by Raul Pantaleo
There are books which, without us fully realising it, continue to influence us, shaping our choices and the way we view the world.
I came across Colin Ward’s Anarchy as Organisation in my library, in the 1979 Antistato edition; upon opening it, I rediscovered my ‘rebellious’ notes dated 30 September 1987.
Leafing through this book, I realised just how much it has influenced my journey as an architect, but above all as an activist.
I was struck by the striking parallel between the table of contents of Anarchy as Organisation and that of my own book Architectures of the ‘We’ 1, which, after almost forty years, seems to retrace, through concrete experiences, many of Colin Ward’s principles and spirit. It is as though those underlined passages were the first traces of a path I would go on to develop over the following decades through projects, collective experiences and practices aimed at transforming spaces and relationships.
The most important lesson Ward’s book taught me was, above all, of a strategic nature: to act in everyday life according to utopian principles. Not to think of anarchy as an abstract horizon, an ideal society to be realised in some indefinite future, but as a daily practice of transforming reality. By recognising, within the fabric of existing society, the possibilities for freedom, cooperation and mutual support. It is from this that a different way of understanding architecture emerges: not merely as the construction of spaces, but as the conditions enabling people to organise themselves, cooperate and become protagonists of their own living environments.
From this perspective, the parallels between Colin Ward’s chapters and those of Architetture del Noi become even more evident.
In the introduction, on page fourteen, where Ward writes: ‘Anarchism is not a vision, based on conjecture, of a future society, but a description of a way in which people organise themselves, rooted in the experience of everyday life (…)’ – the emphasis is twofold. I then find this idea again in the chapter of Architetture del Noi dedicated to communality, understood as the desire to work together with the community and for the community, imagining an architecture that is no longer merely an object, but a process capable of transforming and protecting the common good. Architecture understood as a political agent through which to bring about concrete change in society.
In the first chapter, Anarchy and the State, Ward addresses the theme of direct action. For us, this concept has taken the form of direct action alongside Emergency, building hospitals in various war-torn and impoverished regions, from Sudan to Afghanistan, from Iraq to, today, Syria. Here, our encounter with Gino Strada has served to reinforce a vision of activism in which principles are not merely declarations of intent, but become concrete actions. We recount these experiences in the chapter Activism and in the following chapter, Action, dedicated to our experience on Emergency’s rescue ship. Direct action thus becomes a way of understanding architecture not merely as a professional service, but as a stance, a personal commitment to responsibility and beauty.
The theme of collective organisation found in Ward’s third chapter, The Dissolution of Leadership, finds its counterpart in the shift from ‘I’ to ‘we’. Here, our own story as the TAMassociati collective serves as a living example: the challenge of moving beyond the traditionally authorial and self-referential figure of the architect to build a collective design practice, founded on dialogue and sharing. A process in which architecture ceases to be an individual expression and becomes the result of a shared endeavour.
Hence the link to Ward’s fifth chapter, Who Should Plan?
In Architectures of the ‘We’, this question is explored through the concept of participation – the means by which the ‘we’ of the designers opens up to a broader ‘we’, that of the communities. Fundamental to this journey has been our constant reference to Giancarlo De Carlo, who has helped to guide our reflection on participation as a means of creating beauty and on the social role of the architect.
There is also another key passage in Ward’s fourth chapter, Harmony Arises from Complexity, in which, on page sixty-seven, we read: ‘The anarchic alternative is one that proposes fragmentation and division rather than fusion, diversity rather than unity; in short, it proposes a mass of societies rather than a mass society’.
This statement, in addition to its obvious political significance, also holds profound aesthetic and design significance for us. It means moving away from an authorial architecture—recognisable through a language imposed a priori—in favour of an architecture capable of adapting in response to needs, people and the complexity of places. An architecture that does not seek to reduce differences to a single gesture, but recognises and celebrates them. It is the transition from architecture as an end in itself to architecture oriented towards the common good.
Finally, in the fourteenth and final chapter, Anarchy is a Plausible Future, Ward addresses some issues that appear most urgent today and which relate to a central theme of our reflection: the concept of limits. On page two hundred, Ward writes: ‘The first (general statement) is that the world’s resources are not infinite; the second is that rich countries have so far exploited these non-renewable resources at a rate that our planet is unable to sustain. The third, finally, is that these “developed economies” are also exploiting the resources of the so-called Third World countries.’
It is surprising to find, in a book published more than fifty years ago (the first edition dates from 1973), a reflection that has now become indispensable and tremendously relevant. Limits are not merely an environmental issue, but a cultural, geopolitical and ethical condition of design. It means recognising that we cannot continue to build as if resources were infinite, nor assume that every transformation must necessarily produce new objects. It means questioning the real needs and rights of the entire planet, the responsibility of our choices and the possibility of imagining an architecture capable of grappling with the limits of our future.
Rereading these passages today, what strikes me most is the continuity between the points emphasised in 1987 and the path developed in the decades that followed.
It is on the basis of this rediscovered book, and its surprising resonance in Architetture del Noi, that I would like to pay tribute to Colin Ward. Not only to acknowledge our debt to a thinker who profoundly influenced our formative years, but also to reflect on the relevance today of his most important insight: that a different society need not necessarily be imagined as a distant future, but can begin to take shape in the present, through concrete practices of autonomy, cooperation and self-organisation. From this perspective, architecture can become a tool capable of translating these principles into spaces, relationships and concrete ways of living and inhabiting.
Endnote
1. Raul Pantaleo, Architetture del Noi, Elèuthera, Milan, 2025.