Indice

7 Prefazione di Stefano U. Baldassarri

11 Gli autori dei saggi

17 Raoul Bruni
Parise: il viaggio in Giappone come esperienza estetica

33 Silvia Catitti
The Japanese Roots of Carlo Scarpa’s Poetic Architecture

61 Marco Fagioli
La scoperta moderna del Giappone e l’Italia

77 Edoardo Gerlini
Literature as a Tool of Power at the Heian Court in Japan
and Frederick II’s Court in Sicily

99 Morihisa Ishiguro
Kitaro Nishida lettore di Machiavelli: Riflessioni sull’idea
di ‘Ragion di Stato’ nel Giappone moderno (1868-1945)

113 Haruyuki Kojima

Cross-Cultural Studies of Cognitive Processes:
Differences in Culture, Psychology, and Arts between Italy and Japan

129 Michele Monserrati

Cosmopolitan Possibilities in Translation:
Luigi Barzini’s Views from the Russo-Japanese War

151 Francesco Morena

Arte giapponese e Liberty italiano

5
183 Shunsuke Shirahata
A Comparative Study of Italian and Japanese Military
Architecture in the Sixteenth Century

205 Kin’ya Sugiyama

L’iconografia del “martirio di San Sebastiano” e Yukio Mishima

223 Manila Vannucci
Experiencing the Beautiful and the Sublime:
Cultural and Neurobiological Factors

237 Francesco Vossilla

Some Examples of Artistic Exchange between East and West,
particularly from the Japan-China-Italy Perspective

6
 Silvia Catitti

The Japanese Roots

of Carlo Scarpa’s Poetic Architecture

In his obituary of Carlo Scarpa (1906-1978, fig. 1), Bruno Zevi

(1918-2000), the most influential Italian architectural critic of the
twentieth century, aptly defined the Venetian architect as “the greatest
designer of Italian architecture”1. The polemical architectural historian
Manfredo Tafuri (1935-1994) pointed out that, in Italian, the English
term ‘design’ refers to industrially produced objects of mass consump-
tion, and underlined that the definition of ‘designer’ does not express
the exclusiveness and transcendent quality of Scarpa’s works2. Scarpa is
well known for the timeless design of the precious vases that he created
for Venini − the renowned brand of Venetian blown glass in Murano −
between the 1920s and the 1940s. In addition, Scarpa revolutionized
a field that was relatively new in the twentieth century, that is, instal-
lation design for permanent displays and temporary exhibitions, both
in the cultural and commercial realms. André Chastel (1912-1990),
a leading French art historian, wrote that Scarpa “was the greatest

1
B. Zevi, Carlo Scarpa: Il massimo designer dell’architettura italiana, «Architettura.
Cronache e Storia», 34, 279 (1979), p. 5. Italics mine.
2
M. Tafuri, Il frammento, la “figura”, il gioco: Carlo Scarpa e la cultura architettonica
italiana, in Carlo Scarpa: 1906-1978, eds. F. Dal Co – G. Mazzariol, Mondadori
Electa, Milan, 2009 (1st ed.: Electa, Milan, 1984), pp. 72-95: 77.

33
 Silvia Catitti

installation designer of art exhibitions in Italy, and probably in all

of Europe”3. For his wealthy patrons, Scarpa also explored the more
traditional theme of residential architecture, for both their earthly
existence and their afterlife. The “inimitable” objects and spaces he
created have the power to surprise and to move the viewer4, and have
often been compared to poetry.
Scarpa was one of the few Italian architects of the post-war period
to become internationally renowned before the advent of globaliza-
tion and the spread of communication through information technol-
ogy. Nevertheless, Scarpa regarded himself primarily as a Venetian
artist. What makes his architecture so deeply rooted in the local tradi-
tion and, at the same time, so universal and timeless?
The place and time where Scarpa developed his creativity played
a significant role in shaping his artistic personality. Venice, the histor-
ic European gateway to the culture and commerce of both the Near
and Far East, was naturally open towards Orientalism, and Japonism
in particular5. In Scarpa’s student years, the city of the “Biennale” was
a thriving center of cultural exchange, where international artists and
intellectuals regularly gathered, and he was very well connected to
such cultural circles6. In addition, Venice featured highly distinctive
manufacturing traditions such as paper, lace, and − of course − glass.
Given his specific education as an artist in Venice, Scarpa was in-
volved in the material process of art making. His design studies and
live sketches reveal an intrinsic link between form and investigation

3
P. Duboÿ, L’arte di esporre, Johan & Levi, Monza, 2016, p. 76 and p. 79 note 51.
4
I. Gardella, Le attenzioni di un “gamin”, in Carlo Scarpa: 1906-1978, cit., pp. 214-
215, wrote − in my opinion − the most beautiful lines on Scarpa.
5
A.I. Lima, L’oriente in Carlo Scarpa, in L’orientalismo nell’architettura italiana tra
Ottocento e Novecento, eds. M.A. Giusti – E. Godoli, Maschietto & Musolino, Sie-
na, 1999, pp. 251-256. On Japonism in Italy, see also the essays by Marco Fagioli
and Francesco Morena in this volume.
6
J.K.M. Pierconti, Carlo Scarpa e il Giappone, Mondadori Electa, Milan, 2017 (1st
edition 2007), pp. 15-28.

34
 THE JAPANESE ROOTS OF CARLO SCARPA’S POETIC ARCHITECTURE

of the detail behind it. In addition, Scarpa’s perception of himself as

an artist led him to be captivated by – and open to – a broad range of
interests beyond architecture. For his creative inspiration, he absorbed
stimuli from a wide variety of sources. “Japan has a strong influence
on me”, he once declared in an interview7. For many decades, Scarpa
avidly absorbed impressions from Japanese art, calligraphy, and po-
etry, through the many books that he collected8. Only in 1969 (the
year of the Man on the Moon), at age 63, Scarpa was able to set foot
in Japan for the first time.

