Scarpa, The Venetian

Scarpa, The Venetian | Richard Murphy | Pidgeon Digital 14/05/20, 15:45
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Scarpa, The Venetian

Richard Murphy
ST. MARK'S SQUARE, VENICE. FLOODED

©Richard Murphy
When I'm asked to give talks about Scarpa I tend to say that one really can't cover
the whole subject matter of such a complex and fascinating figure. Indeed one of the
many reasons why he's of such interest to architects today is that his work covers so
many different interest groups. For example, since most of his work is work in
existing buildings, we look at him now as the great authority in how we can intervene
creatively with existing structures. Indeed I like to make the point that he is probably
the first architect of any significance who has built what William Morris described in
his marvellous manifesto for the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings. In
fact it is quite ironic of course that Morris' Society's first international case was
attempting to stop the authorities from "restoring St. Mark's. Venice". So it's a lovely
paradox that it' s the great 20th century Venetian architect Scarpa born in the city in
1906 who should now be teaching us in this country and elsewhere how to put into
practice the principles that Morris outlined. So we can look at him in terms of
working with existing buildings. Because frankly hitherto, in the history of
architecture that sort of work was always considered secondary to the primary task
of building new buildings. For example, one can hardly think of a project by Wright or
Corbusier or Mies or any of the other great heroes of the 20th century which is to
do with an existing building. The second reason we can look at Scarpa is because he
was above all, a museum and exhibition designer, in particular a designer of
permanent exhibitions. And obviously the Castelvecchio in Verona but also the
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Museo Correr in Venice and others are great examples of his work. And today of
course museums are the cathedrals of our age. And how we go about arranging
exhibitions is of great interest to many architects and Scarpa took a point of view
which was in a way quite an extreme. It said that every object in a museum is unique
and therefore needs to be considered for itself. With a unique pedestal for example
in a unique background. How it should be considered against the light, how one
should approach it, what relationship it had to other objects in the room or the space
and above all, I think, how people who visit museums could become participants
rather than just mute observers. And that, if you like, that point of view stands in
contrast to the 19th century idea of the museum as a series of fairly neutral rooms
lined with walls or objects and really a very un-theatrical way of displaying work. This
point of view of Scarpa's was very much in tune with Italy after the war, which was
trying to find what it called the democratic museum; in other words the museum that
engaged the man in the street and educated him and thrilled him with work. In
contrast with Mussolini's ideas of museums which were great kind of storehouses of
state treasures in which people felt rather small. So he was a wonderful museum
exhibition designer and we look at him from that point of view. We can also look at
him from the point of view if you like, what architects call a composer of formal
language of architecture. Because his language is entirely of the 20th century in a
sense that we can obviously see relationships with Hoffman and Wright and De Stijl
and Japan. It‘s tectonic and it‘s planar, it's orthogonal, it's about the development of
space. It's highly 3~ dimensional, it's perhaps uniquely interested in surface texture
which one doesn't associate particularly with architects of this century. But his
language is incredibly rich and when one of the criticisms, if you like, of 20th century
architecture has been this problem of the language of the architecture not
developing into the detail, Scarpa of course can answer that criticism head on. Which
brings me to the fourth reason that many people are interested in Scarpa. Where it is
to do with detailing. Of course he is a jeweller of the small, of how one material meets
another or how one element to the building meets another. Indeed Kahn - who was a
great friend of Scarpa - described him as ornamenting the edges or the joints, the
ornament of the joint. And indeed when people visit a building by Scarpa it's the first
thing that hits them is this extraordinary beautiful craft-based idea of detailing. And
the fifth reason I think for looking at Scarpa is that he left behind a remarkable
