Long game at Urbino: Giancarlo de Carlo's tapestry at Urbino is an inventive reworking of old and new, in which interventions grow out of weaving the existing with modern needs.

For more than half a century Giancarlo De Carlo has played a leading role in European Architecture: as a member of Team X and an early critic of orthodox Modernism; as a pioneer of the contextual approach and of participation; as editor of Spazio e Societa and as organizer of his own summer school ILAUD (International Laboratory for Architecture and Urban Design).

As well as being a design architect he has been a persuasive and articulate theorist and a fearless, independent commentator, prepared to engage political questions as well as architectural ones. In intellectual authority he has few rivals among architects anywhere. His special relationship with Urbino dates back to 1958 when he was first invited to embark on a masterplan. He studied the town in immense detail and published his report as a book. Urbino became the principal vehicle for his developing exploration of techniques for reading the territory': that is for understanding a place, its forms and spaces, and how they reflect both its social history and current state. He has built much in Urbino, both converting old buildings and adding new ones. The current example is a late but vital element in a plan for the university that stretches back decades.

An ancient town on the Eastern side of Italy, Urbino was founded around the sixth century BC, and was Etruscan before it was Roman. (1) The surviving fabric is mostly medieval, but overlaid with Renaissance additions from Urbino's proudest period, when Francesco di Giorgio built his masterpiece, the Ducal Palace for Duke Federico da Montefeltro. By the time De Carlo was engaged to make a masterplan, the town was physically in a shoddy and run-down state, with tourism propping up an economy otherwise limited largely to the local market. The development of the university was therefore vital to the town's revival, but it meant a doubling of the population. De Carlo developed the double strategy of incorporating university faculties into the old town centre while building residential colleges for students on adjacent hillsides, and his new brick and concrete living quarters of the 1960s and '70s stand among the most notable Italian developments of that period.

Within the old town was a number of former monasteries and convents, large redundant institutional complexes not well suited to dwelling or business, which nonetheless served a defining role in the historic fabric. These proved ripe for conversion into university faculties, and De Carlo has gradually been redeveloping them. The Faculty of Economics is the third large intervention set further up the hill. It remakes a whole city block, revealing less change on the outside than the Magistero, yet is even more intricate in its planning.

The block is quadrant shaped, set to the east side of via Saffi, the north-south spinal street that divides the town, and bounded to west and south by via Piave, a circumferential street which perhaps marks an early town wall. All is hillside, the level dropping a couple of storeys into the southern corner. The dominant building on the site, vital for the town's massing and silhouette though plain in facade, was a linear block running north-east to south-west across the middle of the site, containing three tall storeys. Before modern use as municipal offices and a school, this had been a Benedictine monastery, probably with the kitchen on the ground floor, refectory on first and dormitory at the top. (2) An oratory for religious observances had been added projecting eastward towards via Saffi, and an arcade added to the west, which turned the garden quadrant in front into a cloister. The space was further enclosed by the L of a wing added to the north. Between the monastery block and via Saffi to the east lay two other former institutions: the house of Augustinian monks to the north and the Palazzo Brandini to the south, the latter a sixteenth-century family house later also used by the Augustinians. Both were L-shaped developments around tiny courtyards. The sole entrance to the Benedictine monastery had been through a narrow alleyway off the spinal street, squeezed between the other two institutions, and this remains the main entrance to the complex.

All too often, conversions involve the shoe-horning in of new requirements despite the existing fabric, assuming a compulsory utilitarianism which spells compromise from the start. Painful clashes of style are regarded as inevitable, while drastic violence is often done to apply modern services and force conformity with modern regulations. Most difficult of all is to dispose the new accommodation in a manner that reflects equivalent subdivisions and hierarchies to the old, so that the socially most important events take place in the architecturally most important places, and all makes sense as a family of rooms.