1. Venetian, intellectual, artist, and pragmatic aesthete

At a young age, Scarpa had shown a significant inclination to-
wards drawing. At the end of World War I, he enrolled at the Acade-
my of Fine Arts in Venice, without imagining that he would end up
specializing in architecture9. In those years, the figure of the architect
in Italy was undergoing a process of redefinition at three levels. On
the philosophical side, the role of the architect was being reformu-
lated as distinct from both the artist and the engineer. During this
period, the reform of higher education led to the birth of the first in-
dependent Schools of Architecture at university level since 1919. These
aimed to provide architectural students with a combination of intellec-
tual, artistic, and technical abilities. Finally, at the institutional level,
Italy witnessed the creation of the first national register of professional
architects in 192310. At the Academy of Fine Arts, Scarpa graduated

7
B. Radice, Interview with Carlo Scarpa, 31 October 1978. See https://www.unich.
it/progettistisidiventa/REPRINT-INEDITI/Radice-SCARPA.pdf.
8
Pierconti, Carlo Scarpa e il Giappone, cit., pp. 139-142.
9
Carlo Scarpa: “When one frequented the Academy, back in the days, one did not
know what he would be one day, whether a painter, a sculptor or an architect … ”.
I quote from the documentary by G.L. Calderone, Carlo Scarpa. Fuori dal Paradiso,
which came out in 2012.
10
C. Sonego, Carlo Scarpa: gli anni ‘20, in Studi su Carlo Scarpa: 2000-2002, eds.
K.W. Forster - P. Marini, Marsilio, Venice, 2004, pp. 27-86.

35
 Silvia Catitti

in Architectural Drawing in 1926, the very year when the new Insti-
tute of Architecture was created in Venice. Although he could have
applied to equalize his title, Scarpa never obtained a formal qualifica-
tion as an architect. Ironically, he did not have the academic degree
of the many students that he advised at the IUAV, where he served
as a teacher, since 1933, and as a director, between 1971 and 197411.
He left, after disturbing controversies about his lack of qualifications,
and eventually received from his Institute an honorary degree only in
1978, the year when he died in Japan.
Scarpa was a unique figure of aesthete-intellectual, and carefully
constructed his persona. “He deeply loved anything that emanated
beauty and elegance”12. He enjoyed fine suits, exquisitely tailored with
high quality fabric. He wore multiple large rings and a distinctive jas-
mine perfume. He was witty, and showed merciless sarcasm towards
his detractors. However, filmed interviews and accounts from people
who knew him reveal that, despite his fame and position, he was also
quite informal and modest, in both his language and manners. On
the one hand, he liked to express himself in an accessible way, often
indulging in his use of colloquial Venetian expressions. On the other
hand, Scarpa was an extremely knowledgeable man of culture, al-
though he regretted that he did not know either Latin or Greek13. As
his large book collection shows, he was a passionate reader of prose
and poetry from both the West and the East14.

11
For Scarpa’s view of this experience see Radice, Interview, cit.
12
T. Scarpa, Di qualche ricordo di un viaggio fatto con mio padre e maestro in Giap-
pone, in Pierconti, Carlo Scarpa e il Giappone, cit., p. 137.
13
C. Sonego, Appendix, ‘Mio fratello Carlo’ di Gigi Scarpa, in Studi su Carlo Scarpa:
2000-2002, cit., p. 85. See also Radice, Interview, cit.
14
See R. Vendramin, La biblioteca di Carlo Scarpa, in Carlo Scarpa: 1906-1978, cit.,
p. 307. See also Pierconti, Carlo Scarpa e il Giappone, cit., pp. 139-142.

36
 THE JAPANESE ROOTS OF CARLO SCARPA’S POETIC ARCHITECTURE

2. Architecture of fragments
“Carlo Scarpa created details that made you die from pleasure”15.
He had an unparalleled gift for details (fig. 1). When designing, he
conceived architecture as a sequence of autonomous parts that are not
interdependent but in dialogue with each other. Tafuri described Scar-
pa’s architecture as consisting of a “multiplicity of ‘inventions’” and of
a “proliferation of single elements”16. Like most ancient masters of the
Italian Renaissance, such as Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446) and Mi-
chelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564), he conceived his buildings piece
by piece. In contrast to a few other architects of their respective centu-
ries, such as Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472) and Jacopo Barozzi da
Vignola (1505-1573), Brunelleschi and Michelangelo did not attempt
to create comprehensive theoretical systems about architecture. In their
work, they approached each single design problem separately. They
were not looking for standardized solutions, framed within a compre-
hensive system that was applicable to multiple contexts.
In Scarpa’s time, too, a few architects wrote highly influential
manifestos. In 1923, when Scarpa was still a student at the Venice
Academy, he was struck when Charles-Edouard Jeanneret-Gris, called
Le Corbusier (1887-1965) published his Vers une Architecture, the
new programmatic statement of the Modern Movement. On the
contrary, Scarpa did not write any theoretical treatise nor create a
universal system. We have a fragmented idea of his feelings and opin-
ions about architecture. His thought is known primarily through his
built works. His revealing statements (pronounced in lectures, con-
ferences, and interviews) survive in a few video documentaries and
in accounts of people who knew him17. Scarpa’s many architectural

15
Interview with Ida Cadorin in Calderone, Carlo Scarpa. Fuori dal Paradiso, cit.
16
Tafuri, Il frammento, cit., p. 77.
17
A few ideas appear in his unpublished fragmented memoirs, Carlo Scarpa: Vene-
zia 1906-Sendai 1978: I sette fogli giapponesi, which have been interpreted by his
brother Gigi Scarpa.

