"Furnish"

Transcription of the inaugural speech of the academic year 1964-65 of the IUAV of Venice

Lectio Magistralis entitled “Furnishing” held by Carlo Scarpa
18 March 1964

Anyone who knows me well knows my suffering at this moment… 
Public speaking has always been agonizing for me. Even at the beginning of each lesson I feel a certain hesitation… it is a serious defect that I will never correct again.

To give myself a little courage, I wanted to consult the old Crusca dictionary and the etymological dictionary of Battisti to see what they said about the word “arredo”. 
Incidentally, the 1836 Crusca volume was printed on very nice, crispy paper: it made you want to eat it… The Crusca dictionary, for the word “arredo”, only says: “providing the necessary”. Battisti adds that “arredo” derives from the Gothic “garedàm”, which means “to take care of”, and from the Spanish “arrear” which means “to adorn”… 

From these very simple terms follows the principle of necessity. 
Furnishings are necessary, hence the corollary: take care of furnishings, of their conservation and, above all, of beauty, which seems to me a categorical imperative for our profession. Just as we provide for necessity, it seems very logical to provide for beauty, a fact, this, inherent in men since the beginning. In the beginning, cavemen, before furnishing them, decorated the caves: it is unequivocal that we have not received examples of cave furnishings, but marvelous aesthetic forms of decoration. In the first signs drawn blindly in the darkness we see two characteristics: the irrational, spontaneous, instinctive, barbaric gesture, devoid of technique, and then, almost immediately afterwards, a semblance of rationality in the diagonal signs, in the circles that contain squares, instinctive signs but drawn by an ordering mind. I remember a marvelous function of furnishing that becomes an architectural and plastic fact in the interior of an African hut. 

The photograph was in color and so I was able to realize the color values ​​of the environment. The floor was made of beaten earth, more perfect than a rubber floor of our days. Then imagine a place much smaller than this room, an extended rectangle: the door behind was the only source of light, while towards the back was the parents' bed placed on a wall, a sort of step, covered with hand-woven fabrics, in the same way in which the Greeks folded the cushions on their chairs... In that African hut the sense of decoration, the idea of ​​beauty and adornment were completely missing. While in Pompeii, instead, in that highly evolved civilization, we find decoration... The examples I give are intended to demonstrate that modern architecture cannot do without the knowledge of architectural values ​​that have always existed. 
What is, for example, a Renaissance room? There are architectural members that form compartments where perspective paintings can appear. 
It is said that perspective opens space, but I dare say that this is not true. It is enough to go to Maser or to the Villa Valmarana to realize that the impression of the wall always remains. I mean that the sense of space is not given by a pictorial order, but always by physical phenomena, that is, by matter, by the sense of gravity, by the weight of the wall. 
For this reason I affirm that it is the openings, the gaps and the passages that create spatial relationships. Modern architecture, abstractly stereometric, destroys any sensitivity for the framework and the decomposition… 
We have created nothingness around things.

What can we offer when we decide to participate with our works in the creation of a more eloquent life for people?… We no longer have thick walls: we tend towards extremely thin thicknesses, we have even abolished the wall sometimes we say that all this is a spatial fact, but it is not at all, because the spatial value is difficult to say. It is not possible to think of an ancient Greek sitting: thus architecture is always vertical and in fact the classical members are always vertical, while today there is a tendency towards horizontality…

To obtain something you have to invent relationships. But someone might say to me: “So you see that decoration has nothing to do with it?”. And yet I tell you that there comes a time when you have to imagine the chromatism of things – you can make a floor, a ceiling, some walls: do you want them all white? Even in the design of a simple cubic space, small reasonings come into play, an alphabet, perhaps a grammar. It is a curious faculty that allows us to intuit that a precise dimensional fact, a thickness, for example, is an eminent quality of the physical value of things… Modern art has allowed us to see some phenomena of matter with new eyes and has allowed us to discover very important natural facts. We can admire the bark and the trees without hindrance, no longer bound by the eloquence of tradition. As men of our time we have redeemed many things both morally and socially. But as architects we have not yet redeemed the form of humble and simple things.

Transcription of the lecture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna in 1976

Can architecture be poetry? 