number of drawings, of sketches. He worked in a very unusual way compared, for
example, with an ordinary architect of today. He didn't have an office as we know
them. He worked on site a lot of the time, he worked with just one or two assistants
and he worked very much from the detail to the general; as opposed to the other way
round, how most of us work. And so you find a lot of time he did hundreds and
hundreds and hundreds of what are really working drawings of developing ideas,
playing around with ideas and moving slowly and very logically. Investigating
different issues. And he left all these behind and if we piece them together
retrospectively we can see an incredible mind at work. I would maintain, in a more
lucid fashion than any other architect's drawings I have ever inspected; in the sense
that we can look at Corbusier's sketchbook or we can look at those wonderful Aalto
6B pencils or we can see well Wright actually very rarely left us any working
drawings or work-up drawings. But with Scarpa we can see an incredible mind at
work visualised through putting his drawings into a chronological sequence. So for
the scholar or the architectural student I find that's a very interesting angle on his
work. So any of these five reasons we could talk about with Scarpa. But I'm going to
invent a sixth which I think is very interesting. And that is the theme of Scarpa the
Venetian. Because again you could say that one of the criticisms of contemporary
architecture is that it has become totally internationalised. Not only has the world
economy taken over so we find in domestic work in Britain you'll find elements and
materials being used from all over the world, and houses built in Caithness are the
same as those built in Cornwall. That innate connection between the locale and its
very special brand of architecture seems to have been broken forever. But on top of
that, high architecture - if one can use that phrase - has also become an international
dimension. Architects jet around the world depositing their buildings in various
cities, and one does begin to wonder about the issue of rootedness or, as others have
called it, the idea of regionality of architecture. It seems when we look at Scarpa that
what he has done is a remarkable trick. Because he has observed or imbibed the
unique city of Venice, the city of his birth and where he spent more than 50% of his
life. Finishing it as the director of the architecture school at the Venice University.
The whole city has got under his skin. And then he has kind of reproduced the
language of architecture which at the same time as being totally connected to the
20th century also has within it complete understanding of the nature of Venice. So
it's a contemporary reinterpretation of Venetian phenomena. In the first slide you
see a flooded view of the Piazza San Marco. Of course Venice is the only city in
modern day Italy which doesn't have any Roman antecedents because it was formed
by refugees from the Barbarians attacking the Roman Empire and setting up their
homes on the sandbanks in the Lagoon. And the fact that Venice is built at the water
level and therefore, in a way, this extraordinary precious and civilised place is sitting
so perilously close to potential disaster of inundation. I think Scarpa understands
completely in his projects as I'll explain. Other phenomena of the city also, I think,
work their way through in a contemporary way into his work. For example, when
Ruskin describes Venetians as living in basic brick palaces; brick from the mud of the
Brenta, and then they lined them with exotic marbles from their far flung maritime
empire. When you look at Venice it's a city, if you like, in accelerated decay. Not only
does it decays from the top down as all buildings do but it also particularly decays
from the bottom up. And the response from Venetians with their poorer buildings is
to constantly re-stucco. And everywhere where you look in Venice you see the lines
of previous stuccos disintegrated against the rising damp and the washes of boats.
And so this idea of thin constant re-layering the facades of buildings, whether it be
humble houses in stucco or grand palaces with marble, again re-occurs with Scarpa,
because we look at his buildings and we can see him laying thin layers of new
materials on the original structures. Venetian Gothic is also a marvellously free-style
composition, totally asymmetrical, and in that sense you could almost make a direct
connection to the Arts & Crafts. Scarpa's architecture is also determinedly
asymmetrical and free in its composition.
2
VENETIAN PAVILION, ITALIA '61, TURIN
©Richard Murphy
Scarpa had the opportunity of encapsulating the idea of Venice in an exhibition he