37
 Silvia Catitti

drawings disclose a great deal of information about his approach. The

photographs that he took indicate his interests and inclinations.
Like Brunelleschi and Michelangelo, Scarpa thought in terms of
single – even large-scale – details, and conceived each building as a sep-
arate experience. For example, architect Antonio Foscari recalled how
Scarpa produced in expensive ebony a small, elaborate detail for the
lamps of the Olivetti Showroom in San Marco (Venice) in just a few
units for this specific project, and never used the same detail again18. A
remark by his son Tobia Scarpa (b. 1935), an architect himself and for-
mer collaborator, encapsulates this approach to architecture. When his
father found a solution to a design problem, the detail he created was
never a point of reference for future designs. The memory of that detail,
as a successful result of problem solving, might eventually reemerge in
subsequent works, but Scarpa would never consider it either a point of
arrival or a point of departure19. Each building designed by Scarpa is a
sequence of unique fragments of visual poetry.

3. Approach to traditions: inspirations and models

According to Francesco Dal Co, Scarpa avoided the temptation
of embracing ‘the new’ in and of itself; rather, he looked at tradi-
tions in a new way20. With his creativity and artistic sensibility, Scarpa
selected, processed, and blended multiple suggestions from various
sources that he adapted to the specific design theme of the moment.
However, like the artists of the Italian Renaissance, he never cited
explicitly his sources of inspiration. When looking at ancient Roman
examples, in order to create the avant-garde art and architecture of

18
Interview with Antonio Foscari in Calderone, Carlo Scarpa. Fuori dal Paradiso, cit.
19
As reported by Tobia Scarpa in an interview included in Carlo Scarpa e il Giap-
pone, an exhibition that was held at the Museo Nazionale delle Arti del XXI Secolo
(MAXXI) in Rome (9 November 2016 - 26 February 2017).
20
Interview with Francesco Dal Co in the Carlo Scarpa e il Giappone exhibition (see
previous note).

38
 THE JAPANESE ROOTS OF CARLO SCARPA’S POETIC ARCHITECTURE

their time, Donatello (1386-1466, who happened to be Scarpa’s fa-

vorite artist)21, Michelangelo (1475-1564) and Palladio (1508-1580)
freely took inspiration from the precedents that they admired. Had
an ancient Roman citizen come back to life in 1566, he would have
had troubles acknowledging an iconic architecture of the Renaissance
like Palladio’s Villa Rotonda as an ancient Roman building. Similarly,
a visitor from Tokyo would not recognize immediately the Japanese
roots of Scarpa’s iconic Brion funerary complex in San Vito d’Alti-
vole, in the Veneto region (1970-1978; figs. 3-5).
In this work, that best exemplifies the architect’s poetics, Scarpa
re-elaborated and united inspirations from several distinct sources.
When he described the project in various interviews from the mid-to-
late-1970s, he referred to a multiplicity of Mediterranean prototypes:
the Early Christian ‘arcosolium’ tomb (fig. 2), the ancient Greek ‘pro-
pylaeum’ type of entrance (fig. 3), the ‘chapel’ typology and the ‘tem-
ple’ concept22. Surprisingly, he did not reveal his inspiration from
Japan, even though he had visited the country in 1969, while he was
designing the complex. He entirely reinterpreted all the aforemen-
tioned architectural archetypes. In ancient Greece, temples never rose
directly from the water, as what he calls the ‘chapel’ or ‘temple’ of
the Brion complex does (fig. 4). Scarpa’s roots certainly made him
familiar with sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Christian temples,
completely surrounded by water, in the unique built-up environment
that is Venice. The little meditation pavilion on the water (fig. 5), in
the same complex, evokes a small Shokin-tei, teahouses on islands
in Japanese Imperial gardens of the Edo period, such as the famous
Villa of Katsura, near Kyoto. Scarpa had certainly read about the site,

21
Radice, Intervista, cit.
22
For a synthesis, see S. Polano, Catalogo delle opere, in Carlo Scarpa: 1906-1978,
cit., p. 135 n. 175. See also M. Cascavilla - G. Favero, Un’ora con Carlo Scarpa
(documentary, 1972).

39
 Silvia Catitti

at least since 1960, and visited it in 196923. The shape of the large,
circular openings and doorways that recur – with a different symbolic
meaning – in the Brion complex (fig. 3) and in the Veritti funerary
monument, is borrowed from the moon gates in Chinese gardens,
that Scarpa saw in a book from his library24. Scarpa merged two ‘ori-
ental’ worlds, the East of the Mediterranean basin and the Far East.
He once stated: “Japanese culture allows us to enhance the refinement
of our spirit, as Greek culture does too”25.

4. Japanese architecture to Western architects

Scarpa admired how Greece and Japan preserved and perpetrated
their own traditions and techniques. In his appreciation for Japanese
traditions, Scarpa was not alone. As Alida Alabiso recently observed,
“Japanese architecture had always encapsulated those characteristics
that modern architecture in the Western world was seeking”26. What
kind of alternatives were the architects of Scarpa’s day and of a gener-
ation earlier looking for? And what types of answers did they find in
Japanese architecture? Since the 1920s, Modernist architects – even
those who did not embrace radical Functionalism – were looking
for models that offered more practical solutions. They rejected three
main aspects of traditional Western architecture: (1) monumentality
and scale, (2) control over nature, and (3) the role of decoration as an
applied addition, unrelated to the building’s structure. In traditional
Japanese architecture, Western architects appreciated: (1) its human
scale, (2) its dialogue with nature, especially with water and light as

23
Pierconti, Carlo Scarpa e il Giappone, cit., pp. 31-35 and 53-56.
24
Ibidem, pp. 28-29 note 56 and illustration at p. 66. Scarpa never visited China.
His library included two books on Chinese gardens, but it is unknown when he ob-
tained them: O. Siren, Gardens of China, Ranard Press, New York, 1949, and H. Inn,
Chinese Houses and Gardens, Hastings House, New York, 1950.
25
C. Scarpa, Lecture (Venice, 5 February 1976).
26
A. Alabiso, Architettura giapponese e architetti occidentali, Novalogos, Latina,
2014, pp. 10 and 81-82.

