From the Familiar to the Obscure

Carlo Scarpa: The Complete Buildings features 54 built works designed by Carlo Scarpa between the 1930s and his death in 1978, with some of the later works completed posthumously by collaborators. That is a dozen more works than Sergio Los's Carlo Scarpa: An Architectural Guide, published by Arsenale Editrice in 1995, meaning Cemal Emden's collection of photographs goes beyond the publicly visible and visitable projects designed by Scarpa. As such, The Complete Buildings also includes houses and other private spaces that required a bit of time and effort on the part of the photographer to gain access to and shoot. The results are rewarding, yielding many beautiful, and at times unexpected, views of Scarpa's buildings, interiors, landscapes, and monuments. Carlo Scarpa: The Complete Buildings was edited by Emiliano Bugatti, who provides a short introduction, and includes a comprehensive essay and project descriptions by Jale N. Erzen. But the stars of the book are Emden's photographs.

The 54 projects in The Complete Buildings are organized chronologically (by start date) and presented on between two and sixteen pages each. If we apply the logic that more pages equals more famous, the sixteen pages for the Brion Tomb make it Scarpa's most famous work, if not the most remarkable, poetic, and any other apt qualifier. Scarpa worked on the L-shaped complex in San Vito d’Altivole from 1969 until his death (he is actually buried in a corner of the cemetery), making it his last major work completed in his lifetime. 

Enclosed by battered concrete walls of Scarpa's design, the family Brion Tomb complex features an entrance vestibule connected to the existing cemetery, pools of water, a meditation pavilion, a chapel, an arching structure housing Giuseppe and Onorina Brion that Scarpa called an “arcosolium,” and a family tomb covered by a heavy concrete roof. The numerous elements are united by the landscape but also Scarpa's geometries and treatment of architectural details, many of which were present in Scarpa's previous works.

Fourteen pages are devoted to the Olivetti Showroom, easily Scarpa's most visible work, given that it sits behind the arcades on Piazza San Marco in Venice. Behind the stone panels, glass storefront, and woven metal gate, Scarpa managed to insert a mezzanine in the 4-meter (13-foot) tall space, making a shallow stair leading to it the star of the interior. The stone treads appear to float above each other, while their varying widths enabled some of them to be used for the display of typewriters and other Olivetti products. Since 2011 the Olivetti Showroom has been entrusted to FAI - Fondo per L’Ambiente Italiano, which uses the space to host exhibitions and other events.

Verona is home to two major projects carried out by Scarpa, the most famous being the Museo di Castelvecchio, the restoration of a castle and its transformation into a museum. Scarpa worked on it in two phases across three decades, achieving what Jale Erzen describes in the book as “a perfect synthesis of art and architecture as well as of history and the present.” Scarpa's approach, which revealed the castle's layers of historical interventions, is displayed to its fullest in the covered outdoor space where the Cangrande equestrian statue sits on a concrete pedestal next to a bridge connecting two parts of the castle-turned-museum.

A ten-minute walk from the Castelvecchio, past the city's preserved Roman amphitheater, is the Banca Popolare di Verona, also called Palazzo Scarpa and now the headquarters of Banco BPM. Scarpa started the building in 1973 and its construction was completed after his death by Arrigo Rudi, an architect from Verona who also worked with him on the Castelvecchio. (Scarpa never received an architecture license so legally had to work with other architects to realize buildings.) Scarpa renovated the existing building and designed an addition. The facade of the latter has “an almost postmodern expression,” in Erzen's words, given the various shapes and distribution of its windows.

Gracing the cover of The Complete Buildings is not one of the four famous projects described above, but instead the Gavina Showroom in Bologna. Employing the circular motifs that Scarpa also incorporated in the Brion Tomb, the Banca Popolare di Verona, and other projects, the showroom for the modern furniture company sits behind round and double-circle windows set into an impressive concrete storefront. Rough outside, the interior is richly textured and colored in wood, plaster, and mosaic.

Scarpa's residential commissions are not as well known as his commercial, cultural, and cemetery projects, but most famous among them is surely Villa Ottolenghi, which architectural historian Manfredo Tafuri considered one of Scarpa's masterpieces. Located on the eastern shore of Lake Garda, the house was completed by Giuseppe Tommasi and Guido Pietropoli after Scarpa's death. Zoning restrictions led Scarpa to push the building down into the earth, resulting in almost cavernous interiors beneath a heavy roof that doubled as a terrace. The most memorable detail in the house is the nine round striated columns that support the roof and organize the interior.

Scarpa's only built work outside of Italy is in Switzerland: the Zentner House in Zurich, designed for the widow of Angelo Masieri, one of Scarpa's associates. The commission was the transformation of an existing house, so there were minimal changes to the front and side facades. Changes to the elevation facing the garden were more dramatic, with large expanses of glass and Scarpa's signature mosaic bands set into concrete. The living room, turned into a double-height space by Scarpa, connects directly to the garden.

Designed before the Zentner House, the Villa Veritti in Udine was commissioned by Luigi Veritti, a lawyer who was the second cousin of Masieri, Scarpa's collaborator who tragically died in 1952. Scarpa designed a semicircular plan, with a curved wall facing south and a wall with wood-framed windows facing a garden to the south. The house has undergone numerous alterations, per the book, though certain details, including the concrete steps of the spiral stair connecting the three floors, are recognizably Scarpa.

Before Angelo Masieri's death in 1952, Scarpa's collaborator was working on the design of a tomb for the Veritti family, with whom he was related. Scarpa completed the Veritti Tomb after Masieri's death, though Jale Erzen admits that “although the final work has many typical Scarpian features, how much of the design belongs to which architect is uncertain.” An overall rectilinear form with round openings and canopy are early examples of the circular motif that will become present in many of Scarpa's later designs.

This brief tour through Carlo Scarpa: The Complete Buildings ends with one of the many two-page projects: the courtyard of the Grand Hotel Minerva, a historic hotel on the central Piazza Santa Maria Novella in Florence. I thought I knew about every one of Scarpa's projects before flipping through The Complete Buildings, but the photographs of the courtyard's brick walls with dramatically protruding bricks and diamond-shape windows are new to me — and are one of many surprises resulting from Cemal Emden's prolonged efforts to document Scarpa's complete works.