was asked to design in Turin in 1961. This exhibition stand of the Venice pavilion in
the exhibition was called The Sense of Venice, the Sense of Colour and the Control of
the Dominance of the waters. And a very memorable stand it was indeed that he
designed because he placed first of all trays of water on the floor which are filled to
the brim and are just about to overflow. And this is a theme we find in all his work, the
idea of the potential disaster of overflowing water, the way the water almost
overflows into the various “campi" and "piazza” of Venice. And above it arranged a
marvellous glass chandelier made from Murano glass, and coloured glass also from
the same source. And the exotic quality of Venice works its way also into Scarpa's
work. We have to remember of course that historically Venice was the city that
controlled all access between Europe and the East until the Portuguese found their
way round the Cape of Good Hope. And it had, as a consequence, an incredible
connection with the Islamic world and then with the Oriental world. And this works
its way backwards with a kind of love and fascination with gold and precious stones
and remarkable colours. Those colours can be captured in a special Venetian
material called 'stucco lucido' or Venetian plaster work which Scarpa worked with
the Di Luigi brothers in resuscitating really. And this plaster work applied in many
layers has not only a remarkable ability of translucence but also captures incredibly
intense colours. So the pavilion in Turin is, if you like, an abstraction of certain of
these qualities of Venice.
3
PALAZZO QUERINI STAMPALIA, VENICE.
ENTRANCE BRIDGE
©Richard Murphy
The most notably Venetian building of Scarpa's, however, is the renovation of the
Palazzo Querini Stampalia just off the Campo Santa Maria Formosa. This was a 16th
century fairly small palace which has been turned into a scientific and artistic
foundation in the 19th century. And Scarpa, with an old friend who became the
director, Giuseppe Masariol, remodelled the ground-floor rooms and the garden
between 1962 and 1963. On the ground floor of a typical Venetian palace there
would have been the water gate to the canal. And, indeed, when one goes to Venice
today it's difficult to realise just how many canals have been filled in and turned into
footpaths and alley-ways. And originally transport within the city was almost entirely
water-borne, so it‘s quite reasonable that the front entrance of a palace should be its
water gate. And so Scarpa's first move was, in a way, to remember this fact and to
bring the visitors in through the water side of the palace. However, he didn't bring us
in through the water gate itself. Instead, he brought us in through a window onto the
canal which he turned into what he called 'a living window' by the insertion of a new
bridge. And indeed it's the bridge which we first see on approaching the palace. This
bridge - which, incidentally, you'll be amused to hear he had enormous problems with
the authorities in getting permission for. And in fact it was put up overnight as a 'fait
accompli'. and Scarpa had the last laugh because in the end it was the City of Venice
that ended up paying for it, but that's another story. This bridge is, if we look
carefully at it, is a contemporary reinterpretation of traditional Venetian bridges
before they had parapets to them. Because, if we look at a traditional Venetian
bridge, we see a very beautiful and simple contrast between the work done by an
arch, as a constant curve of course, and the fact of the steps that had to vary in their
tread width to accommodate that constant curve. Scarpa did the same thing
between the steel curve of the bridge and the timber treads of his bridge. In addition,
of course, we can see that it has a certain nautical air or it has been compared to
Japanese garden bridges. But I think it is this Venetian origin which is the closest
relationship. It is of course very beautifully detailed, in particular the way the
handrail stanchion changes its nature between that of supporting a balustrade and
the more delicate operation of holding a beautiful teak handrail.
4
PALAZZO QUERINI STAMPALIA, VENICE. NEW
ENTRANCE
©Richard Murphy
The bridge takes us into the entrance, the new entrance to the palace and this was
where the side tradesmen's entrance used to be which Scarpa closed. And here we
can see that the main idea of Scarpa's work in the building, which is incredibly
remarkably Venetian in its origin because what he has done is place a boat-like
building inside the original structure and left, if you like, a kind of moat between the
new and the original. And this moat is all to do with the 'aqua alta', the flooding that
periodically becomes Venice. Because when the water is high, the water actually
percolates into the building, into the space between the new architecture and the
original walls. It's a very curious phenomenon indeed, when you're in the building, to
see this water come sloshing around between you and the perimeter walls. And of
course as the tide goes down, then the water drains away. And the exaggerated curve
is a kind of representational dam to keep the waters at bay. And then inside that
curve is a precious stone floor, a marble floor, which again has direct relevance to the
materials that the Venetians used on all their ground floors, which is terrazzo and
sometimes mosaic. And they use terrazzo because it has an ability to withstand the
rising damp and also an ability to move, because Venetian buildings are all built on
timber piles and so they have a remarkable amount of structural movement, and so
terrazzo does both those jobs. And Scarpa understood that and he understood the
requirement to arrive and to step onto a special coloured floor. But in this instance
the pattern of the floor he developed from a painting by Josef Albers who was one of
his favourite painters. If we look at this front entrance though we also see that he
hung panels of stucco lucido around the walls in a manner reminiscent of De Stijl in a
series of irregular, never-repeated, orthogonal panels, and these panels of stucco
lucido which are on the wall but not touching the wall significantly. They come down
and stretch down as far as they dare, in other words, just about as far as the highest
aqua alta could reach. And again we can see in that idea a representation of the
preciousness - and indeed stucco lucido is a very precious and expensive material -
the preciousness of Venice, as it were, suspended just above the perilous level of the
Lagoon.

