Lessons from ‘Il Professore’ - Carlo Scarpa’s Way of Seeing:

The Uncertain Art of Taking Care

. Introduction

‘The World is a harmony of tensions.’ – Heraclitus

The works of Carlo Scarpa stand as a series of delicious contradictions

and asymmetric harmonies, whose poetic power continue to influence leading
architects and inspire discourse among architectural theorists today, in the
current climate of aggressive object centered building as commodity. As
architects continue to establish the fulcrum between materiality and immateriality,
seeking modes of expression true to their time, Scarpa's work communicates a
fine balance of the free spirit of inquiry and expression of the modern with the
most ancient art of building and technical craftsmanship. In the Modernist C20th,
when decoration had come to be seen as the concealment of pure matter,1
Scarpa employed the algorrhythms of geometric forms to reveal breaks in plane
and edge and emphasise distinctions between sensuously combined materials.

In Scarpa's hands the ornament is expressed as no mere surface but as a

measure. By establishing the unit as filter, Scarpa harmonises the juxtaposition of
multiple views and paths, unorthodox combinations of materials, the expression
of the structural and visual joint as jewelery and punctuation in space; the
breaking of the wall and corner and inversion of the window. Masterfully
conceived details - fragments – are made possible in composition by the use of
measure (Fig I). Matched with the plasticicty of form expressed and contained by
various measures, a range of materials are combined for their intrinsic individual
qualities. Pattern as meter, measure and molding, and material as colour, texture
and opacity have transcended what is commonly understood by the word
ornament. All are elements in an artists palette, a poets vocabulary, gathered
from memory, from experience of places and from the knowledges of
construction and craftsmanship. Through material and measure, order is granted
to asymmetrical composition, circular routes and fragmentary views.

It is of interest to note that as a mirror of his time Scarpa, when

interviewed, '…finds Alberti's 'plea for harmony, 'for 'coherance and unity of form,'
out of tune with modern times,' he finds that he cannot 'embrace that sort of
sureness, that sort of certitude.' 2 At the beginning of the 21st Century, we are no
more certain, and our work – as a gathering of the Arts - cannot pretend to an
absolute certainty, no more than our architecture can resurrect the Orders. Our
age is full of fragments; shifting technologies and financial flux. The role of
todays' architect is subsumed by commercial priorities and a kind of collective
identity crisis. Our societies contain multiple truths and fictions, layers of
histories, collective memories and forgetfulnesses.

This lecture will outline Scarpa's general approach to drawing and look at
three contrasting projects, exploring how Scarpa's way of seeing, drawing and
thinking created works of rich and rare poetic impact. These glimpses underline
an approach that cannot be imitated but can undoubtedly be learnt from. Scarpa
presents to us a re-emphasis of architectural priorities, on what architecture can
contribute to its time and place within an existing landscape or urban fabric.
Scarpa appreciated the conservative Venitian cry of 'Where it was, as it was!'
without resorting to historicism alone. While Scarpas Venitian heritage, identity
and artistry are a rich patina running through his work, his work cannot be
reduced to a regionalism or cultural borrowing, as much as it may celebrate its
multilayered context. Each work is an intervention - of its time and place - a
transformative element which reimagines that pre-existing fabric. The identity of
Venice, and the love of place for the Venitian is surely the acceptance of a

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passing crumbling beauty, the inevitable ravishes of the elements making
Venices survival today almost miraculous.

Three key works which by which Scarpa celebrated times passing, transformed
both historic buildings and landscapes and the way in which they are
experienced.

Firstly, the Canova Plaster Museum is given as an example of Scarpa's

modern sensibility in revolutionising an historic vernacular context with a single
new addition/ extension, without erasing a single part of the existing building.
Secondly, the Castelvecchio is shown as the summit of Scarpa's numerous
explorations of museum space as transmogrified path through time, revealing
layers of eras manifest in the continuity of repair, extension, restoration and
rebuild. Parallel narratives are revealed: the historical strata of the building
complex and the time line of the internal exhibition space. Scarpa's final work -
the Brion Family Tomb - stands as the ultimate summation of Scarpa's
architectural vision, arguably his most freely expressive work; a cosmological
map of meaning in which the visitor can provide their own names, their own
order. He has provided the visitor with a path to walk by, dancing between
rational and irrational forms, blurring focus and shifting perspectives. This garden
- concieved as much for the living as the ennobling of the dead – achieves the
subtlest balance of spiritualised materiality and material spirituality. The
encapsulated microcosm reflects the words of Jorge Lois Borges's The Garden
of Forking Paths as:

'…an incomplete, but not false, image of the universe… (not a) uniform and
absolute time… an infinite series of times, a growing dizzying web of divergent,
convergent and parallel times. That fabric of times that approach one another, fork,
are snipped off, or are simply unknown for centuries.'3

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 . Drawing to See

'I want to see things, I don't trust anything else. I want to see and that's why I draw.

I can see an image only if I draw it.'

Scarpa drew to understand and to create dialogue with those he worked

with, this forming a rich reciprocal part of his seeing. Working with the same
master craftsmen for a large part of his career, Scarpa's drawings became
possible and grew – layer apon layer of adaption and revision – through fruitful
collaboration. The drawings show us journies of thought - questions, arguments
and answers – clearly demonstrated at times on a single piece of board. Sergio
Los, student and assistant in Scarpa's office, recalls his Professor's way of
working:

‘ The drawing on cardboard fixed to the drawing-board embraced the total complex
– the whole building, for example – and developed slowly and cumulatively as the
solutions worked out for various problems were filled in. This drawing – version
was the frame of reference for the whole project from start to finish.’4

The drawing on cardboard could be exploded into various fragments

which could be explored or developed, increasing scale to zoom in on the
realities of fabrication informed by dialogue with craftsmen. Layers of trace
enabled an aspect of the base drawing to be approached from myriad points of
view, both in terms of perspective sketches exploring the composition of key
elements and pursuing structural and functional possibilities. Plan, Section and

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Elevation overlap and intersect; orthographic projection - so often seen as a
frozen (and impossible to experience first hand), completed moment to be
handed over for construction, is here imbued with dynamic possibilities. Shading,
colour, the addition of people, sky and water, transport the drawing to a place
between drawing as information and drawing as art. An alchemical process of
transmutation is generated between this base drawing - as crucible – and the
work of making real in the dialogue established between architect and artisan,
purpose and place, immaterial vision and material reality (See Fig III).

. Canova Plaster Cast Gallery – Possagno, Treviso, 1955 – 1957

Scarpa’s extension to the Gipsoteca Canoviana at Possagno in Treviso,

Italy, is a series of clearly defined volumes cascading down the slope of a narrow
site alongside the existing C19th basilica plan museum. The gallery is placed
within an existing square edged by vernacular buildings, two lengths of outer
walls – largely free of glazing – end in a walled garden enclosing a pool reflecting
light and movement back into the space and sending secondary reflections from
a large expanse of glazed roofing. As the building has been conceived as flowing
downhill with the natural slope of the site, the roof is seen as a flowing channel of
water; the metaphor of water seen by Scarpa becomes real in the outside space
of pool and walled entrance way (Fig IV).

While the exterior sits in quiet contrast to the surrounding buildings, the
interior revolutionises the way in which the sculptures are seen. Scarpa employs
inverted corner windows - breaking the line between walls and ceiling level - to
send diffuse light into the spaces, choreographing the sculptures in a manner to

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establish dynamic relationships between them when viewed while moving
through the space. The sculptures in this way are granted a dance of
perspectives as the viewer is granted shifting vantage points. The existing C19th
building contains dense rows of sculptures through which the visitor moves down
a central aisle, in the manner of the great collections in Florence. Scarpa
reinvigorates our relationship with each piece; we are offered divergent and
convergent routes of approach and departure. This circular approach through
space occurs throughout Scarpa’s late works, and its development can be seen
in parallel with Scarpa’s role as master curator. It is of note that we have the
opportunity to circumambulate these works, in the manner of the sculptor who
originally is the one to walk the circle and see what has yet to be fashioned from
raw matter (Fig V).

