on the line of the horizon: architecture between earth and

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7/2015 - pp 4–15 Journal of Comparative Cultural Studies in ArchitectureJCCS-a

ABSTRACTCarlo Scarpa is one of the best-known and most studied modern architects; the bibliography on his works is vast and exhaustive. Despite the undeni-ably positive critical reception of his work, however, approaching the complex world of his forms is nei-ther easy nor immediate. The singular nature of his built spaces and the originality of his famous construction details have often left him open to accusations of sterile and self-referential formal-ism. This picture of a refined artist isolated in his ivory tower has long overshadowed his work as an architect. In fact, Carlo Scarpa was a perceptive intellectual and an artist sensitive to all aspects of the contemporary world. In his long career as an architect, he constantly sought to reinterpret the legacy of the classical tradition, blending it with the most stimulating ideas drawn from his great inter-est in international artistic experimentation and the cultures of the Far East.

The poetry of Scarpa’s work springs not only from the geometrical rigour of his forms but also from his acute sensitivity towards immaterial aspects of architecture such as light and colour, the sky and the horizon. This article contains the preliminary results of a long study of the original documents in the architect’s personal archive. It will focus in par-ticular on the relationship between architecture and the landscape, developed in a particularly intense cycle of mature works comprising the extension to the Canova plaster museum and the monumental cemetery for the Brion family. In both cases, it would be hard to describe Scarpa’s works simply as “buildings”: in them, open spaces and the rap-port with the sky and the landscape are almost as important as the solid parts of the structure. Scarpa arranges the various elements of the construction by orienting them towards the natural landscape in search of an intimate and creative relationship with the great artistic tradition of the Veneto. The plaster museum is a space projected wholly towards the landscape, inspired by the paintings of Lotto and Canova’s classical legacy. The Brion cemetery, by contrast, is a garden-building that blends oriental influences and Western art to offer a captivating array of visual experiences created by sculptural objects and structured spaces. Here Scarpa plays explicitly with the fine line of the horizon, cutting the built volume at the exact height of viewers’ eyes, and thus aligning, on the edge of the bound-ary wall, objects near and far that resonate with his architectural forms. The walled space embraces the changeability of the sky and the light, which become the true protagonists of the architectural work, following in the footsteps of an experimenta-tion that runs from Giorgione to Le Corbusier.

In the plaster museum, the altitude of +1.37 m marks ground level; in the Brion cemetery, eye level is set at +1.62 m. Between these two extremes, Scarpa calibrates his architectural landscapes al-most like optical devices, to see into the distance

Gianluca FREDIANI

On the Line of the Horizon: Architecture Between Earth and Sky.Carlo Scarpa: the Canova Plaster Museum (1955-1957) and the Brion Ce-metery (1969-1978).

Entlang des Horizonts: Architektur zwischen Himmel und Erde.Carlo Scarpa: die Gipsothek von Canova (1955-1957) und der Brion Friedhof (1969 - 1978)

without being seen. The magnificent obsession with perfect sight” is in him so compelling and fundamental that it appears to demand a constant reference point from which to measure the dimen-sional variations transcribed into the stratified world of his forms: the horizon. Scarpa thus shows us that architecture is the sublime play of materials arrange above and below the line of the horizon.

KEYWORDSScarpa, horizon, landscape, Brion

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Entlang des Horizonts: Architektur zwischen Himmel und Erde.Carlo Scarpa: die Gipsothek von Canova (1955-1957) und der Brion Friedhof (1969 - 1978) Gianluca Frediani

INHALTCarlo Scarpa zählt unbestrittenen zu den Meistern der modernen Architektur, die Bibliografie seiner Bauten und Projekte ist umfassend und tiefgehend. Trotz der fachlichen Anerkennung seiner Arbeit als Architekt ist die Annäherung an sein komplexes Werk weder leicht noch unmittelbar.

Die Einzigartigkeit der von ihm geschaffenen Räume und die Originalität seiner für ihn typischen Konstruktionsdetails haben ihm oft dem Vorwurf ausgesetzt, einen selbstbezogenen Formalismus zu schaffen. Dieses Bild des eigenwilligen Künstlers blieb lange an seiner Person als Architekt haften. Carlo Scarpa war jedoch im Gegenteil ein scharfsin-niger Intellektueller und ein für alle Formen seiner Gegenwart sensibler Künstler. Während seiner langen Karriere hat er stetig versucht, das Erbe der klassischen Tradition neu zu interpretieren. Er setzte es jenen Einflüssen aus, die in seiner großen Passion für experimentelle Werke der internationa-len Kunst und für Kulturen aus Fernost fußte.

Die Poesie seiner Arbeit zeigt sich nicht nur in der Geometrie der Formen, sondern auch in der Sensi-bilität gegenüber den immateriellen Elementen der Architektur, wie Licht und Farben, Himmel und Ho-rizont. Das vorliegende Essay nimmt Resultate aus dem intensiven Studium von Originaldokumenten des persönlichen Archivs des Architekten vorweg. Das Hauptaugenmerk liegt dabei vor allem in der Beziehung zwischen Architektur und Landschaft: die Erweiterung der Gipsothek von Canova und das monumentale Grabmal der Familie Brion. In beiden Fällen ist es schwierig die Arbeiten von Scarpa als „Gebäude“ zu bezeichnen, da bei beiden der offe-ne Raum in Beziehung zu Himmel und Landschaft ebenso stark ist wie die Bauwerke selbst. Scarpa ordnet die konstruktiven Elemente so an, dass sich deren Aufmerksamkeit auf das Panorama richtet, auf der Suche nach einer intimen und kreativen Beziehung mit der großen künstlerischen Tradition Venetiens.