WATERGATE & PILLAR
©Richard Murphy
If we move from the entrance to the next room in the palace, which is the water gate,
we see a remarkable pillar which he constructed, which is all about the expression of
how something is made. We see the pillar has a very prosaic function of hiding a
couple of radiators in the exhibition room, but can see at its upper level it is to do
with erosion, and at its lower level it's to do with putting together. And the elements
are Istrian limestone, and where they are eroded you can see the stylisation of the
internal drilling of a cut, which is always necessary if you're cutting into a material.
And at the lower level where they are put together we can see the elaboration of the
joint with gold leaf, which again reminds us of Vienna, Hoffman and also the Orient.
This pillar is placed typically centripitally in the space, it's not central, it sits off to one
side. The space from it flows out in four different directions: one to the water gate,
one to the further exhibition room, one to the entrance room and finally to the main
exhibition space which occupies the room traditionally known in Venetian palaces as
the 'Androni'.
PALAZZO QUERINI STAMPALIA, VENICE. THE

‘ANDRONI'
©Richard Murphy
The 'Androni' is a space that connects the water gate through the garden, because
Venetian palaces were designed very much with defence in mind and the original
staircase to all palaces would have been placed at the rear in the entrance garden.
The Androni therefore was a kind of trading place. It was almost an outdoor kind of
passageway and goods would be unloaded from the canal and brought through and
sorted out and then taken up to the palace above. So in that sense it is, in a way,
Scarpa's exterior facade. And again, remembering the words of Ruskin he did what
the Venetians have always done, is lined the walls with a very precious material. In
this instance he chose deliberately material not from the Veneto but from near
Rome, and he placed on the exhibition walls travertine stone which is placed
between brass strips; and then between the travertine stone which has this
marvellous grained effect which he placed in horizontal and vertical alignments,
between the travertine stones he placed lights, faced in etched glass. Now for
Scarpa, he had spent his life doing either permanent or temporary exhibitions around
specific objects, to have to design a neutral exhibition room, as this room was must
have been something rather curious. And so his response to it is to make a room
which, when empty, becomes an exhibition in itself. Because the walls themselves,
with the lights lit up, become a rather magical precious surface material. You can also
see, if you look carefully at the edges, that he has again, just like Ruskin, he has
applied the stone in an expressive way to the walls, and you can see what is old and
what is new by inspecting the edges.
PALAZZO QUERINI STAMPALIA, VENICE. STONE

DOOR IN 'ANDRONI'
©Richard Murphy
At the far end of this room is anther reference to Venice. On the Island of Torcello is
a very beautiful 7th century cathedral. Indeed Torcello at one stage rivalled Venice in
the development of the Lagoon but today really little else is there apart from the
cathedral. On the south side of the cathedral are some very remarkable Istrian stone
shutters on the exterior which hinge, we don't know why, whether it was against
sunlight or whether it was to do with defence, nobody knows, but Scarpa is on record
as having said he was fascinated by them, having first seen them as a schoolboy. And
so at the end of the androni we find a reference to these shutters and a beautiful
travertine stone door which hinges in a very expressive and kind of mysterious way
into an exhibition room placed beyond.
PALAZZO QUERINI STAMPALIA, VENICE. STONE

DOOR IN OLIVETTI SHOWROOM, VENICE
©Richard Murphy
There is another stone door which Scarpa designed in his other major work in Venice
and earlier work in the 50s, the Olivetti showroom in Piazza San Marco. The
showroom itself is another project where the space flows out from, in this instance,
two objects. A beautiful staircase and also a sculpture by Alberto Vianni. But here we
can see the pass door for the staff as part of a composition, the name of Olivetti and
a pivoting stone door. Typically we can see also at this point how Scarpa was
fascinated by the different surface textures he could get from the same material,
again, in this instance, the comparatively local limestone from the peninsula of Istria
across the Lagoon.

SCULPTURE IN GARDEN
©Richard Murphy
Returning to the Querini Stampalia, and this time coming into the garden, we see
again the idea of Venice and the Orient. Because when one walks into this garden,
the first thing one senses is the sound of water, and it‘s the sound of Arab gardens
the trickling of little trickles of water. And the ability of Scarpa to focus us on the very
tiniest of elements is again, I would maintain, a Venetian idea. The first thing we see is
a representation of the source of the water in a very small sculpture which is an
orthogonal maze of little channels; again representational of the chaos, if you like, of
the plan of Venice which itself emerged from the various developments of the
parishes of the town towards each other. Indeed, when one looks at the plan of
Venice as a completely disorganised event with a series of parishes growing out from
their 'campi' where they stored fresh water - and many of the canals we find today
are in fact boundaries between those parishes - it's this chaos and anarchy which I
think Scarpa enjoyed enormously in all his architecture as a stimulant to free
composition, as you can see in this little object. But to me what's fascinating in that is
the way he is able to draw out attention to the very tiniest little things so that we
begin to inspect something that is 2 mm or 3 mm in its depth. I can't think of another
architect who is capable of doing that.
10