In accord with the modulation of light - via glazed areas and inverted
windows and peepholes – the walls themselves are lime-and-marble-plaster
white to heighten the play of light and plasticity of form. It is common practice in
art galleries today for exhibition spaces to be neutral, desiring the amplification of
the work over the prestige of the gallery. Scarpa’s intervention can be seen as a
moving towards this now commonplace focus on the artwork itself, and the
institutionalised aspects of the academy quietened in comparison. This blank
background, with its celebration of form, light and surface alone, was to be
reflected back into the basilica museum; the entire gallery was painted white.

The corner window is a suitable fragment to describe the whole, an

example of Scarpa prioritising seeing with an artist’s eye, sometimes inverted to
include within the envelope of the building a slice of sky, becoming then both a
receptacle and diffuser of light (Fig VI, VII):

‘…I devised this window – type that projects inward… I planned the arrangement
up there, on high, which seemed to be rather evocative. The day of the official
opening, there was a very fine blue sky… the sky looked as though it had been

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sliced into blocks… naturally we installed it with some care, and did some work on
perspective, so the ensemble could be taken in at a glance.’5

. Castelvecchio Museum, Verona, 1956 – 1964

Layers of building, repair, demolition and restoration characterise the

Castelvecchio. Scarpa's initial intervention to house an exhibition space went
beyond guiding visitors through an exhibition, and heightening awareness of the
exhibits, to include an experiential journey through the layer upon layer of eras
present in the buildings themselves. Scarpa boldly used what Sergio Los
describes as 'a little judicious demolition to reveal the different historical strata of
the structural complex'.6

The visitor is led through the exhibition space – each exhibit era
delineated by contrasting arrangements of materials – to an external causeway
where the statue of Cangrande directly confronts the visitors' path. The climax of
this space was altered and changed and refined in plan, section and elevation
accompanied by structural detailing (Fig III & VIII). From the interior muted lime
stucco with its grid marble inlay floor and steel beamed roof connecting spaces
between arches to the theatrical juxtaposition of horseman, bridge, patchwork of
battlements, and the unpeeling of rooflines we see a range of Scarpa's
transformative abilities. The formal role of the museum has become transcendent
and transporting. The orchestration of the overall composition does not ignore
the place and fineness of all aspects of detailing; Every stand for each exhibit is
unique, every staircase treated as an individual work of art, every slab of stone
paving in the square has been set down in a grand cheography of the senses
(Fig IX).

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 Scarpa's drawings reveal a phase of archeological and historical inquiry in
which hidden layers are discovered and breaks in the historical timeline are
created. Encircling the focus point of the equestrian statue of Cangrande I della
Scala, we can look up dizzyingly (Fig X) or stand face to face and see his half
amused smile. We can suspect a Piranesian passion for the making use of the
ruin, the acceptance of time as ultimate conquerer, as Scarpa's new perspectives
open up – no mere restoration, renovation or intervention – but a tranfiguration of
space (XI). In Scarpa's own words:

'You see how the building retains its identity in time…I wanted to preserve the
originality, the character of every room, but I didn't want to use the wooden beams
of the earlier restoration. Since the rooms were square, I set a paired steel beam to
support the point where the two reinforced concrete beams crossed, so indicating
the building's formal structure…This is the visual logic I wanted to use as a frame of
reference..The new joints reveal the structure of the element and the new
functions.'7

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In the work of Carlo Scarpa

'Beauty'

The first sense

Art

The first word

Then wonder

Then the inner realisation of 'form'

The sense of the wholeness of inseperable elements.

Design consults nature

To give presence to the elements.

A work of art makes manifest the wholeness of 'form'

The symphony of the selected shapes of the elements.

In the elements

The joint inspires ornament, its celebration.

The detail is the adoration of nature.

Louis I. Khan 8

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 . Brion Family Tomb, Treviso, Italy 1969 – 1978

The beguiling Brion-Vega Tomb can be seen as Scarpa's tabula rasa

gathering and manifestation of a langauge of fineness in which all parts are a
unified yet dissonant symphony. His final work is his fitting final resting place -
buried upright in the fashion of a medieval knight – A labyrinth carved upon his
flat tombstone by his son Tobias: an off-centre point within this his great garden
and maze of geometric meanings, myriad perspectives, a landscape as
netherworld expressing in Scarpa's own words:

'…The naturalness of water and meadow, of water and earth. Water is the
source of life.'9

The culmination of a lifetime of studying and creating forms, and spaces

between, the play of concave and convex plasticity embracing multiple
perspectives; all of these intricately wrought elements were developed over a
period of ten years of drawing, thinking, dialogue and crafting.

