CARLO SCARPA — ITALIAN ARCHITECT YOU WILL LIKE
People always ask me why I like Italy, why I am interested in Italian culture, laguage, architecture, design. ‘‘Italians are so lazy, heritage of prior generations is all what they have, what you have found it their designs?’’. Once I told with my old boss about it, and he asked the same questions. And I explained him my own vision of Italian’s life: ‘‘Many of them are so sensitive, contemplative, mediative… All their lives are filled with details and beauty. I like it, because that’s what I’m missing from my life’’. ‘‘Yeah, I understand, what are you talking about’’ he said, ‘‘and, you know, after your words I remembered one fantastic Italian architect, his name is Carlo Scarpa’’.
FORMATION
Italian architect Carlo Scarpa was born on 2 June 1906 in Venice and lived in the Veneto for most of his life. He received a good education and got out of the Venice Royal Academy of Fine Arts in 1926. However, he didn’t get a full-scale education of architecture, was criticized and tried as an architect without license, but he was acquitted. Carlo Scarpa started to design in the late 1920s. He started to design glasswares for the Cappellin company until it closed in 1932. That year, he went to Paolo Venini, one of the leading figures in the production of Murano glass, for whom he designed for 15 years as an artistic director. Carlo Scarpa returned to the architecture in 1935 when he got the order for transformation of the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice campus. In his work he properly combined metal, wood and glass, what is naturally included into the medieval architecture of the university.
It didn’t take long to see new orders. Carlo started to work with exhibitions design and renovations. Great international career came to him after the reconstruction of Castelvecchio Museum. Scarpa’s architectural style is visible in the details for door-ways, staircases, furnishings, and even fixtures designed to hold a specific piece of artwork. The renovation carefully balanced new and old, revealing the history of the original building where appropriate. After this project he has started to be invited in another regions of the country. Scarpa’s projects has had an impact on creations of famous architectures such as Tadao Ando, Mario Botta etc. Scarpa died because of accidental exposure in Japan in 1978, but he have left behind a rich cultural heritage of architecture and design and left name in the history.
SCARPA’S VISION
Carlo Scarpa said: ‘‘The principle of necessity: furnishings are necessary. But there’s a second, more important corollary: beauty. We could say it’s a absolute imperative, for our subject-matter, an obligation to fulfil. The value of a work lies in its highest expression: when a thing is very well-expressed, the value is very high. There are things which express something, forms which express something, but the language of architecture is hard to understand. Painting, sculpture, poetry perhaps, music a great deal, are rather well understood. Architecture is still a mysterious language.
Therefore my intention is also related to a manner of reasoning whish should find rational justification, what is rational superiority, meaning, an ineluctable logic, which has nothing to do with rationalism or func-tionalism. In fact, I always take an opposing stand. I believe there’s a superior logic, which is the attainment of form. A Master is one who invigorates by expressing new things. The others listen and understand, if they’re able. I don’t consider myself a Master because our poor heads are full of the modern constituents of men who, to our misfortune, are dead. All the great modern architects no longer exist. Deep down I’m a Byzantine, Hoffman has traits of a Europe which looks to the Orient’.
It can certainly be poetry, Frank Lloyd Wright said “Architecture, gentlemen, is poetry” at a conference in London. We can say this architecture, which we wish to be poetry, should be called harmony, because harmony would be like the beautiful face of a woman: harmonious, in perfect proportion. I’d so like a critic or scholar of my work to discover certain intentions I’ve always had, that is, a powerful will to remain within tradition. The supreme ideal would be to return to the ancient origins of Hellenism, when cities, like Polis, held as high and supreme the concept of God, if believers, or of the State, if we believe in the State. Otherwise, to live the best possible way since modern technology allows it’’.
SCARPA INSPIRES
Even after decades Carlo Scarpa continues to inspire people by his creations. For example, MIM Studio has designed a series of concrete furniture hardware inspired by his architecture. The series is made up of concrete handles, knobs, and robe hooks, which aim to create character through light and shadow. Some of the pieces, with a zigzag pattern, are meant to reduce the heaviness of the concrete material, making it seem light and delicate, while other pieces are meant to express a sense of solidity. We can said that Scarpa’s architecture set a new direction of modern architecture with craft tradition and set a new line.