40
 THE JAPANESE ROOTS OF CARLO SCARPA’S POETIC ARCHITECTURE

found in Japanese gardens, and (3) its minimalism or lack of auxiliary

ornamentation27.

4.1. Human scale

As Scarpa once said: “My work is very brief, and not particularly
prominent, grandiosity wise. Actually, if I may, in my modest opin-
ion great works of art are always small in size …”28. On a different
occasion, he pointed out: “In Japan, people have fine skills in using
extremely small spaces at their best, and in creating magical things”29.
Many authors have emphasized the impact of various aspects of na-
ture on the Japanese attitude towards human scale in traditional
architecture. Fabrizio Fuccello underlined the role that the limited
space available for human settlings in the mountainous archipelago
of Japanese islands (where most of the territory was devoted to rice
fields) has played in the development of ‘miniature’ architecture30.
With his enlightening Japanese perspective, architect Yoshinobu Ash-
ihara emphasized the role of local climate in the different approach
to scale in architecture. In Japan, humidity (which is conducive to
growth of lavish vegetation) would eventually make nature take over
any man-made construction31. “In palaces of a certain relevance as
well as in the ordinary homes, the importance of walls was always
limited. Walls were never made to make an impression from the out-
side”, as in Mediterranean stone architecture32. Japanese architecture
is the ‘architecture of the floor’ in contrast to the ‘architecture of the

27
Ibid., pp. 79-86.
28
C. Scarpa, Lecture (Vienna, 16 November 1976).
29
C. Scarpa, Lecture (Venice, 20 February 1975).
30
F. Fuccello, Spazio e Architettura in Giappone, Edizioni Cadmo, Florence, 1996, p. 9.
31
Y. Ashihara. L’ordine nascosto: Tokyo attraverso il ventesimo secolo, transl. M. Al-
vito, Gangemi Editore, Rome, 1995, p. 57 (original edition, Kakureta chitsujo,
Chūōkōron, Tokyo,1986).
32
Ibid., pp. 9-10

41
 Silvia Catitti

wall’, which is typical of the West33. Light walls were also an efficient
life-saving response to frequent earthquakes, another extreme mani-
festation of the power of nature in Japan.

4.2. Nature: water and light

“Everywhere in Japan there are marvelous things inside the gar-
dens. One finds famous stone basins. These are spectacularly beau-
tiful, rustic and highly crafted”34. “Everything is beautiful!” Scarpa
synthetically wrote to his wife35. He fell under the spell of the “venera-
tion of the unique in nature”36, which led Japanese designers to select
from nature objects featuring inimitable forms and to display them
in homes and gardens. Whenever possible, Scarpa included water and
greenery in his poetic architectural compositions. Having appreciat-
ed, adopted, and mastered the contemporary aesthetics of exposed,
raw concrete37, he changed the natural stones shaped by nature in his
Japanese prototypes into artificial elements made in concrete, molded
by men.
Scarpa looked at the Japanese sense of aesthetics through the lens
of the experience, background, and taste of a Westerner, who had
been educated in Venice in the 1920s. As a student at the local Acad-
emy of Fine Arts, he had certainly studied the ‘architectural styles’
of the West. He was exposed to Italian Baroque architecture, where
the careful use of water and light enhances the forms of architecture.
Moreover, as a Venetian, he was sensible to the powerful interaction
among light, water, and architecture (fig. 6). Imbued with Western

33
Ibid., p. 38.
34
Scarpa, Lecture, cit. (see note 29 above).
35
Carlo Scarpa’s telegram to his wife (from Nara, 1969).
36
G. Nitschke, Japanese Gardens, Taschen, Köln, 2003, pp. 10-26.
37
“Brutalism’, from the French expression ‘Béton brut’: ‘the aesthetic use of basic
building processes with no apparent concern for visual amenities”: https://www.
dezeen.com/2014/09/10/dezeen-guide-to-brutalist-architecture-owen-hopkins/.

42
 THE JAPANESE ROOTS OF CARLO SCARPA’S POETIC ARCHITECTURE

culture, Le Corbusier stressed the role of light when he gave his influ-
ential definition of architecture as “le jeu savant, correct et magnifique
des volumes assemblés sous la lumière” (“architecture is the accom-
plished, exact, and superb game of volumes assembled in sunlight)”38.