Die Gipsothek hat einen gänzlich auf die Landschaft fokussierten Raum, der von den Werken von Lo-renzo Lotto und vom klassischen Erbe des Antonio Canova inspiriert ist. Das Grabmal Brion hingegen - ein gebauter Garten - steht zwischen den Ein-flüssen aus dem Orient und der abendländischen Kunst, spielt mit der optischen Wahrnehmung und vereint ein spannungsreiches Miteinander skulptu-raler Objekte und gebauter Räume. Scarpa arbeitet unmissverständlich mit der sensiblen Horizontli-nie und positioniert das gebaute Volumen präzise auf Augenhöhe. Nah und weit entfernte Objekte werden an die Kante der Umfassungsmauer an-einandergereiht, so dass diese in Resonanz mit der Architektur treten. Der umbaute Raum nimmt die Veränderlichkeit des Himmels und des Lichts auf, die zu den wahren Protagonisten der Architektur werden, den Spuren einer Entwicklung folgend, die von Giorgione bis Le Corbusier führt.

Bei der Gipsothek kennzeichnet die Höhenmarke von +1,37 m das Niveau des Fußbodens; beim Grabmal Brion fixiert die Höhenmarke von +1,62 m die Augenhöhe. Zwischen diesen Extremen rich-tet Scarpa seine architektonische Landschaft wie optische Vorrichtungen aus, um weit zu sehen ohne gesehen zu werden. Diese Obsession nach dem „perfekten Sehen“ ist für ihn so zwingend, dass ihm die Notwendigkeit eines konstanten Referenzpunk-tes vorgeschrieben scheint, eine Konstante, von der aus die unterschiedlichen Dimensionen gemessen

werden können: der Horizont. Scarpa zeigt uns so, dass die Architektur das sublime, feine Spiel der Anordnung architektonischer Elemente unter und über der Horizontlinie ist.

SCHLAGWORTE Scarpa, Horizont, Landschaft, Brion

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On the Line of the Horizon: Architecture Between Earth and Sky. Carlo Scarpa: the Canova Plaster Museum (1955-1957) and the Brion Cemetery (1969-1978).Gianluca Frediani

Fig. 1:Glass by Scarpa in the collec-tion of the Museo della rarità - Carlo Scarpa (Monselice).

1 Tentori, F. (1958). Pro-getti di Carlo Scarpa: casa Veritti a Udine e casa Taddei a Venezia. Casabella-continuità, 222, 15-20; Ragghianti, C. L. (1959). La “Crosera de piazza” di Carlo Scarpa. Zodiac, 4, 128-147; Bettini, S. (1960). L’architettura di Carlo Scarpa. Zodiac, 6, 140-187.

2 Dal Co, F. & Mazzariol, G. (eds, 1984). Carlo Scarpa. Opera completa. Electa, Mi-lan; Beltramini, G., Forster K. W. & Marini P. (eds, 2000). Carlo Scarpa. Mostre e Musei 1944|1976. Case e Paesaggi 1972|1978. Electa, Milan. 3 Frediani, G. (2014). Quote ed orizzonti. Carlo Scarpa: paesaggi veneti. Monograph in press in the series DIAP Print / Teorie, pub-lished by Quodlibet, Macerata.

4 Buchanan, P. (1985). Gardens of Death and Dreams. The Architectural Review, 1063, 59-59.

5 Cited in: Semi, F. (2010). a lezione con Carlo Scarpa. Cicero, Venice, 256; from the lecture on 18 Febru-ary 1976.

6 On this see: Lanza-rini, O. (2003). Carlo Scarpa. L’architetto e le arti. Marsilio, Venice.

7 Author’s transcription from the text of the lecture held at the Vienna Academy (1976).

Writing about Carlo Scarpa is a challenging task. The bibliography on him is vast, his works have been repeatedly published in all the major interna-tional journals and his critical fortunes have risen rapidly since a few years after his sudden death (1978). The first in-depth critical studies1 on his work as an architect and artist appeared in the form of long essays in various Italian magazines, espe-cially after he was awarded the prestigious Olivetti prize (1956), a turning point for his professional career and artistic repute. A few years after his death, systematic monographs2 provided a broad interpretative framework; these were followed by detailed studies of his main built works. In 2001, the Italian state purchased the architect’s entire archive, now held in the collections of MAXXI – Museo delle arti del XXI secolo (Rome) and at the Centro Scarpa, established in collaboration with CISA - Centro Internazionale di Studi di Architettura Andrea Palladio (Vicenza), at the Treviso State Ar-chive. Most of his drawings are now freely available online thanks to the important digitization project run by MAXXI in collaboration with other institu-tions. The systematic reorganization of the Scarpa archive offers scholars access to the vast quantity of materials belonging to the architect, including his private papers, opening up new and interest-ing perspectives on even his best-known works. This essay, anticipating a broader research project currently in press,3 is based on research conducted on the original documents and drawings held in the Roman archives and on the results of repeated on-site measuring campaigns. As such, most of the drawings published here are little known or previ-ously unpublished.

Over time, judgements of Scarpa have conflicted. Even in the 1970s, as his fame grew rapidly, many authoritative critics saw in his works an excess of self-referential formalism alongside the elegance of his structural solutions.4 However, this recurrent judgement is the result of a misunderstanding and demonstrates the difficulty of understanding Scarpa’s language and penetrating the world of his ideas. Scarpa’s presumed formalism lies entirely in the novelty of his inventions and in most cases de-rives from superficial readings of his work. Scarpa’s difficult personality, his shy public persona and ten-dency to use dialect, eventually came to underpin the facile and picturesque image of a brilliant but isolated craftsman, shut up in his ivory tower and shackled to old, even obsolete construction tech-niques. Nothing could be further from the truth. As I will attempt to demonstrate, beneath the mask of an unworldly solitude Scarpa was a highly cultured architect with a vast network of cultural relation-ships that led him to study not only the ideas of the contemporary world but also the legacy of the classical tradition in all its profundity. Perusing his personal documents, we immediately discover his sensitivity to a vast range of influences, from art to literature, music to poetry, within the broader cultural scene stretching between Europe and the Far East. His highly expressive forms, then, are not the result of extreme narcissism, but the outcome of a long and painstaking study of the living body of architecture and its construction principles. Scarpa works with construction materials at least as much as immaterial features like air, light and colour. His acute sensitivity towards the illusory and the changeable probably derives from a long apprenticeship in the Venini glassworks, modelling glass pastes and thicknesses in the quest for new forms (Fig. 1). Traces of this fervent work, of the laborious process by which he refined his ideas are

to be found in the densely packed design papers for his projects, mostly in his own hand, full of sketches, recollections and reflections. Examining just a few of the thousands of sheets composing his archive shows that Scarpa was a highly acute observer of forms, an architect-painter who in-terpreted and practiced architecture in a highly personal way as a “visual art”. His working sheets are impressive palimpsests in which variants and ideas, references and traces accumulate on the paper, stratified like archaeological remains in the soil of an ancient city.

