The International Laboratory of Architecture and Urbanism (ILAUD) was founded in 1974 by Giancarlo De Carlo as an international network of universities of architecture. Established in Urbino, Italy, where there was no school of architecture, ILAUD was intended as a generator of architectural thinking based on the concentration and comparison of different experiences produced in different contexts. ILAUD inherited many friends from De Carlo’s participation in Team X including Jaap Bakema, Alison and Peter Smithson, and Aldo van Eyck, while introducing new voices such as Charles Moore and Donlyn Lyndon within an agenda connected to social issues.

A laboratory instead of a summer school, ILAUD was organized as an annual course where students and teachers would face theoretical and design problems together, and as permanent activities that all participating universities were supposed to develop for the following year. Their organizational records, letters, publications and drawings illustrate how the Laboratory operated and how it was able to develop a specific approach towards urban issues with both professors and students researching and designing on the same site.

ILAUD was designed to avoid being a school. Its sessions were based around students and visiting architects working together, and included fireworks displays and performances by experimental composers like Karlheinz Stockhausen.