STAIRCASE
©Richard Murphy
Ruskin said 'It is better to have a crutch than a new leg’ and in that sense he was
describing in "The Seven Lamps of Architecture" the idea, which Morris then
encapsulated in his Manifesto, of building structures which supported the original
history rather than wiped it away and replaced it. And here we can see the staircase
within the Querini Stampalia, a built example of that phenomenon. The staircase was
worn and could easily have been replaced with a modern staircase. But instead,
Scarpa, mindful of the tradition of layering in Venetian architecture put a new
staircase, layers of marble in this instance, placed on the treads and the risers in such
a way that you can see through and see the original staircase underneath. just as you
can when you see through the stucco layers and see the original construction
underneath of Venetian buildings.
11
PALAZZO QUERINI STAMPALIA, VENICE. NOTCHED

CONCRETE & CAPITAL
©Richard Murphy
Not only does Scarpa layer new with the old but he also in doing so is able to bring to
our attention the original history of the building in a particularly vitalic way. In this
tiny detail in Querini Stampalia, we see him facing the rear of a Renaissance arch
with a construction of concrete made very deliberately with large chips of Istrian
limestone as its aggregate. And he takes a notch out of the concrete just at the point
where the column has its capital. And in so doing, in so juxtaposing the new with the
old our attention is drawn deliberately to the original history of the building. And we
see this in all his projects, an opportunity for the new to make the original must more
vitalic and obvious to the visitor.
12
PALAZZO QUERINI STAMPALIA, VENICE. GLASS

TILE MOSAIC IN GARDEN WALL
©Richard Murphy
Another Venetian tradition is the idea of taking something base, like a brick wall, and
putting something incredibly precious into it, and thereby ennobling, if you like, the
entire element with that new addition. And in the garden of the Querini Starnpalia,
we can see Scarpa building, what is, in my opinion anyway, a rather beautiful concrete
wall - concrete of course is a material of no particular precious quality - but then
placing into it a mosaic of Murano glass tiles; and in so doing, the entire wall takes on
a status which it otherwise would not have.
13

LIMESTONE QUOIN STONES
©Richard Murphy
Also in the garden we find Istrian limestone quoin stones interlocking with each
other, and these finish off many of the little low concrete walls we find in the grass.
And I'm convinced that that is a direct reference to the many abstract quoin stone
patterns that one finds on the comers in Venice, where the stuccoist has finished his
stucco and just followed the line, the ad hoc line if you like, of the quoin stones. And
so you get these remarkable shapes all round the city.
14
PALAZZO ABATELLIS, SICILY. CENTRE COURTYARD

©Richard Murphy
Well of course Scarpa was a Venetian architect but he built outside Venice. In fact his
furthest project was the Palazzo Abatellis in Sicily, a project which in my opinion
should be much better known by all those interested in Scarpa He worked on it in
1956/7 and his approach was one of a Venetian architect in the sense that he
cleaned the building and his intervention was fairly minimal. We are really only
discussing, in terms of physical work, probably three doorways and one staircase.
But its effect was quite remarkable in its transformation. Shown here is the exterior
of the courtyard in the centre of the palace which he lined, just as the Venetians do
but in a contemporary way, with a thin new layer of render. And we can see that it is
the thinness and the particular orthogonal quality of this render where it meets all
the window and door jambs that gives it the kind of 20th century machine-like
quality. It has an incredible, precise, right angled quality and thereby throws the
weathered original nature of the lintels and sills and jambs into intense relief. And if
you look carefully you can see that the render lines between one day's work and the
next is organised as a series of hairline abstract patterns that go all the way round
the courtyard and effectively make the courtyard into a kind of giant De Stijl painting
with abstract shapes linking all the windows together. It's a remarkably clever and
subtle transformation of an architectural element.
15
PALAZZO ABATELLIS, SICILY. INTERIOR VIEWS