“… I am better at expressing myself when I see something, I need to see: I wouldn’t dream of love but I would fall in love through sight!”.5

Scarpa was an inveterate and tireless draftsman; in many ways an insatiable perfectionist of the drawn sign as a mental impression. His artistic training at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice allowed him to study freely the principles of spatial composition starting from the classical tradition and techniques for working with materials. But the classical roots of his work do not stop short at the simple analysis of the past; they become a dispassionate search for the new, in close contact with contemporary trends in art and architecture. This continuous oscillation between the academic tradition and avant-garde artistic experimentation, presented in the many editions of the Venice Biennale,6 shows the original-ity of his way of working on materials and space. In modern times, no other architect has achieved Carlo Scarpa’s precise and refined control over ma-terials, proportions and perspectives. His spaces are built around skilful, calculated intersections between vision and matter, the corporeal and the invisible… to the extent that, if we study his works in depth, they seem to be made more of elusive materials than of concrete substances.

In front of his works we cannot avoid, even at first glance, being captivated by the perfection of his delicate construction mechanisms, of their details and the joints connecting the various parts and evoking, in the contrast between light and heavy elements, the infinite distance between the differ-ent dimensions of matter and space. In his works, Scarpa developed a particular sensitivity to the small-scale: “if I may, a little idea of mine: great works of art are always small in size”.7 Limited di-mensions gave him the opportunity to study the relationship between elements, up to that final limit where forms approach perfection. Examining his fine chisel-work, the textures of his facings, our gaze is almost inexplicably bewitched. We are caught up in a web of slight shifts, subtle artifices that lead our eyes to wander in far-off and unknown

Fig. 1

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Fig. 2: Brion Cemetery, mouldings in reinforced concrete.

Fig. 3:Brion Cemetery, mechanical object inserted into the rein-forced concrete.

Fig. 4: Brion Cemetery, view from the chapel.

Fig. 5: Brion Cemetery, view towards the bell-tower of the church of S. Vito.

8 Among the specific pub-lications on the theme of the landscape in Scarpa’s work I note: Doods, G. (2002). Desir-ing Landscapes / Landscapes of desire: Scopic and Somatic in the Brion Sanctuary, in Doods G. & Tavernor R. (eds). Body and Building. The MIT Press, Cambridge Mass.-London, 238-257.

9 On the extension to the plaster museum at Pos-sagno see: Marini, P. (2000). Ampliamento della Gipsoteca Canoviana, Possagno (Treviso), 1955-57, in Beltramini, G., For-ster, K. W. & Marini, P. (eds). Carlo Scarpa. Mostre e Musei 1944|1976. Case e Paesaggi 1972|1978, Electa, Milan, 136-145.

directions in a profound exploration of matter. This sublime corporeality of Scarpa’s architecture is at first sight the most striking aspect of his work. All students of architecture are familiar with the staircase in the Olivetti store at San Marco or the concrete mouldings in the Brion cemetery (Fig. 2 & 3). In time, his bravura pieces have become iconic works of modern architecture, celebrated and stud-ied from Japan to America. The beauty of these pieces has become almost a trademark, leading to the frequent misunderstanding that sees Scarpa as a master of the small scale, of the artefact, as if he were an artisan and not an architect. However, the beauty of his delicate mechanisms, his joints or his nodes, should not deceive us to the extent that we ignore his ideas about architecture, his per-ceptive visions of space. The attention that Scarpa devotes to seeking detailed solutions, to connecting pieces and surfaces is merely a superficial layer of precious tangibility cladding the clarity of his spatial concepts… although, often, the beauty of this cladding risks distracting us and making our eyes linger exclusively on the close-up, superficial, relations between things. Scarpa’s compositional ability lies not only in material sophistry and the delicacy of his joints, but attains a far larger di-mension that makes the perception of distance, the calculated gaze towards the horizon one of the strong points of his work (Fig. 4 & 5). Scarpa was certainly an inspired singer of matter and a subtle poet of the immaterial. Often forced by the vicis-situdes of his complex professional life to work in already defined buildings, within forms that had already been described, he resolved this difficult rapport with pre-existing structures by establishing new relationships with both the natural8 and urban landscape. In his hands, every cut, every opening in the walls becomes an opportunity to capture dis-tant – or very distant – objects and thus construct fleeting perspectives, open up unexpected vistas and, ultimately, create new landscapes.

Scarpa, in short, forces us to look simultaneously near and far, and to constantly relate the scale of the small detail with that of the outside environ-ment, the wider context, describing unpredictable topographies with his architectural elements. The

impact of his spaces lies precisely in this purely visual contrast, in which vistas are compressed and dilated, that in some specific works seems to give concrete expression to the dream of capturing air or even the horizon… by lining up exactly along it nearby objects and distant landscape features, as if they were all independent figures or, perhaps, artefacts in an exhibition. This relationship with the immaterial, with the lightness of air and light, with the changeability of shadows and noises, sounds and even perfumes, represent the field of action developed by Scarpa in many of his masterpieces, slowly defining some recurrent compositional fig-ures that faithfully accompany the evolution of his work as an architect for decades.

