Carlos Scarpa. Desenho e Desígnio

Abstract

The design process is based on a constant interplay of feeling and reason. The feelings, preferences, longings, and desires that emerge and demand to be given a form must be controlled by powers of reasoning.1 The character of Carlo Scarpa must be understood in the context that he arises. Scarpa was born in Venice and he graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts, during the transition, in Italy, from the Classicism to the Modern Movement. The practice of drawing, acquired in the Academy, will allow Scarpa to develop his architectural projects. Scarpa creates, constructs, experiments end see through the drawing. The project drawings and sketches made by Carlo Scarpa aren't mere drawings of representation. They are "intention", they express a meaning, a project. Scarpa draws to build. Also the most superficial analysis his drawings reveals since the beginning an obsession for the materials, the construction, the light effects and textures, the three-dimensional assembly of the objects.2 The architecture of Carlo Scarpa is made of subtle gestures and variations, in a craft, slow, meticulous, rigorous, and emotional work. His architecture reveals one unusual sensibility, one careful design of the details, spatial relationships, tension and balance which sense is searched always having the drawing as an instrument. Scarpa draws every detail, looking for the image and meaning that he intents to transmit. He never adopts the conventional solutions. The drawing associated to a humanist spirit allows Carlo Scarpa to make his projects become much more than simple buildings. With his art Scarpa reinvents and gives a new shine to the character of Antonio Canova; he gives back to the city of Verona his symbolic building, also as a part of his story; he represents the dream, life and death in the concrete grey volumes of the Brion Tomb. Actually, the artistic statute of the architect begins to vanish. Scarpa's project method is far away from the contemporary's project techniques. With the new project aids, that announce the progressive forgetfulness of the drawing as an architect's instrument, we gain something, we lose a lot.