carlo scarpa, architect: the cangrande space, castelvecchio museum, verona 1956-1973
castelvecchio museum, verona, italy. 1956-1973
area di cangrande della scala, 1961-1964
architect: carlo scarpa, 1906-1978
I am going to run through a few photos from three study trips where I was able to join my students in discovering some of our finest modern architecture. trying to make sense of the masters with a group of your future colleagues is just about the most fun a grown man can have while still being paid - even if the wages offered by the academy border on the symbolic.
the first photo is a crazy vertical composite made from some six or eight individual shots. the problem of how to portray the complex spaces of carlo scarpa seems to call for the unreasonable. this is particularly true of the area di cangrande della scala, the space around the gothic equestrian statue that scarpa made the centre piece of his museum.
if scarpa's work is characterised by his surgical interventions in the historical fabric of the veneto, we are here looking at a complete amputation. within its defensive walls, the castelvecchio - literally the old castle - held a modern wing. modern by italian standards, that is, since this early nineteenth-century structure would be considered historic anywhere else. yet, carlo scarpa managed to convince the authorities to let him tear down a full bay of the building and, not least, its monumental exterior staircase.
we are looking at the scar tissue of the amputation here: the bridges and enigmatic modernist structures inserted into the void, scarpa had created for himself. it is one of the most celebrated spaces of 20th-century museum building, but should perhaps be one of the most controversial for the sheer violence imparted by its architect.
we all know the solid reasons scarpa gave for the demolition: how the old moat was found under the grand staircase, how an ancient gate turned up, how important historical layers were revealed. but tellingly, scarpa had already decided to tear down parts of the 19th-century building before these discoveries were made. in fact, he had originally suggested removing a similar length of it at the other end, where no moat or gate would have been uncovered.
ascribing reasonable causes to the unreasonable, ie. rationalising, is central to creative work. it is how we form layers of meaning around solutions that were at first only intuited. as architects, spending large sums of other people's money, we are forced to be quite blunt and literal in the reasons we give for our proposals. yet the process by which meaning is arrived at, leaves our work as open to interpretation as if it had been poetry.
leaving aside all reasonable causes, all rationalising, I see scarpa establishing a hierarchy in which the medieval parts of the castle and scarpa's own modern additions gain primacy over the nineteenth-century buildings. it is a power game of sorts, and scarpa turns out to share the prejudices of the early modern architects he so admired.
I see him sharing their distaste for nineteenth-century architecture, and I think of the strange and disjunctive space he created through demolition as a distant relative of le corbusier's plan voisin of 1922 in which the swiss master famously proposed to replace central paris with glass skyscrapers.
yet, where le corbusier offered us the utopian promise of technological perfection, scarpa made a ruin of the building he had been asked to restore. there were no utopian promises left to be made for carlo scarpa, who had lived through fascism and the world war, only the poetry of our european heritage laid bare.
it is a poetry which recognises loss and decay, and which reminds us of john ruskin's profound and profoundly disturbing discovery that buildings must be allowed to die their own slow deaths if they are to stay authentic.
second attempt to write about the cangrande space
carlo scarpa, architect: the cangrande space, castelvecchio museum, verona 1956-1973
castelvecchio museum, verona, italy. 1956-1973
area di cangrande della scala, 1961-1964
architect: carlo scarpa, 1906-1978
I am going to run through a few photos from three study trips where I was able to join my students in discovering some of our finest modern architecture. trying to make sense of the masters with a group of your future colleagues is just about the most fun a grown man can have while still being paid - even if the wages offered by the academy border on the symbolic.
the first photo is a crazy vertical composite made from some six or eight individual shots. the problem of how to portray the complex spaces of carlo scarpa seems to call for the unreasonable. this is particularly true of the area di cangrande della scala, the space around the gothic equestrian statue that scarpa made the centre piece of his museum.
if scarpa's work is characterised by his surgical interventions in the historical fabric of the veneto, we are here looking at a complete amputation. within its defensive walls, the castelvecchio - literally the old castle - held a modern wing. modern by italian standards, that is, since this early nineteenth-century structure would be considered historic anywhere else. yet, carlo scarpa managed to convince the authorities to let him tear down a full bay of the building and, not least, its monumental exterior staircase.
we are looking at the scar tissue of the amputation here: the bridges and enigmatic modernist structures inserted into the void, scarpa had created for himself. it is one of the most celebrated spaces of 20th-century museum building, but should perhaps be one of the most controversial for the sheer violence imparted by its architect.
we all know the solid reasons scarpa gave for the demolition: how the old moat was found under the grand staircase, how an ancient gate turned up, how important historical layers were revealed. but tellingly, scarpa had already decided to tear down parts of the 19th-century building before these discoveries were made. in fact, he had originally suggested removing a similar length of it at the other end, where no moat or gate would have been uncovered.
ascribing reasonable causes to the unreasonable, ie. rationalising, is central to creative work. it is how we form layers of meaning around solutions that were at first only intuited. as architects, spending large sums of other people's money, we are forced to be quite blunt and literal in the reasons we give for our proposals. yet the process by which meaning is arrived at, leaves our work as open to interpretation as if it had been poetry.
leaving aside all reasonable causes, all rationalising, I see scarpa establishing a hierarchy in which the medieval parts of the castle and scarpa's own modern additions gain primacy over the nineteenth-century buildings. it is a power game of sorts, and scarpa turns out to share the prejudices of the early modern architects he so admired.
I see him sharing their distaste for nineteenth-century architecture, and I think of the strange and disjunctive space he created through demolition as a distant relative of le corbusier's plan voisin of 1922 in which the swiss master famously proposed to replace central paris with glass skyscrapers.
yet, where le corbusier offered us the utopian promise of technological perfection, scarpa made a ruin of the building he had been asked to restore. there were no utopian promises left to be made for carlo scarpa, who had lived through fascism and the world war, only the poetry of our european heritage laid bare.
it is a poetry which recognises loss and decay, and which reminds us of john ruskin's profound and profoundly disturbing discovery that buildings must be allowed to die their own slow deaths if they are to stay authentic.
second attempt to write about the cangrande space