In this context, a particularly intense period is represented by the series of works created over about twenty years in the upper March of Treviso around Asolo, where Scarpa lived for a number of years. His long familiarity with these places gave Scarpa an intense awareness of the richly complex landscape of the foothills, surrounded by mountain ranges and opening onto a broad plain stretching down to the Venetian lagoon. In this diverse terri-tory, Scarpa was responsible first for the extension to the Canova plaster museum at Possagno (1955-1957), the first of his mature works, before his long involvement with the site for the Brion cemetery (1969-1978), ending only with his sudden death (Fig. 6, 7 & 8). In this area of the Veneto on the boundary between the plain and the Alpine foot-hills, scattered with imposing aristocratic villas and overlooked by the sharp profile of mount Grappa, Scarpa found an ideal landscape in which to work, and, at the same time, a family and spiritual home. Here he found it easy to retrace the stratified signs of the work of Giorgione and Palladio, of Lotto and Longhena… evidence of an uninterrupted artistic tradition of which he felt himself to be an intimate part and interpreter. The roughly twenty years that separate the Canova plaster museum from the Brion cemetery in them-selves suffice to underline the enormous formal differences in their spaces. In the plaster museum9, between the walls of the 19th-century hall and the

Fig. 2 Fig. 3

Fig. 4 Fig. 5

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10 Cited in: Semi, F. (2010). a lezione con Carlo Scarpa. Cicero, Venice, 197; from the lecture on 23 January 1976.

Fig. 6:Canova Plaster Museum, over-all plan (a = Lazzari hall, b = entrance, c = upper room, d = room of the Three Graces, e = terrace with pool, f = open-air corridor, g = stables, h = canopy, i = service court, l = loggia, m = garden, n = house of Canova).

Fig. 7:Carlo Scarpa, Canova Plaster Museum, preliminary study with the stables, plan 1:100 (MAXXI 047985, detail).

Fig. 8:Canova Plaster Museum, Scar-pa’s extension (photo 1958).

edge of the country road, Scarpa places a series of smooth bright white surfaces reminiscent of the wall-slabs of Mies van der Rohe’s early Berlin villas. At the centre of the museum space a surprising vista opens up, moving towards an almost theatri-cal backdrop, a fragment of an ideal landscape, defined as in a Renaissance painting. Scarpa him-self who mentioned a painting by Lorenzo Lotto as a source of inspiration in a later academic lecture:

“Finally, let us talk about the Three Graces, a won-derful, superb group. I think I have brought in Venetian painting and that there is an aspect of what we could call ‘the Veneto’ here. I remember I made a little perspectival sketch to indicate a lit-tle, light, tone of green and I remember thinking of a painting by Lorenzo Lotto. In the upper corner of the painting, in the only portrait by Lotto in the Gallerie dell’Accademia, there are a couple brush strokes, no more than that, a tiny fragment in total: a hint of sky in the background, a little window with a bit of green“10 (Fig. 9).

With this recollection, we return to the complex world of Scarpa’s cultural references; he draws in-spiration both from the works of the masters of the Modern Movement and from those of the great-

est Venetian artists. His broad cultural background includes painting and sculpture, architecture and literature, making it extremely difficult to recon-struct the origin of some ideas and the paths along which he matured. At Possagno, enclosed in an inauspicious place, Scarpa designs a building as if it were a Renaissance painting. The figures in the foreground are those modelled by Canova, in plaster and clay, but the background underlines the explosion of perspectival space towards the out-line of the Asolo hills, as if to animate a calculated “painting”. Scarpa dematerializes the wall of the famous “syringe-shaped” hall of the Three Graces, leaving only a fragile glass diaphragm to separate the inside and outside (Fig. 10). The pool of water on the terrace reflects light, creating flashes that move across the white walls of the museum (Fig. 11); the backlight, reinforced by these flickers, is designed to dissolve the corporeal limits of the building and allow our gaze to extend through the air, deepening our perception to the extreme limit, the hills silhouetted in the distance. The physical dimension of the gallery gradually fades away in a type of space that we could describe as “atmos-pheric”, since within it the evaporation of matter into light seems to directly recall a refined form of pictorial “sfumato”. More than with stone, Scarpa

Fig. 6 Fig. 7

Fig. 8

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Fig. 9: Canova Plaster Museum, the “syringe-shaped” room with the Three Graces (photo 1958).

Fig. 10: Canova Plaster Museum, the “open-air corridor” (photo 1958).

Fig. 11: Canova Plaster Museum, the glass wall and the pool.

Fig. 12:Carlo Scarpa, sketch with Vil-la Lippomano (MAXXI 04795 back, detail).

Fig. 13:Villa Lippomano, plan.

Fig. 14:Villa Lippomano, exterior.

11 Editorial article (1958). Ampliamento della Gipsoteca Canoviana a Possagno (1956-1957). Casabella-continuità, 222, 8-15. The drawings pub-lished here have since been lost. Because of later altera-tions, the fine photographs published in the magazine are the only images that convey the original meaning of these places and the correct relation-ship between the rooms of the museum and the landscape.

12 Over time the rooms in the plaster museum have undergone slight modifica-tions, especially as concerns the museum display and the entrance area. The surrounding landscape has been profoundly altered and even the imme-diate surroundings of the museum have been severely compromised by a series of infelicitous building projects.

13 The direct knowledge of Villa Lippomano should be re-lated to the unhappy outcome of the project for villa Zoppas (1952-1953), intended to be built in the same area.

14 “Barchessa” is the Ve-netian dialect term for a rural service building, typical of the architecture of aristocratic vil-las.

15 In these lines I re-peat some ideas recently discussed in the lecture: “La gipsoteca canoviana di Carlo Scarpa: nuovi materiali”, held at the Museo Gipsoteca Antonio Canova in October 2014.

builds space with light and air, dilating the modest physical area available through the perception of nature, which aspires to become the protagonist of a new landscape, a cultured landscape. The photo-graphs of the plaster museum published in 1958, when it was presented in the prestigious pages of <<Casabella-continuità>>11 perfectly render the luminous and pictorial quality of Scarpa’s space; today, sadly, after the unfortunate alterations made over time,12 it can no longer elicit the same intense visual experience that it once did.