The arrangement of all elements within the provided family plot was
established through swiftly executed bird's eye view drawings. These overviews
were given reality with numerous working drawings zooming in to the scale of
door and gate mechanisms; the micro seen as no less parts of the overall
composition than the macro (Fig XII & XIII). Key elements have symbolic and
funery functions. The arcosolium10 is both a focal point and symbol of the unity of
love - sheltering the Brion heads of family – and a celebratory object within the
garden, adorned with glass and tile mosiac (XIV). Decoration has here the
function of ritual importance, and the contruction element of the concrete arch

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has here a symbolic meaning. The dialectic of form and function so preoccupying
the Modern movements of the C20th are unified in Scarpa's vision.

In the Chapel we see Scarpa's continuation of 'breaking:' a small corner

window opens the lecturn controlling reflected light and cool air from the water of
the moat, blurring functions and the boundaries of the building. The panels are
almost level with the surrounding water, so that the inner space connects to the
raw element of water. Above this break in the corner, already creating a triangle
behind the altar, the wall is further perforated by square windows, glazed not by
glass but by thin slices of alabaster offering a warm orange light in contrast to the
main unfiltered light shining down from a central vault.

The stepped ziggurat motif - which has become by the time of the Brion Tomb a
well established signature – translates here from external form-and-void
mouldings to form a pyramidal inverted void over the alter, rising to a square
window casting light downward as natural stage lighting. The chapel sits at a 45
degree angle to the regular grid of the site, the roof vault light returns the
diagonal alignment back to the square grid. This playfulness can be seen as the
sheer enjoyment of geometry expressed througout the garden. This playfulness
exists in the framing of perspectives for the visitor; the binocular view from the
propylaeum to the arcosolium. Jean-Francios Bedard observes that in his
drawings, 'In many sections and elevations Scarpa positions male and female
figures… female figures view the arcosolium through a metallic piece out of
which Scarpa has hollowed a double circle that forms their eyes… Scarpa has
hinted at the ocular symbolism of the interlocking circles in his description of the
mosaic – rimmed windows of the propylaeum.'11

Alongside the ritual of funerals to be held by the family in the chapel,

Scarpa has placed the private pavilion to frame a view across to the Brion Vega
tomb, shielding this place of meditiation from the more public parts of the garden.

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Giving prominance to particular places and vantage points purely through plays
of geometry and the riddle of lines and symbols, Scarpa is once again
choreographing the movement of people through space (Fig XV & XVI).

The spaces are composed and emphasised or broken by the ziggurat

edging, the distinction between natural and built elements blurs in places as ivy
climbs the outer rampart walls. Water covers over ziggurat steps which continue
vertically to edge pathways and plinths. Flooded ruins are alluded to, discovered
places of forgotten ritual glimpsed at, and yet strangely all is new and bravely
abstracted, free from historic orders and religious ceremonial symbols. It is the
stepped motif which contains so many aspects of what unfolds across the site,
proof of his conviction that, 'one must have a pattern…without a motif one cannot
generate special mouldings.'12 This statement reveals an important critical
understanding of historical forms used to join planes or create layers of fineness
and emphasise the play of light and the intricacies of contrasting surfaces. It
speaks of architecture that is jewel-like, devoted and lyrical. There is an Escher-
like joy in the use of the step motif in three dimensions, invertions interact with
light and shade seeming to echo multiple dimensions. Whether flat or broken,
wrapped around a corner or treading into water, it is the distilled characteristic of
Scarpa's tireless searching, questioning and giving reality to new forms.