©Richard Murphy
The next three slides show you one room in this very beautiful museum, and I show
you it as a little demonstration of Scarpa‘s ability to work magic with a few elements,
two doors and a window. As we enter this little room, we see a very beautiful bust of
Eleanor of Aragon placed looking sideways against a window, but placed against a
green stucco lucido screen wall which is placed on the wall ahead of us, so that the
white bust is seen in relief against the green screen. You'll notice, looking at the
green screen, that it is notched at the bottom where the window seat would
otherwise interrupt it. That's another tiny little example of Scarpa setting up a
conversation between his new interventions and the original history, so that we are
drawn to notice things otherwise we might have ignored. Returning to the idea of the
democratic museum you’ll see that we become a participant in this room. And the
placing of the sculpture at right angles to the entrance door, and in particular to the
light, draws us in out of curiosity to come and confront the sculpture from the front
in full light.
16
PALAZZO ABATELLIS, SICILY. INTERIOR VIEWS

©Richard Murphy
And here we see the sculpture itself, it's slightly asymmetrical, and it's no mistake-
that Scarpa also produces a unique stand which itself is slight asymmetrical. And as
we are drawn around the sculpture, we see that Scarpa also continues the green
stucco lucido screen behind it so that the sculpture, as it were, sets up a little space in
a comer of the room around which it can be inspected.
17
PALAZZO ABATELLIS, SICILY. DOOR & TWO BUSTS

©Richard Murphy
And having pulled us into the room and turned us through, effectively, 180° we then
become aware of the doorway through which we have just entered and the fact that
it itself is guarded on either side by two heads placed, one on a vertical column in
front of the green stucco lucido on one side, and one on a horizontal timber structure
on a blue stucco lucido column on the other. And thereby Scarpa sets us going on a
circular path around the room which we then inspect a statue of the Virgin again, set
against the blue stucco lucido, the colour of which, of course, comes from the
remains of painting on the statue itself. It's a marvellous example of how we move
and engage with sculptures in a very small room with very few props.
18
PALAZZO ABATELLIS, SICILY. WATER & OLIVETTI

SHOWROOM
©Richard Murphy
Returning to Venice. I have kept until the end the issue of water. I mentioned at the
beginning the idea of a flooding and inundation. And the next slides show you
examples of Scarpa working with that medium. Indeed, I think there are hardly any
built projects of his which did not incorporate the phenomenon of water. In the
Olivetti showroom he placed the sculpture by Vianni in a tray of black Belgian
marble, in this instance, in the front entrance which he filled absolutely to the brim
with water. So that the whole tray acts as a reflective surface with the underside of
the sculpture being seen in the reflection in the water. Indeed the effect is so
successful that it has been known for people to step onto the water thinking that it's
solid.
19
PALAZZO ABATELLIS, SICILY. WATER AT BRION

CEMETERY
©Richard Murphy
In the next slide you can see his remarkable, almost metaphysical work, the cemetery
for the family of Brion at San Vito di Altivole. And in this work there are very many
allusions to the idea of life and death from many, I believe, different religious
interpretations using water as a medium. There is the idea of the source of water, the
channel of life, the spreading out of the family. But in this instance you can see the
idea of water as a dividing line, if you like, between the life as we know it and the life
we can possibly glimpse beyond or, in this instance, beneath the surface of the water.
Because Scarpa's intense language of ziggurat-like concrete sculptures out of which
the entire cemetery is formed. As you can see continues down underneath the
surface of the water into a kind of murky underworld. Again, as I said, analogous I
believe to the mysteries of life after death.
20
CASTEL VECCHIO, VERONA. SCULPTURE GALLERY
©Richard Murphy
The idea of water filling a container to its brim he also used in an analogous way in
Castel Vecchio. In the main sculpture gallery on the ground floor we see a new
insertion of a floor in a manner similar to that already seen at the Querini Stampalia.
But here he made a floor of local what's known as 'prun‘ stone (from just outside
Verona) in its edgings which he then filled up with concrete which is polished to a
very high degree of reflectance. So the concrete in this instance becomes analogous
to water almost overflowing its container. And we can see this particularly at the
entrance where there is like a little cascade detail between the entrance floor and
the new floor of the museum. Because the new floor itself is orthogonal, it is always
irregular because Scarpa, particularly when he was interested in the idea of people
moving through buildings, would give you floor or wall surfaces made of irregular
elements so that there was a kind of sub-conscious syncopation. And this orthogonal
insertion draws our attention to the irregular, slightly irregular, shapes of the rooms
of the castle which are the result of its sitting adjacent to the bend of the river which
you don't see but can sense through the wall.
21
CASTEL VECCHIO, VERONA. SCARPA DRAWING OF