Studying the original drawings has yielded some interesting work sheets, full of notes and sketches, indicative of the complexities of Scarpa’s design process. This is not the right place to deal in depth with the many aspects relating to the reading and interpretation of these hitherto unpublished materials, and I will simply note the fine sketch in which the architect compares the plan of the new plaster museum with the typological layout of a Venetian villa with which he was familiar,13 the 17th-century Villa Lippomano at San Vedemiano, attributed to Longhena. The striking feature of this graphic comparison is Scarpa’s reading of the ar-

chitectural structure of the Treviso villa, analysing the complex geometrical system generated by the intersection of the longitudinal and transverse axes, the main building and the barchessa14. It is this delicate compositional mechanism that creates a strong relationship with the landscape, thanks to a layout that, despite the many differences in lan-guage and style, is very similar to that adopted for the plaster museum.

This refined visual manipulation of the spaces of the plaster museum in relation to the landscape is reinforced by the close relationship with another important building linked to Canova’s artistic lega-cy: the nearby Temple of Canova15. This structure stands a short distance from the plaster museum on a raised terrace commanding broad views over the landscape of ridges and Alpine foothills stretch-ing towards Asolo and its plain. Walking through its elegant porch, one’s perception of the natural landscape is fragmented by the shafts of the Doric columns, which seem almost to create a sequence of stills of the panorama. The floor of the pronaos runs freely towards the horizon without interruption and only the trilithic structure of the temple frames

Fig. 9 Fig. 10 Fig. 11

Fig. 12

Fig. 13 Fig. 14

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16 Here Scarpa explic-itly cites the Canova temple, adopting the same solution for the floor: “I created a black and white design of triangles, as in the Temple of Canova, above Possagno…”, cited in: Semi, F. (2010). a lezione con Carlo Scarpa. Cicero, Venice, 199; from the lecture on 23 January 1976.

17 The reference 0.00 is in Lazzari’s 19th-century room. 18 For an accurate histori-cal reconstruction of the Brion cemetery project see: Zanchet-tin, V. (2005). Carlo Scarpa. Il complesso monumentale Brion. Marsilio, Venice. The text is accompanied by G. Berengo Gardin’s fine B/W photos taken in 1972 when the annexe was completed.

19 An industrialist from Treviso who died prematurely in 1968 after a very successful career in the field of applied electronics. 20 The Islamic influences on Scarpa’s architecture can easily be ascribed on the one hand to his literary knowledge of the topic, on the other to his direct experience in Sicily for the refurbishment of Palazzo Abatellis in Palermo (1953-1966). 21 Cited in: Semi, F. (2010). a lezione con Carlo Scarpa. Cicero, Venice, 258; from the lecture on 18 Febru-ary 1976.

Fig. 15:Canova Plaster Museum, the room of the Three Graces.

Fig. 16: Canova Plaster Museum, cut in the wall facing the stables.

Fig. 17:Canova Plaster Museum, sec-tion with the altitude +1.37 m, graphic processing of a draw-ing by Carlo Scarpa (MAXXI 047990, detail).

Fig. 18:Temple of Canova, the land-scape from the Doric porch.

the view, directing our gaze towards the landscape that we see passing before us as if through a se-quence of free windows. In the plaster museum, lower down but enjoying the same view, Scarpa cre-ates a situation similar to that of the temple above, creating a sort of binocular vision over the horizon. If we enter the new wing and align our gaze along the row of steel pillars, we simultaneously see two parallel visions of the landscape: the first, opening up between the old hall and the new building, in the “open-air corridor”16; the second, hosting the famous group with the Three Graces, in the central hall. This multiple vision, at different perspectival depths, is clearly presented as a reinterpretation of the fragmentary perception of the landscape from the temple porch. More obvious still is the similar-ity apparent in the two buildings between the floor of the pronaos and the complex arrangement of levels in the plaster museum, designed by Scarpa in a series of sketches and drawings. In his early studies for the enlargement, Scarpa intended to extend the rooms of the museum up to the wing of the so-called “stables”. He therefore placed the upper level17 of the floor at +1.37 m, organizing the subsequent height differences in a series of floors with raised edges sloping towards the ter-race with the pool. From here, the level rises to regain the “altitude” of +1.37 m precisely on the edge of the parapet of the terrace. The plan in the project section of 1955 accurately reconstructs this complex orographical situation. Inside the stables, we would thus find ourselves in an exactly identical situation to that of the Temple of Canova, with the floor-level aligned with the edge of the parapet in order to provide a view over the landscape without frames or limitations, projecting the space of the museum outside the box of its walls, towards the horizon (Fig. 17).

At Possagno, Scarpa works with the immaterial ele-ments of architecture, with air and light, the sky and the horizon. This delicate design mechanism reappears as a dominant theme in what is perhaps his most famous work: the Brion cemetery at S. Vito di Altivole18. For the wealthy family of Giuseppe Brion19, Scarpa designed a monumental cemetery whose conception in many ways departed from Ital-ian tradition. On the edge of the old public cemetery of S. Vito, in an L-shaped area of about 2000 m2, Scarpa designed and built a sort of “ideal garden” that from the outset seems to contain many dif-ferent characteristics, as if it were a summa of recollections of numerous places. The serene space surrounding the graves and the chapel, the perfect equilibrium of the parts and above all the inten-sity of its visual rapport with the landscape places Scarpa’s cemetery halfway between an Islamic garden20 and a hortus conclusus. The contrast with the adjacent public cemetery, on which it turns its back and with which it almost entirely rejects any relationship, is underlined by the deliberate decision to make this place a privileged point from which to observe the natural landscape. Scarpa thus raises a sloping boundary wall separating the cemetery from the fields:

“Among other things, I should say this at once, the division made in this way was made simply to ensure that a person up here, putting his hands here and looking from here would see the whole panorama beneath; and that from outside, from the countryside where people work with oxen, with tractors and so on, no-one can see in.”21

The wall serves not only to protect and isolate the garden, but above all to create a precise visual boundary by establishing, with its height, the po-sition of an artificial horizon. The upper edge of

Fig. 15 Fig. 16 Fig. 18

Fig. 17

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Fig. 19: Canova Plaster Museum, plan with the double perspective over the landscape, graphic processing of a (lost) drawing by Carlo Scarpa.