We are invited, equally by the touch of textured concrete or alabaster, by

the play of light, shade and water, by the articulation of spaces between expanse
of grassland and half buried and hidden tombs, by the distant mountain vista and
the immanent encirling garden walls (Fig XVII), to look from ourselves to the
horizon for a timeless instant. Steven Holl states that experiential essences are
manifest in Scarpa's work:

'It is these – the thorn on the rose, the drop of water on the leaf –
that must be reinstated in our daily lives.'13

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 . Conclusion: The Art of 'Taking Care'

The role of Architecture today is in a kind of crisis, mirroring in part what

has manifested as the ongoing global financial crisis. A disjunction has occurred
between the world of the Arts and the increasingly technocratic world of Industry,
where commercial interests overrule social, civic and environmental
responsibilities, and where a homogenous cultural identity has been spawned as
a kind of aesthetics of globalisation, and development. As Dalibor Vaseley
observes in his seminal work Architecture in the Age of Divided Representation,
'the state of contemporary architecture is to a large extent defined by the general
fragmentation of culture.' 14 As previously stated Scarpa did not avoid the lack of
symmetry of his time - quite the opposite - his work celebrates the harmony of
tensions within his time.

Scarpa's work offers the key to a way of seeing the value of each part to
the whole; the architect has the potential to gather creative attributes - mulitple
perspectives - and combine these within the prevalent commercial realm. Helmut
Klassen's example of Michelangelo aptly parallels Scarpa’s waqy of seeing when
he states that:

'Disegno is not tied to an order of analysis but to a synthetic dimensionality

defined by observation. Michelangelo's figures are not drawings from life but are
defined as constructions of diverse parts and members derived from various sources
– life, dissection and historical works. Yet primary to the work's identity is the
integration of the parts into, and their inseparabiltiy from an observed
whole...Observation is an attention to things, a care of the flesh.'15

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As Michelango's care is of the flesh as sculptor, Scarpa's architecture can be
seen as a care of inhabited space, between skin and surface, dweller and
dwelling.

The mere façade of design cannot suffice, design can not only be reduced
to a tool for the sales pitch of industry, the architect cannot ignore poetic and
ethic responsibilties, or fail to acknowledge that architecture has a truly humane
and transformative role within society. Although it can be argued that Scarpa did
not realise his vision on the grander urban scale, we must remember that each
detail is given its due and taken care of, and this offers an ethical approach to
any scale. The Canova Museum, Castelvecchio and the Brion Tomb indicate
transformative space on a humble scale - both urban and rural - indeed each
small intervention in Venice celebratorily incorporates its surroundings. We can
only imagine how Scarpa's unrealised project for Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, might
have informed an urban grid, physical context hewn from nothing but sand and
the need for shade and the importance of water (Fig XVIII).

The concerns of each part: the stair, the door, the window, the composition
of space and the experience of tensions between each part, have in Scarpa's
words, 'always concerned builders in the past. The problems involved are the
same as ever, only the answer changes.'16 Scarpa's works offer another
important lesson to our placing of interventions into an existing layered urban
fabric. His drawings of existing site constraints include the layers of the past into
which his work is merely an addition, a considered intervention emphasising
continuity. With the passing of time accepted, the poetics of time's passing is
made manifest, and celebrated.

The eye of an artist who knows his root and imagines his path and legacy
- the glassmaker, sculptor, teacher, the sincere seeker of beauty – is seen in the
drawings made real by tireless collaboration with artisans. The drawings indicate

14
a timeline in which Scarpa reflected upon, reiterated, returned to, consulted with
artisans and envisioned the richest possibilities for each project. We see his work
made possible by patrons who had their own artistic vision - the Brion family
standing as a decade long relationship (Fig XX) - and a conviction of Scarpa's
ability beyond - and it could be argued against - purely commercial realities.

The Professor understood the problem of having an 'immense desire to be

part of a tradition, but without having capitals and columns.' 17 Drawing for
Scarpa was an 'ancient discipline,' the generative means between being and
becoming, a means to in his own terms, 'a distinctive personal character that
would lend each work the moral authority that everyone in the world of art must
strive for.'18 It is said that Scarpa did not like the propelling pencil in place of the
traditional lead pencil. This is no mere conservatism, but an understanding of
tools and materials, a knowledge that the unquestioning adoption of
technological advancement may result in an unforeseen loss of fineness and a
diminishment of poetic ressonance. Scarpa used the very latest building
techniques of his time without blind acceptance, all as part of one visionary
palette.

