ILAUD is active on both conceptual and hands-on aspects of architecture and urban environment.

ILAUD research activities concern the following different sectors:

– theoretical and methodological seminars on cultural multiplicity, and its consequences; the migration of models, also considering the flows of information, data, images that digital technology allows; how the cultural variety must be protected in applying A.I.

– publication of “ILAUD Journals” as a place to discuss the issues that ILAUD addresses, favouring different opinions and criticisms.

In addition, ILAUD has always been interested in assessing, through operational projects on concrete cases, how consistent and effective some principles of its theoretical principles and its working methodology were.

For this purpose, ILAUD always worked on carefully selected relevant case studies in cooperation with local authorities, citizens associations, no-profit organizations and universities. ILAUD policy is to accept the requests by local authorities to study an issue they are concerned with only when they fit in its research program.

This is what was done in Genoa with the project for the rehabilitation of Pré District in the historic centre of the city (1980), in Pistoia with the project for re-using the dismissed industrial area of Breda Works (1983),  partly in Venice with the studies of its lagoon area ( Eastern front of the Lagoon, 2000; Lido Tidal Inlet, 2001). In all these cases, ILAUD had received a formal assignment from the directly responsible Public institutions.

Each project developed due to the collective effort of young professionals’ part of the international ILAUD community. The method adopted in the projects has always been in line with ILAUD’s workshops approach: strong dialectic relationship, inclusion, respect for the environment and of cultural diversity, use of “tentative” project approach and great attention to the participatory processes. Each project was never a purely formal solution, but open to change according to future needs.

Lastly, ILAUD has always been curating and designing exhibitions.

In the years 2000 two exhibitions were made to celebrate ILAUD’s activity from its foundation in 1976 to Giancarlo DeCarlo’s death in 2003, and to let know that its international workshops had started again in Buenos Aires in 2006.

The first exhibition was presented to the Italian public in 2008 in Modena at the Poletti Library, where the ILAUD archives had been transferred to the Library. It was entitled “La frontiera mobile. Il Laboratorio di Architettura  e Urbanistica dal 1976 a oggi”. The second exhibition titled “Giancarlo De Carlo and the new ILAUD” was made in 2009 to be presented in India, China and the Middle East where ILAUD had for the first time begun to operate.