Fig. 20:Canova Plaster Museum, dou-ble views over the landscape.

Fig. 21: Brion Cemetery, view towards the church of S. Vito and Asolo castle.

Fig. 22:Brion Cemetery, overall plan (a = chapel, b = cemetery of the religious, c = entrance to the chapel, d = chapel of the relatives, e = arcosolium, f = upper lawn, g = large pool, h = meditation pavilion, i = propylaia, l = gate, m = pub-lic cemetery, n = entrance to the cemetery with tree-lined avenue).

Fig. 23:Brion Cemetery, altitude of +1.62 m, section of the boundary wall with female figure (MAXXI 003081, detail).

22 Cited in: Semi, F. (2010). a lezione con Carlo Scarpa. Cicero, Venice, 61; from the inaugural lecture for the academic year 1963-1964.

23 See : Pietropoli, G. (1983). Invitació al viatge. Quaderns d’architectura i ur-banisme, 158, 4-8.

24 The path seems to appear out of nowhere and suddenly end against the boundary wall. On the logic of its form and position, despite the large quantity of informa-tion and evidence on the Brion tomb worksite, we have no ac-curate information. Its nature still remains a small mystery …

the wall is at eye-level for visitors, invited by this fascinating alignment of levels to look towards the sharp outline of the distant mountains, the bell-tower of the church of San Vito, the Asolo castle, the tops of the tallest trees lined up along the top of the concrete wall.

To build the Brion cemetery, Scarpa went through a long and difficult design process that forced him to measure, correct and remeasure all the parts of a composition that evidently aspires to perfection. To study the original papers held in the Architecture Archives of MAXXI is to immerse oneself in a sea of sheets containing the traces of Scarpa’s superhu-man efforts. It is telling that he begins the worksite with the boundary wall: the separation between the cemetery and the rest of the countryside is absolutely necessary to enclose the space, restrict its size and calculate the reciprocal effects of its elements. From the first study sketches, Scarpa’s papers present elegant female nudes that accom-pany the forms of the architectural work, still in theprocess of definition, marking with the height of their gaze the exact point of the artificial horizon. Scarpa examines numerous variants for the bound-ary wall, whose height varies within the range of a few centimetres, until it is definitively set at the fateful altitude of +1.62 m.

“The height of the eyes of an average man is almost always around a metre and sixty, in other words about half of an architectural value.”22

Fixed at +1.62 m, the petrified horizon visible from within the Brion cemetery forms an ideal bound-ary between two contrasting worlds: the enclosed garden and free nature, the inside and outside, life and death, the material weight of concrete and the aerial lightness of the sky. Along this horizon the distant signs of the landscape line up in an

orderly fashion; detached from the ground they become almost like artefacts in an exhibition, in-dependent figures that resonate with the sculptural forms of the elements created by the architect. The elastic curve of the arcosolium thus establishes a relationship with the outline of the mountains, the bell-tower of San Vito appears between gaps in the walls, Asolo castle represents a measuring point towards the horizon.

The entire system of the garden is calculated to form a camera obscura. As we arrive from the long cypress-lined avenue running west, we as-cend some steps (shifted slightly to the left23) to enter the so-called “propylaia”. Here, the reinforced concrete wall blocks our path, giving us a first open view of the landscape through two large circular oculi that intersect at exactly +1.62 m, thus lining up with the horizon created by the wall. We look to the left and the half-dark gallery of the propylaia opens up a deep vista aimed at the church of San Vito with its bell-tower. The low walls leading off the gallery continue to line up with the horizon at the magical elevation of +1.62 m.

Here we are at the highest point of the complex. Scarpa adopts a sophisticated artifice, completely raising this area of the garden by 0.75 m. This change in altitude gives us an elevated view com-pared to ground level; it raises us up sufficiently to see into the distance. The decision to raise the ground level is linked not only to Scarpa’s innate aversion to monotonous levels but probably also to the allure of similar expedients adopted in the Palladian villas of this area. In the nearby Villa Emo we find a similar detachment created by a broad stepped ramp linking the first floor of the building to the ground. Is it a coincidence that in the Brion cemetery, too, the main path through the garden, with its enigmatic form24, is also a ramp? Descend-

Fig. 19 Fig. 20 Fig. 21

Fig. 22 Fig. 23

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25 I refer here to my early essay: Frediani, G. (1995). Policromia architettonica. Regole e illusione. Gangemi, Roma.

26 As is known, Scarpa travelled to Japan for the first time in 1969, just when he was beginning to work for the Brion family. On this issue see the detailed essay: Pierconti, M. J. K. (2007). Carlo Scarpa e il Giappone, Electa, Milan.

Fig. 24:Brion Cemetery, the two oc-uli intersecting at a height of +1.62 m.

Fig. 25:Carlo Scarpa, Brion Ceme-tery, study for the “propylaia” (MAXXI 002870, detail).

Fig. 26:Brion Cemetery, view from the “propylaia” towards the “arco-solium”.

Fig. 27:Brion Cemetery, the central path, lowering of the point of view.

Fig. 28:Carlo Scarpa at the Brion cem-etery worksite (period photo).

Fig. 29:Giorgione, Castelfranco Altar-piece.

Fig. 30: Carlo Scarpa, Brion Cemetery, detail of the “propylaia” with figures and the horizon at +1.62 m (MAXXI 002506, detail).

