Tools or Tokenism? Participative Design Strategies in the International Laboratory for Architecture & Urban Design (1976-1978)

This paper compares three projects presented at the International Laboratory for Architecture & Urban Design (ILA&UD, 1976-2015) that focused on increasing user participation. ILA&UD was an experimental educational platform that uniquely operated in the crevices of architecture, urban design, and planning. Established by Giancarlo de Carlo in 1976, it was one of many networks emerging in Europe centered on urban form after the post-war reconstruction period. This paper focuses on the formative ILA&UD years (1976-1978), in which the notions of participation and reuse were central. ILA&UD is a discursive site to study debates on participation before they even involved the “user” and before they were carved in stone. By contrasting De Carlo’s studio briefs with three illustrative urban design projects presented by participants from KU Leuven, MIT and ETH Zürich, this paper aims to highlight that the ongoing search for urban design tools and methodologies was indecisively teetering between autonomous and heteronomous approaches to urban form. The three projects explore a range of attitudes, from confirming the power of inhabitation to designing with users. By focusing on ambivalences in the discourse, the paper hopes to nuance the dominant perception that participation entailed, as Kenny Cupers observed, “a straightforward course of empowerment for those involved.”