De Carlo has not let himself be defeated anywhere: advantageous reuse of spaces occurs throughout. The central spine block contains two levels of large lecture theatres, topped by the library under a newly exposed roof. These tall spaces are exploited by a series of galleries which break down the scale and add diversity, but the axis is always respected. The cloister arcade at garden level has been fully opened up and is used as a foyer, left visually continuous with the main entrance and reception desk to be discovered on entry, while the space directly above it has become the foyer and transition space for the largest of the linear lecture halls. The projecting oratory to the east remains unbroken, serving as a further lecture hall, and a seminar room is added above within its roof space. Corner courtyards have been considerably enlarged by demolishing accretions, so daylight now reaches the depths of the building. They have become the main circulation nodes, for each court is provided with a new glazed sta ircase, the most obvious De Carlo intervention. Echoing medieval spiral staircases, they have three short flights per turn, creating the possibility of multiple landing connections to the complex mix of inherited floor levels. They count as fire-stairs, yet are also the main routes in everyday use to get about the building, creating clear reference points for navigation. Classrooms and offices take over the old fabric in a seemingly effortless manner section by section, mostly following the original spans and the existing fenestration.

There is always pressure towards maximum usable space, and as with earlier projects like the Law Faculty, De Carlo sought to exploit the basement. Under the garden, he has created a large, almost semicircular amphitheatre which exploits the irregular space, while giving the whole floor a sense of focus that was otherwise missing. It is partnered by a stepped gallery running back under the cloister arcade, with round columns beneath those supporting the arches above. It leads, naturally enough, to the lift and stair of the rear circulation node. The slope of the basement follows that of via Piave outside, absorbing the rake of the seating and allowing exit doors at both ends. Roof lights in the garden allow some daylight within, and a side view into the northern courtyard gives a hint of contact with the outside world. The vaulted cafeteria in the old cellar of the spine block must depend on artificial light, but even here slight glimpses are gained of the outside world via the lower entrance or the courtyard. Generally, the views and spatial progressions perceived on using the building have been a matter of critical concern. The main promenade architecturale starts with the old alley, proceeds by way of the restored stone portal and arrives in front of the cloister with a view of the reconstructed garden, but after that it develops its own logic to reveal a sequence of spaces that seems always to have been there, yet is entirely new.

The rich plans and sections show the enormous amount of work done and changes made yet, from the outside, the building is not much changed. Old brickwork and roof tiling have been repaired following traditional details, and new windows have been put back in old frames, generally with the same or similar glazing pattern. Ugly ill-considered gashes in the fabric have been filled or at least tidied up, and the few new openings are made following the old proportion system with glazing patterns in subtle variation. Stonework and plasterwork have been lovingly repaired, and a traditional sundial remade. The clean-up has revealed a surprising elegance in the severe brick facades and brought an unexpected sense of harmony. Baroque plasterwork in the oratory and cloister have been carefully preserved, but the new detailing added throughout is simple and modern, following the logic of materials and construction. Painted steel platforms and railings contrast nicely with the solidity of the old work, leaving evident what has changed. The most flamboyant aspect of the new work is the treatment of the staircase glazing, faceted like a crystal with glass-to-glass joints to make kaleidoscopic reflections. The structure is white-painted steelwork, the landings also the glazing breaks, with sheer glass onto the flights. De Carlo wanted these stairs as delicate as possible, and jewel-like within the heavy old walls.

De Carlo is playing a long game at Urbino, often with a light touch and with no great compulsion to over-impose his personal signature. The Magistero, published in the AR some 20 years ago, has dated little, and the new conversion makes no arguments with it, being if anything more modest. Oblivious to the calls of fashion, De Carlo builds with a view to centuries past, and looks to the future: the work is for Urbino's citizens yet to come. It is hard to think of another contemporary architect who has contributed so much to one place. Without his intervention the whole development of the town and its university would have taken a different and almost certainly more destructive turn. Ordinary old buildings in the centre would probably have been destroyed. With his struggle to understand the relationship between buildings and human institutions, his concern with shared memory, his careful painstaking 'reading of the territory', De Carlo has demonstrated a method that seems to me the precise opposite of 'The Bilb ao Effect', for instead of imposing from without, it discovers from within.

(1.) For more on De Carlo and Urbino see Chapter 5 of Zucchi, Benedict, Giancarlo De Carlo, Butterworth, 1992.

(2.) This and subsequent information from Albano, Anna ed. Il Palazzo dei Reflessi: un progetto di Giancarlo De Carlo, Skira 2001 (a short monograph on the project).

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Giancarlo De Carlo, Milan

Project team

Giancarlo De Carlo, Monica Mazzolani, Michael Costantin, Fabio Leoni, Roberto Rosada, Paola Spada

Structural engineer

Domenico Fucili

Services engineer

Rolando Girolli

Photographs

Paola de Pietri