Fig. 31:Carlo Scarpa, Brion Cemetery, study of the lines of vision in the “chapel” (MAXXI 002572).

ing along this path slowly alters the height of our gaze as we approach the boundary wall and the “relatives’ tombs”. In the few steps that separate us from the wall, all the magic of Scarpa’s design becomes apparent: if we descend just a few steps the view over the countryside vanishes… and our gaze slowly loses its reference points, capturing only the sky. The nature of the garden changes radically: previously a pair of binoculars pointed at the landscape it becomes, as if by magic, an enclosed space highly reminiscent of the Chambres exteriéures, built by Le Corbusier starting from his work at Pessac25.

The reference to Le Corbusier is not coincidental. Scarpa’s archive, as we have said, is revealing ever more numerous traces of his cultural refer-ence points and his broad artistic interests. Among the many images of particular interest here are the photos taken in the early 1950s during a visit to the Unité d’Habitation at Marseille, at the time still being completed. One image in particular im-mortalizes the famous roof-garden with its raised edge restricting the gaze, capturing the outline of the mountains behind, defining a scene that ap-pears to be a clear precedent for the design of the Brion cemetery. This reference again offers an insight into the complex world of citations re-constructed by Scarpa in his work, that does not even attempt to conceal his fondness for eastern civilizations, and in particular that of Japan26. His

inventive process involves an almost superhuman effort to condense into new forms all the stimuli and suggestions deriving from this world of references, so broad in time and space. The tension result-ing from this effort to recompose these disparate elements is evident in the Brion cemetery, finally allowing us to penetrate that formal complexity that has often seemed almost enigmatic. Whilst on the one hand Scarpa draws on Eastern motifs for some parts of the cemetery garden, he also betrays his close familiarity with its context, its traditions and its landscape. This is not restricted to the distant relationship with Villa Emo and the system of con-nections with the centuriation of Asolo, but also the affinities between the Brion cemetery and the ar-tistic tradition of the Veneto. Only a few kilometres away stands the cathedral of Castelfranco, home to a precious painting that was without doubt a reference point for Scarpa in his work for the Brion family. I refer to Giorgione’s famous altarpiece that, in many ways, anticipates the compositional theme and even some visual features of Scarpa’s work. In Giorgione’s painting, the space is divided in two by a tall red drape that prevents the figures from seeing the nearby landscape. The Madonna and child sit high up on a throne, above the scene. We, though, as viewers, enjoy a raised, intermediate point of view that allows us to observe both scenes from an external position. The space described by Giorgione is incredibly similar to the architectural structure of the Brion cemetery, not only for the

Fig. 24 Fig. 25

Fig. 26 Fig. 27 Fig. 28 Fig. 29

Fig. 30 Fig. 31

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27 Cited in: Semi, F. (2010). a lezione con Carlo Scarpa. Cicero, Venice, 268; from the lecture on 18 Febru-ary 1976.

Fig. 32:Brion cemetery, the large pool and the “propylaia”.

Fig. 33:Brion cemetery, the large pool and the “propylaia”.

Fig. 34:Carlo Scarpa, Brion Cemetery, study for the arrangement of the pool and the pavilion (MAXXI 004194).

Fig. 35:Carlo Scarpa at the Brion cem-etery worksite with the fore-man, Pietro Bozzetto (period photo).

Fig. 36:Carlo Scarpa, Brion cemetery, study for the peephole in the pavilion (MAXXI 004158).

resemblance of the fabric drape to the cemetery’s boundary wall, but above all for the radical con-trast between two different worlds: the artificial and calculated world of the dedicatory scene and the infinite and free world of surrounding nature. This unprecedented similarity with the Castelfranco altarpiece is a further demonstration of the richness and breadth of Scarpa’s cultural references (Fig. 29); he looked without inhibitions and confines to both the contemporary and the Renaissance worlds. He designs classical mouldings with modern materials and the appeal of his architecture lies precisely in this temporal and semantic separation that only his artistic creativity is able to overcome and pacify. The calculated relationship with the horizon, the wall height of +1.62 m, demonstrate Scarpa’s de-liberate intention to construct a landscape only half of which is made up of heavy materials, concrete and stone, whilst for the other half he draws upon the elusive qualities of light, sky and air. The cem-etery turns out to be a complex set of elements designed to be enclosed only by the firmament… by an infinitely variable sky that is an integral part of the architectural composition.

“For an architect the main thing in the world, in life, is to recognize the hours in the sky, the hours of the morning, the day, the night …”27.

In between these two dimensions is the implacable mark of the visual horizon, set at +1.62 m. Scarpa calculates this height with millimetrical precision and traces it coherently onto all the walls of the

complex. This is the height of the boundary wall but also of the web of oculi and low walls in the en-trances, the plaster panels on the boundary walls to the south but above all the row of mosaic tiles that prolongs the line of the horizon even where there is no longer anything to be seen, on the tall walls enclosing the large pool in the “meditation pavilion”. Here Scarpa skilfully creates a sense of disorienta-tion anticipated by the echoes of our footsteps on the paving slabs of the entrance and the sheen of water on the glass panel closing the entrance to the pavilion itself. As soon as we enter the pavilion, we suddenly lose vision: the side walls fall beneath the level of our visual horizon, in other words below +1.62 m, and we can only perceive the reflections of the water beneath and above, vague patches of sky. Scarpa blinds us, then, at the culmination of the path, making us lose, albeit for an instant, our traditional orientation and perceptual equilibrium. The only exception is the peephole opening towards the north, pointed at the elongated profile of the bell-tower of San Vito. Then, like lost wayfarers, we can only kneel and sit, like penitents, and in this gesture end the path to our spiritual meditation.