4.3. Details: materials and textures

Traditional Japan considered both visual and performing ‘arts’ as
the skills of simplifying the representation of the world by removing
all that is not essential39. With the advent of industrialization, ar-
chitectural decoration in the Western world underwent a process of
standardization, thus losing both quality and originality40. In Japan,
Scarpa and others admired the authenticity and fine quality of the
materials employed, as well as the sophisticated textures (executed by
skilled and experienced craftsmen) that made each architectural detail
express the intrinsic aesthetic value of every building material. Scarpa
put extreme, almost obsessive care in the planning and making of ev-
ery detail41. He was interested in the process, conceived as an unhur-
ried journey in the idea of beauty. “In the same way as we [architects]
must provide a solution to necessities [of men], it seems very logical
to me that we also need to provide beauty”, Scarpa once stated42.
He worked slowly. He enjoyed the luxury of being unconcerned
with the budget, especially when his clients were the protagonists of
Italy’s post-war economic boom (fig. 2)43. Scarpa also saw an ethic
value in the accurate work of man. In Japan, the role of the traditional
sensei master implies moral responsibilities that exceed the mere prac-

38
Le Corbusier, Vers une architecture, Cres, Paris, 1925, p. 19 (translation mine).
39
Fuccello, Spazio e architettura, cit., pp. 69-70.
40
See Alabiso, Architettura giapponese, cit., pp. 10 and 43-47.
41
Gardella, Le attenzioni, cit., p. 215.
42
C. Scarpa, Lecture (Venice, 1964); see text in Carlo Scarpa: 1906-1978, cit., p. 282.
43
See M. Scimemi - V. Zanchettin, Interview with Eugenio Bozzetto (2006): http: //
mediateca.palladiomuseum.org/scarpa/web/videointervista.php?id=10.

43
 Silvia Catitti

tice of a professional engagement44. Scarpa was an inspiring master to

many. Everybody called him ‘il professore’45. He established endur-
ing relationships with collaborators in many fields of architecture. A
number of his former students from IUAV became his assistants, and
he worked for a long time with the same woodworkers, plasterers,
blacksmiths, and master workers of reinforced concrete. He relied on
them to achieve the sophisticated structures and the uniquely poet-
ic textures of his buildings’ surfaces. Every single collaborator agrees
that he was extremely knowledgeable about the secrets of the mate-
rials they used and of the techniques they employed46. The success of
Scarpa’s works lies both in his command of techniques and in his di-
alogue with the craftsmen who materially transferred his design ideas
into reality. He had experienced the same exchange and dialogue in
his youth, when he worked with the Venini glass blowers in Murano,
both rediscovering and inventing with them techniques for obtaining
unique aesthetic effects.

5. The last ‘ancient Byzantine master’

Profoundly Venetian, Carlo Scarpa repeatedly compared his ap-
proach to that of the Byzantine masters who worked in Venice in the
Middle Ages47. According to Dal Co, the specific association with these
artists meant that Scarpa conceived the architect as the figure in com-
mand of all techniques48. Scarpa felt close to the artisan-architects of the
past, who relied on the solid baggage of their multidisciplinary appren-
ticeship, which had been handed over to them generation after genera-

44
Pierconti, Carlo Scarpa e il Giappone, cit., pp. 44-45.
45
G. Lovison, Interview with Aldo Businaro, in Ritratto di Carlo Scarpa, documen-
tary (2009).
46
O. Lanzarini, Interview with Eugenio De Luigi (2009): http: // mediateca.palla-
diomuseum.org/scarpa/web/videointervista.php?id=8.
47
Lovison, Ritratto, cit.
48
F. Dal Co, Genie ist Fleiss: L’architettura di Carlo Scarpa, in Carlo Scarpa: 1906-
1978, cit., p. 39.

44
 THE JAPANESE ROOTS OF CARLO SCARPA’S POETIC ARCHITECTURE

tion by the voice and the hands of previous dedicated craftsmen. These
professionals, like Scarpa, had received no formal schooling in archi-
tecture and did not practice with a certificate. Their pragmatic meth-
od made the Byzantine masters so versatile that, like Scarpa, they were
confident conceiving designs both for small objects and for large-scale
architecture.
Like the ancient masters (including Brunelleschi and Michelange-
lo), in each architectural commission Scarpa was responsible for every
phase, from its conception to its implementation49. He actively partici-
pated in the life of the construction site. His Milanese colleague Ignazio
Gardella (1905-1999) defined him as the “commander in chief of the
construction process”50. He regularly brought and explained drawings
of architectural details to the workers, supervising their work and dis-
cussing ways of making his unusual solutions come to life51. His pres-
ence on site was fundamental, as the construction management of his
architectural enterprises was much more similar to that of the ancient
masters than his contemporaries’. Like Brunelleschi (who Scarpa re-
garded as “almost like a Greek visionary”) or Michelangelo, he never
made comprehensive final decisions before construction had begun52.
He changed his plans along the way, experimented new solutions, and
defined details directly on site, while works were in progress.

49
For Michelangelo as archon of the tectones, see S. Catitti, The Laurentian Library:
Patronage and Building History, in San Lorenzo: A Florentine Church, eds. R. Gaston
- L.A. Waldman, Villa I Tatti, Florence, 2017, p. 389.
50
Gardella, Le attenzioni, cit., p. 214.
51
Scimemi – Zanchettin, Interview, cit.
52
For Scarpa on Brunelleschi, see Radice, Interview, cit. For this little known aspect
of Michelangelo’s approach as a construction site manager, see Catitti, The Lauren-
tian Library, cit., p. 414.

45
 Silvia Catitti

6. The value of craftsmanship

Scarpa looked for perfection in form, and focused on achieving a
finely crafted final product. As Mauro Pierconti pointed out, the pho-
tographs that Carlo Scarpa took during his first trip to Japan in 1969
reveal his deep interest in craftsmanship, the process of making art. A
whole series of slides shows artisans busy making tatami mats, docu-
menting various phases of the production53. Most likely, this interest
was ignited decades earlier by the famous woodblock prints by Jap-
anese painter Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849), showing craftsmen
busy in all sorts of traditional activities against the background of
many of the Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji54. Traveling around Japan,
Scarpa looked carefully at the techniques for assembling beams of tem-
ple roofs. He took pictures and made free-hand sketches on any scrap
of paper available, including packs of cigarettes. One photo shows him
exploring with his gaze and touch the manufacture of a knot, made of
ropes that tied together bamboo trunks; the latter seemed to form light-
weight architectural structures55. According to his son, who accompa-
nied him for part of this trip, Scarpa looked carefully at the walls of the
houses he happened to see. These featured a technique comparable to
that of the partitions of traditional Venetian homes; that is, a wooden
frame covered by a mixture of clay. Scarpa felt moved when he saw the
natural beauty of the cracks that clay formed while hardening, with the
heat emanating from inside the house56.