I am very moved: the tradition of my studies, by a sort of natural geographical affinity, brought me closer to the modernity that came from Vienna, with the glorious names that you all know. Naturally, the artist I admired most and who educated me most was the one who had the possibility of being published most in German magazines (I remember “Moderne Bauformen” and “Wasmuths Monatshefte”), Josef Hoffmann. In Hoffmann there is a profound expression of the sense of decoration that, in students accustomed to the Academy of Fine Arts, made them think, as Ruskin says, that “architecture is decoration”. The reason for all this is very simple: after all, I am a Byzantine, and Hoffmann, after all, has somewhat oriental characteristics – of Europe turned towards the East. Those who know the expressive forms of this architect's art should agree with what I say… In truth and unfortunately, I descend, by cultural tradition, from the monument to Vittorio Emanuele there in Rome. I was, in fact, the best student of my professor at the Academy, who in turn had been the best student of the author of that monument. 

The spiritual poverty of that time was due to the fact that the teachers of the academies of fine arts shared the eclectic taste of the 19th century. For this reason we had to make some effort to free ourselves from our scholastic education. 
An effort that, after all, should always be made to reach that sense of moral authority that an individual, in the field of art, must conquer in order to be able to declare himself an artist. One must always leave the maternal womb. 
For me, for example, it was a stroke of luck to find the volume entitled Vers une architecture by Le Corbusier at the end of school: it represented an opening of the soul; from then on, spiritual conditions changed completely. This is to remember the stages of a short life that does not pretend to be that of a master, also because I think that masters, at this moment, are all dead. A master, in fact, is someone who expresses new things that others can understand… And the great modern architects are no more. The last one, Louis Kahn, left us in a not very beautiful way – they are irreplaceable losses… “Can architecture be poetry?”. Of course. F. LI. Wright proclaimed it in a conference in London. But not always: only sometimes is architecture poetry. Society does not always ask for poetry. One must not think: “I will make a poetic architecture”. Poetry is born from things in themselves… The question should be this: “When is an Attic base poetry and when is it not?”

We can say that the architecture that we would like to be poetry should be called harmony, like a beautiful woman's face. There are forms that express something. Architecture is a very difficult language to understand - it is mysterious, unlike other arts, music in particular, which are more directly comprehensible. In Japan, for example, two very distinct tendencies are felt: Buddhism, of Chinese origin, and Shintoism, which represents the authentic Japan; all our modern taste and our critical judgment go towards Shintoism - so much so that Chinese architecture, although very glorious, we do not like it. The value of a work consists in its expression - when something is expressed well, its value becomes very high.

Transcript of the conference held in Madrid in 1978
Carlo Scarpa- Mille Cipressi – Lecture held in Madrid in the summer of 1978
F. Dal Co G. Mazziarol “Carlo Scarpa Complete Works” Electa 1984-1992 

A Thousand Cypresses

For the Brion tomb, I could have proposed planting a thousand cypresses – a thousand cypresses are a large natural park and a natural event, in the future, would have obtained a better result than my architecture. But as always happens at the end of a job, I thought: “My God, I got it all wrong!”.

It is probable, however, that the one who built the pyramids did not think like this… We have no certainties – everything is debatable, so much so that there is great confusion in architecture, while in the past, for example, the architecture of Catalonia was similar to that of France, Provence, Italy, Sicily. That world spoke a very similar language.

Regarding the Brion project, the first idea came to me like this: we had to enter the old cemetery, through the traditional avenue of cypresses that exists in all Italian cemeteries, and set up a kind of shrine. There were many ugly, country tombs and funerary shrines; so I suddenly decided that there should be a perspective element of interruption on the water basin. I really like water, perhaps because I am Venetian... I drew the watercourse, which rises from a certain point, and, in the sun, I arranged the two sarcophagi that must contain the bodies of the wife and Mr. Brion... The sloping surrounding wall has a small opening in the shape of a helmet at one point. Those who are inside can look out and see the countryside, while those who are outside cannot see inside. In this way an enclosed place is created. I planted the cypresses right away, as soon as the work began… In the relatives' chapel, there is currently only one real tomb, while the other deceased are remembered by stones placed on the ground. 
I realized that I had to study a solution for the flowerbed under the chapel, because the ground remains arid – everything should always be defined – but the material is not suitable, it would require Escorial stone. In summer it is very beautiful; the swallows fly… This is the only work that I go to see willingly, because I feel like I have captured the sense of the countryside, as the Brions wanted. Everyone goes there with great affection; the children play, the dogs run: all cemeteries should be made like this and, in fact, I had designed a rather interesting one for Modena.