At Possagno and San Vito Scarpa creates two complexes that it would be hard to describe as “buildings” because the built part only forms half of each complete composition. Here architectural elements relate and resonate with natural fea-tures to define a landscape of universal beauty. The plaster museum, with its system of opaque and semi-transparent panels, and the cemetery, al-

Fig. 32

Fig. 33 Fig. 34

Fig. 35 Fig. 36

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Fig. 37:Carlo Scarpa, Brion cemetery, view with the pavilion, the pool and the line of the horizon (MAXXI 004194).

most a dissected volume, demonstrate the scale of sensitivity that Scarpa employed in the calculated interplay of real and illusory, natural and artificial. Both in the plaster museum and the cemetery, the architectural space is only completed outside the box of the walls, where the architect skilfully posi-tions the vanishing point and the line of the horizon, capturing in the web of reciprocal relationships all the elements of an idealized landscape. In this sophisticated modulation of light and shade, near and far, earth and sky, Scarpa again shows us the importance of visual control over individual parts. In the plaster museum, the level +1.37 m marks ground level; in the Brion cemetery, +1.62 m is at eye-level. Between these two extremes, Scarpa calibrates his architectural landscapes almost like optical devices, to see into the distance without being seen. The magnificent obsession with “perfect vision” is in him so compelling and fundamental that it seems to impose upon him the need for a constant reference point from which to measure the dimensional variations transcribed into the strati-fied world of his forms: the horizon: Scarpa thus shows us that architecture is the sublime play of materials arranged above and below the line of the horizon.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTThe author wishes to thank all those who have assisted him in his research, and especially Tobia Scarpa, Guido Pietropoli and Valeriano Pastor for their advice and direct testimony; Elisabetta Miche-lato, CCS - Centro Carlo Scarpa at the Treviso State Archive (Treviso) and Esmeralda Valente, MAXXI - Museo delle arti del XXI secolo Carlo Scarpa Archive (Rome), for their valuable scholarly collaboration.

Fig. 37

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Prof. Dr. Gianluca Frediani

Architect, born in 1961 in Naples (I), works and lives between Italy and Austria. Ass. Professor of Architectural Design at the University of Ferrara. PhD in Architectural Design at the Sapienza Uni-versity of Rome and at the University of Technology of Vienna. Professorship at the Institute for Baukunst at the University of Technology of Graz, where he is currently en-rolled as free Professor at the Institute for History of the City and Architecture. 2012 DAAD Fellowship, Research program “Architecture and Ruins”.

Scientific consultant for cul-tural and private institutions. He publishes extensively in scientific magazines and has participated in European re-search groups as co-ordinator or chief researcher. His works as architect have been pub-lished in several international reviews.

His main research interest is focalised on the theory of architectural and urban de-sign, and particularly on the transformation and reuse of buildings in historic context. At the Department of Archi-tecture of Ferrara he founded the ARCDES research unit consisting of researchers and experts whose activities range from strategies for urban and environmental regeneration to projects for social and public buildings.

Books and Monographs: architettura è (2011); Col-limazioni (2011); Paolo Soleri e Vietri (2000); Chiesa evangelica a Klosterneuburg (1998); Guide per progettare. Le Chiese (1997); Policromia architettonica. Regola e Illu-sione (1995); Ignazio Gardella e Ischia (1991).

Contact: [email protected] frg@unife

REFERENCESBeltramini, G., Forster K. W. & Marini, P. (eds, 2000). Carlo Scarpa.

Mostre e Musei 1944|1976. Case e Paesaggi 1972|1978. Electa, Milan.

Buchanan, P. (1985). Gardens of Death and Dreams. The Architec-tural Review, 1063, 54-59.

Dal Co, F. & Mazzariol, G. (eds, 1984). Carlo Scarpa. Opera completa. Electa, Milan.

Duboy, P. & Noever, P. (1989). The other city – Carlo Scarpa - Die andere Stadt. Ernst & Sohn, Berlin.

Fonatti, F. (1985). Elemente des bauens bei Carlo Scarpa. Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Wien.

Forster K. W. & Marini, P. (2005). Studi su Carlo Scarpa 2000-2002. Marsilio, Venice.

Futagawa, Y. (1988). Carlo Scarpa Selected Drawnings. GA Docu-ments, 21, 46-48.

Lanzarini, O. (2003). Carlo Scarpa. L’architetto e le arti. Marsilio, Venice.

Los, S. (1994). Carlo Scarpa. Taschen, Köln.

Pierconti, M. J. K. (2007). Carlo Scarpa e il Giappone, Electa, Milan.

Pietropoli, G. (1983). Invitació al viatge. Quaderns d’architectura i urbanisme, 158, 4-8.

(2007). Memoriae Causa – Carlo Scarpa e il complesso monu-mentale Brion 1969-1978. Fondazione Benetton, Treviso.

Portoghesi, P. (1979). In ricordo di Carlo Scarpa. Controspazio, 3, 2-5.

Semi, F. (2010). A lezione con Carlo Scarpa. Cicero, Venice.

Tafuri, M. (1975). Les Muses inquiétantes. L’architecture d’aujourd’hui, 181, 14-33.

Zanchettin, V. (2005). Carlo Scarpa. Il complesso monumentale Brion. Marsilio, Venice.

COPYRIGHTFondazione MAXXI Museo delle arti del XXI secolo (Rome), Carlo Scarpa Archive: 07, 12, 17, 23, 26, 32, 33, 35, 37, 39.

Pietropoli Archive (Rovigo): 03, 30, 40.

CASABELLA-continuità (222/1958): 08, 09, 10, 19.

Image 06 was processed by the author from a recording of the places.

Image 13 was processed by the author after a recording by A. Buonocchio.

Image 22 was processed by the author based on a direct recording campaign and on the overall plan in: TOMBA MONUMENTALE BRION. IL RILIEVO 1998-2000, CD-Rom published with Casabella 678, 2000; measuring campaign undertaken on behalf of IUAV, Venice – Department of History and coordinated by F. Dal Co, with recording and scale drawing by D. Dal Pozzo and CAD rendering by M. Zonta.

Image 31 is from The Yorck Project: 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei. DVD-Rom, 2002. ISBN 3936122202, distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH.

All the other photos show the current state (2010-2014) and were taken by the author.

on the line of the horizon: architecture between earth and

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