53
Pierconti, Carlo Scarpa e il Giappone, cit., illustration at p. 44.
54
Since 1930, Scarpa owned the following book on Hokusai: M. Salaman, Hoku-
sai, The Studio Limited, London, 1930. He purchased two more volumes on the
painter, on occasion of two shows (one in Genoa, the other in Rome) both held in
1974. See Pierconti, Carlo Scarpa e il Giappone, cit., p. 142.
55
Ibid., illustration at page 55.
56
Interview with Tobia Scarpa, cit.

46
 THE JAPANESE ROOTS OF CARLO SCARPA’S POETIC ARCHITECTURE

7. Japanese concepts in Scarpa’s architecture

Which aspect of Scarpa’s architecture has roots in Japanese architec-
ture? At a large scale, the idea of an unhierarchically organized sequence
of spaces is typically Japanese. Once inside the Brion complex, for ex-
ample, the visitor does not know which area to explore first. Scarpa con-
ceived his architecture as a series of interconnected spatial experiences,
skillfully directing the “relation of one space with the adjoining ones”57
by focusing on transitional elements and details. In Japanese culture,
the idea of ‘in-between’ elements applies both to architecture and po-
etry. Scarpa had a deep interest in poetry. His highly poetic transitional
spaces (not serving any practical function, yet holding both an aesthetic
and a spiritual value in and of themselves) derive from Japanese cul-
ture58. The concept of a flowing space is also typically Japanese59. Scarpa
had certainly experienced something comparable in Italy. Innovative
architects of the seventeenth century, such as Francesco Borromini, had
already designed their Baroque architecture envisioning the dynamic
movement of the viewer. As such, they surpassed the static, one-point
perspective of the Renaissance, which led to buildings imagined to be
seen from one privileged point of observation. In so doing, these Ba-
roque architects had conceived new architectural forms that provided
the user with surprising aesthetic experiences from multiple viewpoints.
When Scarpa was a student, Futurism – the famous Italian avant-garde
movement – included the notion of time (the fourth dimension) in the
design and experience of art. However, the way in which every space
that Scarpa designed was meant to be perceived in motion and over
time has very little to do with these two Western precedents.
At the small-scale level, Scarpa was fully aware of the potential of
each material he chose. Likewise, he used every building material in
a ‘sublime’ way60. Scarpa created new juxtapositions among materials

57
Fuccello, Spazio e architettura, cit., p. 75.
58
Ibid., p. 45.
59
Ibid., p. 48.
60
For the notion of ‘sublimity’, see Manila Vannucci’s essay in this volume.

47
 Silvia Catitti

and designs, thus achieving a highly poetic effect. In assembling the

various parts of a building, he carefully designed joints that were new
and unique. When juxtaposing forms in his compositions, he shift-
ed axes in a way that recalls asymmetrical Japanese geometrical wall
patterns (fig. 1) that reject symmetry. Thinking of Japan as a source
of inspiration, he once stated: “One should think of Japan, and the
refinement we can find there, their skill in creating magical things”61.
Although many scholars have focused on Scarpa’s direct experience
with Japan in 1969, on the first of his two trips there, he had been un-
der the spell of Japanese aesthetics, calligraphy, and poetry well before
visiting this country. After claiming “Japan has a strong influence on
me”, he added the following clarification: “not only because I have been
there, but because – even before going there – I admired their essential-
ness […] and, above all, their supreme good taste”62.
At the beginning of Scarpa’s career, in the 1920s-1930s, Western
knowledge of the Far East was extremely fragmentary. It was based on
a limited number of literary sources (very few of which were provided
with illustrations) and the rare, decontextualized items enriching the
collections of some European connoisseurs63. The few books on Japan
that Scarpa owned proved a fundamental tool for his exploration of
Japanese art64. In addition, during his student years in Venice, Scarpa
frequented Ca’ Pesaro, where the “Museo d’Arte Orientale” was inau-
gurated in 192865.
From a Western perspective, the objects collected in this museum
were regrouped under the umbrella of decorative arts or ‘arts-and-

61
Scarpa, Lecture, cit. (see note 29 above).
62
Radice, Interview, cit.
63
For Italian collections and collectors of Japanese art, see Francesco Morena’s es-
say in this volume. More specifically, for those to which Scarpa was exposed, see
Pierconti, Carlo Scarpa e il Giappone, cit., p. 15.
64
For a selected inventory of Scarpa’s ‘Oriental library’, see note 8 above.
65
See Pierconti, Carlo Scarpa e il Giappone, cit., pp. 18-21.

