Inspired By: Carlo Scarpa 1906-1978
Mez Joseph
Carlo Scarpa was born in Venice on June 2, 1906, the son of an elementary school teacher. At the time of his death in 1978 at the age of 72, Carlo Scarpa was at the height of his fame and influence. His buildings and projects were being studied by architects and students throughout the world, and his decorative style had become a model for architects wishing to revive craft and luscious materials in the contemporary manner.
It is in the Castelvecchio Museum in Verona that Carlo Scarpa's delicate handling of ancient buildings comes to its highest achievement. Here floor patterns and materials interact to form a tactile play of pliant versus hard surfaces The new is held apart from the old by reveal joints and spatial slots that function as miniature conceptual "moats," and each work of art is lovingly held up to view by a stand or a bracket that is almost human in its anthropomorphic configuration.
Carlo Scarpa resisted the postmodern and neorationalist influences of the 1970s, preferring to elaborate a decorative system derived from the materials of modern architecture used in a craft tradition. Carlo Scarpa was in constant touch with his artisans, and his drawings were revised almost daily to reflect a preindustrial attention to old methods of construction.
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