Without an artists eye and hand we do not have such art, without absolute
collaboration with artisans Scarpa's architecture would not have been possible. A
final reflection of this part of our 'architectural palette' which must be fought for
can be seen in the words of Saverio Anfodillo – Master cabinet maker and 30
year collaborator with Scarpa – when asked if such work could be possible today:

'No, it's a pity but I don't think so. All our crafts will soon be extinct. Today's
architects have a different approach. Their drafts are finished, and they just want to
see them executed. Nowadays, craftsmen are force to close their workshops
because manual work has become unaffordable due to the cost of labour and the
strict legal conditions. Everything is mass-produced these days, which was
something Professor Scarpa did not care for. His things were unique.'

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 . Bibliography & Credits

Albertini, Bianca & Bagnoli, Sandro, Carlo Scarpa: Architecture in Details,

MIT Press, 1989

Borges, Jorge Luis, The Garden of Forking Paths from Fictions,

Penguin Classics, 2000

Dal Co, Francesco & Mazzoriol, Giuseppe, Carlo Scarpa: The Complete
Works,
Rizzoli International, 1985

Los, Sergio, Carlo Scarpa

Taschen, 1993

Nakamura, Toshio, Carlo Scarpa

Yoshio Yoshida, 1990

Noever, Peter, Carlo Scarpa: The Craft of Architecture

Hatje Cantz, 2003

Olsberg, Nicholas, Carlo Scarpa: Architect – Intervening With History

The Monacelli Press, 1999

Perez-Gomez, Alberto & Parcell, Stephen – Chora: Volume One

Intervals in the Philosophy of Architecture
McGill-Queens University Press, 1994

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 Vesely, Dalibor, Architecture in the Age of Divided Representation: The
Question of Creativity in the Shadow of Production,
MIT Press, 2004

Credits

Cover: Original Carlo Scarpa Portrait by Gianni Berengo Gardin &

Revetment in Castelvecchio from Albertini, Bianca & Bagnoli, Sandro, Carlo
Scarpa: Architecture in Details,
MIT Press, 1989

I, III, IV, V, VII, VIII, XX: Olsberg, Nicholas, Carlo Scarpa: Architect –
Intervening With History
The Monacelli Press, 1999

II: 'Jehr' from flikr.com

VI, IX, X, XV, XVI, XVIII, XIX, : Dal Co, Francesco & Mazzoriol, Giuseppe,
Carlo Scarpa: The Complete Works,
Rizzoli International, 1985

XI, XIII: Los, Sergio, Carlo Scarpa

Taschen, 1993

XII, XIV, XV, XVII: Nakamura, Toshio, Carlo Scarpa

Yoshio Yoshida, 1990

All Remaining Photos Authors Own

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 References:

1 Dal Co, Francesco & Mazzoriol, Giuseppe, Carlo Scarpa: The Complete Works, Rizzoli International, 1985, page 56.

2 Olsberg, Nicholas, Carlo Scarpa: Architect – Intervening With History, 1999, page 15.

3 Borges, Jorge Luis, The Garden of Forking Paths from Fictions, 2000, page 85.

4 Los, Sergio, Carlo Scarpa, 1993, page 44.

5 Olsberg, Nicholas, Carlo Scarpa: Architect – Intervening With History, 1999, page 59.

6 Los, Sergio, Carlo Scarpa, 1993, page 73.

7 Olsberg, Nicholas, Carlo Scarpa: Architect – Intervening With History, 1999, page 67

8 Olsberg, Nicholas, Carlo Scarpa: Architect – Intervening With History, 1999, page 39.

9 Los, Sergio, Carlo Scarpa, 1993, page 132.

10 Latin meaning: arched recess… the term has underlying notions of the ennobling of the dead, in usually subterranean tombs.

11 Olsberg, Nicholas, Carlo Scarpa: Architect – Intervening With History, 1999, page 138. Propylaeum lit. ‘gate building.’

12 Ibid, page 144.

13 Ibid, page 247

14 Vesely, Dalibor, Architecture in the Age of Divided Representation: The Question of Creativity in the Shadow of Production,

2004, page 12.

15 Perez-Gomez, Alberto & Parcell, Stephen – Chora: Volume One Intervals in the Philosophy of Architecture, 1994, page 67.

16Olsberg, Nicholas, Carlo Scarpa: Architect – Intervening With History, 1999, Page 109.

17 Ibid, Page 13.

18 Ibid, Page 12.

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