48
 THE JAPANESE ROOTS OF CARLO SCARPA’S POETIC ARCHITECTURE

crafts’. In the 1920s, however, the very concept of ‘visual arts’ was
relatively new to Japan66. There, traditional architecture meant a set
of secret and elaborate techniques to process and assemble natural
materials for construction purposes. In those years, publications by
Japanese authors that focused on local architecture were extremely
rare. As Itō Teiji’s The Roots of Japanese Architecture shows, Japanese
historiography started to consider architecture as an ‘art’ (and, more
specifically, as a freestanding art) only in the 1960s. This shift reflects
the Westernization that led Japanese authors to use Western criteria
when looking at the products of traditional local craftsmanship67.
There is no evidence that Scarpa was interested in identifying the
different typologies, historical periods, and styles of Japanese archi-
tecture. His exploration was guided by his sensibility as an artist. He
thus established a relationship with Japanese culture more on an emo-
tional than on an intellectual level. Surprisingly, the inventory of his
extensive library does not include essential books on this subject. A
case in point is Itō Teiji’s illustrated volume, which appeared (both in
English and Italian) back in 1963. The same is true of Kenzo Tange’s
influential Katsura: Tradition and Creation in Japanese Architecture68.
Both books were available before Scarpa went to Japan for the first
time. Three seminal books on traditional Japanese architecture, first
published in English before World Word II, are also absent from Scar-
pa’s library. Since 1886, the most popular book in the West on the
traditional domestic architecture of Japan was Japanese Homes and
their Surroundings, written and illustrated by American zoologist and
orientalist Edward Morse (1838-1925). In its approach, this volume

66
K. Okakura, The Ideals of the East with Special Reference to the Art of Japan, John
Murray, London, 1903.
67
I. Teiji, The Roots of Japanese architecture: A Photographic Quest, Harper & Row,
New York, 1963.
68
K. Tange, Katsura: Tradition and Creation in Japanese architecture, Yale University
Press, New Haven, 1960.

49
 Silvia Catitti

reflects the taste and interest of a late-nineteenth century collector69.

Morse divided the house into its basic macro-components. Also, he
created categories of details and architectural elements, including and
illustrating all possible variations that he encountered in his passion-
ate exploration of the country. Houses and People of Japan70, published
in 1937 by German architect Bruno Taut (1880-1938), also explored
the architecture of the house dividing it into macro-elements. The
book enjoyed a high degree of visibility in Europe. Finally, in 1893
Victorian architect Josiah Conder (1852-1920) published his Land-
scape Gardening in Japan71. Geared towards a devoted audience of
British garden lovers, the illustrated book is a zibaldone or mixed bag
of non-scholarly data collated from a variety of uncited sources.
Although Scarpa did not own any of these volumes, Morse, Taut,
and Conder had a strong impact on the famous anthropologist Fosco
Maraini (1912-2004)72, author of Ore giapponesi (1956), and on the
fellow Italian journalist Mario Gromo (1901-1960), who wrote the
Taccuino giapponese (1959)73. These were the two best-known, general
reference books in Italian on Japanese culture. Scarpa read them both
before visiting Japan. He planned his own itinerary by marking the
route in pink pencil on the map of Japan that accompanied Maraini’s
volume74. He also annotated extensively the text of the Taccuino gia-

69
E.S. Morse, Japanese Homes and their Surroundings, Harper, New York, 1886.
70
For the impact that Taut’s functionalist approach had on Western knowledge and
perception of the villa and garden of Katsura, see Alabiso, Architettura giapponese,
cit., p. 79.
71
J. Conder, Landscape Gardens of Japan, Kelly and Walsh Limited, Tokyo, 1893.
72
All five aforementioned volumes were in Maraini’s ‘Oriental Library’, which is
now accessible at the Gabinetto Scientifico Letterario Viesseux in Florence.
73
F. Maraini, Ore giapponesi, Leonardo da Vinci, Bari, 1958 (Scarpa owned it since
1960); M. Gromo, Taccuino giapponese, Paravia, Turin, 1959. It is unknown when
Gromo’s book entered Scarpa’s library; on both, see Pierconti, Carlo Scarpa e il Gi-
appone, cit., pp. 29-32, 35 (illustration), 141.
74
The annotated map is reproduced in Pierconti, Carlo Scarpa e il Giappone, cit., p. 31.

50
 THE JAPANESE ROOTS OF CARLO SCARPA’S POETIC ARCHITECTURE

ponese, essentially a guide of ‘things you can’t miss in Japan’, where the
author poetically described sequences of natural and man-made land-
scapes and artifacts75. Gromo put a great deal of emphasis on the Villa
of Katsura, a site on which Scarpa had long fantasized and that would
make a great impression on him. The prominent role attributed to this
villa shows that Gromo evidently incorporated ideas from Taut. It was
the German architect who developed the idea (which soon became
widespread both in the West and the East) that the seventeenth-centu-
ry Imperial Villa and its park embodied the quintessence of traditional
architecture76. Being built and constantly improved over the course of
two centuries, the site appears to the visitors as a blend of different
styles. Taut provided a reading of the villa in a functionalist light77.
The location and orientation of the pavilions respond in the most nat-
ural and efficient way to the elements and to all climate conditions.
Lightweight and moveable partitions in the rooms adapt to seasons and
times of the day, generating flexible spaces. Built-in closets and inge-
nious multifunctional containers substitute the virtually absent free-
standing furniture. Surfaces that feature no superfluous ornamentation
emanate beauty from their refined textures, which are derived from the
transformation process and combination of natural materials. Filtered
through Gromo’s sensibility, this view had an impact on Scarpa when
he visited the villa, thus influencing his approach to it78.
Scholars have also drawn attention to the fascination that oth-
er canonical destinations –Tokyo, Kamakura, Hakone, Osaka, and
Kyoto, as well as the Nara and Ise shrines – must have had on Scar-

75
F. Maraini, Ore giapponesi, Leonardo da Vinci, Bari, 1958 (Scarpa bought it in
1960). M. Gromo, Taccuino giapponese, Paravia, Turin, 1959. It is unknown when
Gromo’s book entered Scarpa’s library; on both, see Pierconti, Carlo Scarpa e il Gi-
appone, cit., pp. 29-32, 35 (illustration), 141.
76
Alabiso, Architettura giapponese, cit., p. 71.
77
Ibid., p. 79.
78
Pierconti, Carlo Scarpa e il Giappone, cit., pp. 54-56.

