, drawings or technical material because we know that you wouldn't want to look at them. ...We would like to persuade you that [...] you have the right to contribute you opinion and your action. You are the central figures of all that Town Planning invests in its work'(1) . This is what the three curators of the Town Planning Exhibition set up for the tenth Milan Triennale in 1954, Giancarlo De Carlo (1919), Carlo Doglio (1914-95) and Ludovico Quaroni (1911-87) think, and film. 'The exhibition manages to annoy everyone...', was to be the comment of Zevi who, without half-measures, defined them as 'the anarchist who rips up plans'.

The approach is actually quite clear on a disciplinary level and refers to Geddes' lesson, not so well known then, but already available in Italy through Mumford's writings(2): 'Have you never thought that it is us, day by day and altogether, who give form to this space? (3)'. The intention of the three films and the entire layout of the exhibition is contained in the final sentence of one of the three films, which, recalling those principles, says: 'Go to your city, man, and work with those who want to make it more human, more similar to you'(4) . The three curators turned to three documentary directors to make the three films: Gerardo Guerrieri, Michele Gandin and Nicolò Ferrari. Moreover, De Carlo predicted that their films would be screened in the cinemas and reserved part of his expectation of sensitising the people to town planning questions for this. The scene opens in Una lezione d'urbanistica with an explicit wrecking parody of the idea of 'existenzminimum' itself and of standardised home furnishings. The set reproduces the few square metres of a home inhabited by 'an ordinary man oppressed by the plans of the architect-town planner (5) , unable to cope with windows that don't open unless the table has first been moved, and other openings which, left ajar, allow the shower water to end up on clothes laid on the bed.

The controversy with Bottoni's La giornata nella casa popolare is explicit. The 'man of the city' is for this reason called on to collaborate with those technicians who have the tools of town planning, but no longer recognise themselves in the 'modern town planning game'. This will also be seen by the reactions to the provocations launched from the screens of the 10th Triennale. Even if De Carlo complains that 'the ineffable High Priests have rejected the provocation with disdain and have not answered' the solicitations of their films (6) , there actually were answers and these were quite strong: that of Luigi Piccinato certainly was, when he defined the exhibition as '... a mistaken and hopeless exhibition. Or rather, counterproductive and negative...'(7) . The three films are then all placed in sequence as three chapters of a single book on town planning theory. After the initial scene, Una lezione d'urbanistica shows three architects in a room, in the centre of which the map of a city is placed on the floor, almost as if it were a sick patient to whom the three technicians were to apply their remedies: the fine architecture of 'architect A'; the traffic innovations of 'architect B, highly experienced technician'; the typifications of 'professor C', who 'for the love of his plan, could make himself an oppressor of man'. Finally, the reassurance: 'Go into your city, man, and work with those who want to make it more similar to you'. A similar positive note on the destiny of the city also appears half-way through La città degli uomini, when, after a reading of the main problems affecting the big cities, the rhythm of the images changes abruptly, becoming lively and festive and revealing the positive sides of life in the city. 'The city is bad housing, cheerless labour, humiliation, degradation and worry. But it is also hope, openness, a stimulus to communication and to freedom. In the city all the assets of the world - science, technique, production and art - are developed'. Cronache dell'urbanistica italiana is by far the more complex of the three films and the one in which the screenplay seems more elaborate. The messages, even if traditionally intended to be concise and united in a strictly practical relationship with the images, rigorously express the town planning programme they intend pursuing and communicating.

The initial images are those of hovels on the extreme outskirts of Rome. It is there possible to see makeshift houses built beneath the level of the sewers, which the women take care of as if they were the streets of a surreal landscape. According to the commentary, these are dramatic aspects 'of the Italian evils' revealed by the war. The old 'Sassi' of Matera, and the La Martella district, are nevertheless the genuine subject of the film (8) . The typological characteristics of the new UNRA Casas district designed by Quaroni and built in 1951 and the solutions aimed at conserving the most important aspects of the housing culture of the 'Sassi' are shown. But, more especially, the focus is on the conceptual rather than the constituent aspects which make that design a significantly different example from the other solutions then adopted.
'For the first time some Bodies [placed] the problem of the council house in the right human and social terms, turning to the most qualified technical strengths of modern architecture. ... It is necessary [is the conclusion] that all have a greater awareness of their problems. The people, with the weight of their participation, have the chance to ensure that reconstruction really does become town planning. The tool of all and not the weapon of a few' (9) .
As can be seen, the design given life by the three documentaries has its own powerful internal consistency, able to connect the most abstract themes of disciplinary orientations with the more concrete ones of the planning solutions adopted for specific and circumscribed themes. Nevertheless, it is still collective 'participation', recognised as the condition itself of town planning, that keeps the picture together.

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(1) Cfr. La Mostra dell'Urbanistica alla Decima Triennale, in 'Casabella' No. 203, 1954, pp. 18-31.
(2) Cfr. De Carlo, Doglio, Mariani, Samonà, Le radici malate dell'urbanistica italiana, cit., p. 62.
(3) From the exhibition captions
(4) From, Una lezione d'urbanistica.
(5) Cfr. B. Zevi L'anarchico che straccia i piani, in "l'Espresso", 5 October 1954
(6) Cfr. G. De Carlo, Intenzioni e risultati della mostra di urbanistica, in 'Casabella', No. 203, 1954, p. 24.
(7) Cfr. Opinioni sulla mostra dell'urbanistica, in 'Casabella' No. 203, 1954, p. 27
(8) Cfr. Quaroni, La città fisica, Laterza, Bari 1981, p. 59.
(9)This is the final comment of the film.