FAÇADE
©Richard Murphy
In this drawing of Scarpa's, a study for his work on the facade of Castel Vecchio again
we can see the idea of layering at work. In this instance he was perturbed by the false
nature of the original wall in the sense that it was a fakery made in the 1920’s of re-
used Veronese window and door surrounds into a wall that had been originally built
by the French military at the beginning of the 19th century. And so he's highly
aggressive towards it in this study. As you can see, demolishing the bay on the left
and replacing the great statue of Cangrande, and also suggesting that it could be
severed from the roof and thereby lose its function of supporting the roof. He's
moved windows and abolished windows. But the interesting aspect, to me, of this
study is, first of all, that he has taken a symmetrical facade and attempted to, if you
like, undermine it by placing the windows in new relationships to each other through
the use of notches in the stucco lining. And secondly is the idea of a new and
completely independent facade glimpsed behind the original openings. So in this
sense it‘s rather curious, it's the reverse of what the Venetians might do. Instead of
adding a layer onto the front he is conniving to reveal a layer behind the original
facade. And this new revealed layer, as you can see, has no relevance at all to the
rhythms of the original facade but it has, as it were, a life of its own, expressing a new
independent life inside the museum. And you can see the development of the idea of
a red screen at ground floor level travelling along the entire length of the building
from the entrance on the right, through past the original loggia entrance in the
middle, and emerging on the left as a support for a viewing platform from which the
Cangrande statue would have been seen. We can also see the idea vertically of
asymmetrically syncopated steel and glass windows appearing to connect the
ground and first floor windows via a kind of shadow gap detailing around the original
window openings.
22
CASTEL VECCHIO, VERONA. PAVEMENT OF PRUN

STONE (A PINK LIMESTONE FROM ITALY)
©Richard Murphy
The idea of excavation as well as layering we can see when Scarpa excavates into his
materials. And the next slide shows an example of that, where he takes the polished
pavement of prun stone just by the entrance and starts the life of that red screen
seen in the previous drawing, as it were emerging from the earth. When we go to
Venice and lift a paving slab, what we find underneath is the sand of the lagoon. The
whole of Venice is really built on a wafer-thin man-made construction and
immediately beneath is nature in the raw. And I think this little reference here at the
entrance of Castel Vecchio is all about that. Because we just take off the man-made
polished surface of the prun stone and underneath is revealed its geological reality.
23
CASTEL VECCHIO, VERONA. CAN GRANDE STATUE

LOCATED
©Richard Murphy
And finally we see the effect of that new screen on the Castel Vecchio as we see it
today, and we can see how it wanders along independently and eventually emerges
in a cut in the facade and the revelation of the Cangrande statue. The cut in the
facade is also fascinating because, as I mentioned at the beginning, Scarpa is
interested in making compositions out of free, thin, tectonic elements. And the way
he has contrived to cut the facade wall here we can see is lift to manipulate it into a
whole series of independently sliding thin elements, as if the original building had
been made out of laminates which he is then cutting and then de-laminating.
24
CASTEL VECCHIO, VERONA. CAN GRANDE STATUE
LOCATED
©Richard Murphy
We can see another example of that on the roof which similarly he cut from the
original commune wall seen here on the left. He cut the roof but he also, as it were,
skinned it, he took away the Roman tiles and contrived to suggest that there might
be an inner layer of copper underneath the tiles. This little excursion into some of
Scarpa's buildings is by no means a complete description of either him, his work or
the buildings. But in a way it's a foray into making connections all the time between
this unique creative artist, the extraordinary phenomena of the city of his birth and
his life. And how that phenomena can be re-interpreted and informed by 20th
century architecture and find expression in an architecture which is of its own time
but more particularly of its own place.
Related talks:
Richard Murphy Mark Mack Eric Owen Moss

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Scarpa, The Venetian | Richard Murphy | Pidgeon Digital 14/05/20, 15:45

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ST. MARK'S SQUARE, VENICE. FLOODED

Scarpa had the opportunity of encapsulating the idea of Venice in an exhibition he

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Richard Murphy Mark Mack Eric Owen Moss

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