51
 Silvia Catitti

pa. His interest and reactions are documented by the slides that he
took. However, a number of considerations draw us into modern Ja-
pan, too. From the inventory of Scarpa’s library, we know that since
1961 he collected issues of Japan Design House, a Japanese journal
published in English. On the one hand, this publication showcased
historic materials and techniques related to local traditional architec-
ture. On the other hand, it promoted contemporary Japanese design
production. Scarpa, who was evidently both interested in and up-to-
date on the new frontiers of Japanese architecture, must have sought
out contemporary buildings during his Asian sojourn.
The occasion for Scarpa’s trip in 1969 was provided by an exhi-
bition on contemporary Italian Furniture Design79. For the first part
of his trip, Scarpa traveled with Italian industrial furniture entrepre-
neurs and designers. When their hosts organized for them a tour of
canonical historic sites around Tokyo, they must have provided some
guidance. After the other Italian visitors left, Scarpa continued his
journey. He did so first with his son and then with an Italy-based ar-
chitect, Takahama Kazuhide (b. 1930)80. Some of these Japanese fig-
ures (all from the field of contemporary design) must have introduced
their foreign guests to contemporary Japanese design.
When Scarpa visited Japan, Tokyo exemplified the change that
the country had rapidly undergone after World War II. As in the
West, the city (now electrified and mechanized) had become densely
populated. This led to a radical transformation in architectural mate-
rials and techniques, particularly in traditional residential typologies.
While Western architects were seeking to learn from traditional Jap-
anese architecture, local architects looked West. As a consequence,
traditional spaces were disappearing. As early as the 1960s, Japanese
designers gave birth to novel and stimulating solutions for residential
architecture. In doing so, they created a synthesis between Eastern
and Western patterns. By 1969, significant examples of the reformu-

79
Ibid., p. 28.
80
Ibid., p. 30.

52
 THE JAPANESE ROOTS OF CARLO SCARPA’S POETIC ARCHITECTURE

lation of the house concept were already visible in various neighbor-

hoods of Tokyo. To cite but one major example, in 1966 local archi-
tect Takamitsu Azuma had built for himself the ingenious miniature
Tower House in Shibuya, a true work of art in and of itself. Extremely
functional, it departs from the traditional idea that the house must
include spaces with no apparent function, just for the sake of aes-
thetic contemplation and spiritual meditation. Entirely built in ex-
posed concrete, its raw surfaces are visible both outside and inside the
building81. Similar to the Olivetti Showroom that Scarpa designed in
Venice, the interiors revolve around a highly expressive staircase.
According to his son Tobia, Scarpa’s visit to Japan (where he final-
ly saw in person what he had long explored and admired in books),
led him to further simplify his forms. After he returned from his 1969
trip, Scarpa’s design became more abstract. The architect was then 63
years old. Like many Western masters of the past in their late career,
such as Michelangelo or Titian, abstraction led to an increase in the
poetical effect of their evocative design. We can see this in the linearity
of the highly poetic architecture of the Brion complex. Poetry was an
important part of Scarpa’s intellectual life. In a lecture he had given in
Vienna, two years earlier, Scarpa built upon the association between
poetry and architecture made by a great master of Modern architec-
ture that he admired, the American architect Frank Lloyd Wright.
Scarpa said: “Sometimes architecture can be poetry. It is not always
so: society doesn’t always ask for poetry. Poetry is not something that
pertains to the day-to-day living. One can’t think: ‘Oh, I’m going to
design poetical architecture’. Poetry comes out, only if the designer
has this nature in himself ”82. As we have seen, Scarpa – a visual poet

81
As a recent exhibition demonstrated, the Tower House was not an isolated case in
Japan. See The Japanese House: Architecture and Life After 1945, Museo delle Arti
del XXI Secolo (MAXXI), Rome (9 November 2016-26 February 2017), and The
Barbican Art Center, London (23 March 2017-25 June 2017).
82
C. Scarpa, Lecture (Vienna, 16 November 1976); see text in Carlo Scarpa: 1906-
1978, cit., p. 283.

53
– did have ‘this nature in himself ’. Japanese aesthetics contributed to
his natural skills.
Following the steps and path of Matsuo Bashō, a seventeenth-cen-
tury Japanese poet that he admired, Scarpa planned his second trip to
Japan in the fall of 1978. On November 28, he died in Sendai, a few
days after an accident. The incomparable works that Scarpa designed
still offer us a lesson in poetic architecture.

Fig. 1. Carlo Scarpa, Detail of the side façade of the Olivetti Showroom, Venice
(Gianantonio Battistella©CISA – A. Palladio).

54
Fig. 2. Carlo Scarpa, Brion funerary complex, San Vito d’Altivole, Treviso
(Stefan Buzas©CISA – A. Palladio).

55
Fig. 3. Carlo Scarpa, Propilaeum of the Brion funerary complex, San Vito d’Altivole, Treviso
(Gianantonio Battistella©CISA – A. Palladio).

56
Fig. 4. Carlo Scarpa, Chapel of the Brion funerary complex, San Vito d’Altivole, Treviso
(Gianantonio Battistella©CISA – A. Palladio).

57
 Fig. 5. Carlo Scarpa, Meditation pavilion of the Brion funerary complex,
San Vito d’Altivole, Treviso (Gianantonio Battistella©CISA – A. Palladio).

58
Fig. 6. Carlo Scarpa, New Wing of the Canova Museum, Possagno, Treviso
(Gianantonio Battistella©CISA – A. Palladio).

59