I adopted some tricks. I needed a certain light and I thought of everything according to a module of 5,5 centimeters. This motif that seems silly is instead very rich in expressive possibilities and movement… I measured everything with the numbers 11 and 5,5. Since everything comes from a multiplication, everything comes back and every measurement is exact. Someone might object that the measurements are exact even using a module of 1 centimeter – this is not true, because 50 times 2 is 100, while 55 times 2 is 110, and with another 55 is 165, no longer 150, and doubling it makes 220 and then 330, 440. In this way I can divide the parts, and I will never have 150 but 154. Many use regulatory paths or the golden section; mine is a very simple module that can allow for movements – the centimeter is dry, while in my case you get ratios. In other occasions, in fact, I found it very pleasant to work with the English measurement system, which is very rich in possibilities.
I remember that, on the occasion of the setting up of the exhibition of Mendelsohn's drawings in San Francisco, while I was drawing my sections, there was a technician who looked like a woodcutter and who used measurements in inches. His measurements corresponded only in part to those I had taken, and so I had to accept his, because in this way he saw the raw material, the wood cut according to established sections... [In the small temple of the Brion tomb] there are small windows that illuminate the altar, and above there is a wooden dome with a window that opens electrically. On the floor there is a stone and then some stained glass to illuminate the altar. 

Originally I wanted the glass to be transparent, then I tried using alabaster and then pink marble from Portugal, which filters a beautiful light all day. The altar is made of bronze (it was an accident at work). They wanted to make it in reinforced concrete, with the addition of an American additive called Mc Master, because I had discovered that if you pour concrete on a very shiny surface the material remains shiny. However, since these additives are iron-based, when we cast it it looked like a cake: a disgrace. So I destroyed everything. But, in my opinion, the design was now fine. And so I used a sheet of silicon bronze and filled everything with reinforced concrete to prevent it from resonating. The painted plaster is what I often do, using glue and plaster, so that the mixture forms a stucco. When it is done, you treat it with a suitable tool, and it becomes shiny and soft like silk. Now it is a little ruined because it is not heated; the condensation makes it become spotted. Someone said: “How beautiful! It looks like a Tapiès… but it’s not true”. These are accidents that happen when you don’t think about things. I should have used a different material, but that result could only be achieved with that material.

The door in Mondrian was made of iron; a person looking at it can see the sparkle of the lights and, in the morning, the sun makes the walls light up differently. I don’t know if young people feel these things, but it doesn’t matter: if the architecture is good, those who listen to it and look at it feel the benefits without realizing it. The environment educates in a critical way. The critic, on the other hand, is the one who discovers the truth of things… Le Corbusier once said to a student: “I meditate on it – I try to think continuously”. Now I have a project in my head for a shop in Venice, for a very wealthy client. Since I can’t touch anything, I have to make a skin, a lining – but which is the most suitable for that place?…

I haven’t done many new jobs. I’ve fixed up museums and set up exhibitions, always working in a context. When the context is forced, perhaps, a job becomes easier. Let’s consider the case of the Olivetti store. The store consisted of a front part and, after a wall, there was another room. You had to go up to the upper floor; there were forced spaces, a central pillar, two windows – where to put the staircase? I decided to put it at the point where I gained some thickness. I also had to force things; by putting it in the most difficult point, I could throw away – and I was interested in throwing away. In this way, I could better grasp the length. Having understood the problem, you start working – the staircase is rather beautiful, they are blocks of marble placed side by side… 

Things come slowly to me, if there is a starting point. The conclusion should find rational, ineluctable reasons, which however have nothing to do with rationalism and functionalism. It is a very expensive staircase. But Olivetti could afford it – for the king, a royal palace can be built.
And then the theme was: “A business card in Piazza San Marco”. Not just any shop. I asked the client: “What do you want? Should I make offices?” – “No, no… a business card”… I want to confess: I would like a critic to discover in my works certain intentions that I have always had. That is to say, an enormous desire to be within tradition, but without making capitals or columns, because they can no longer be done. Not even a god would invent an Attic base today. 

Only that one is beautiful – all the others are dross; even Palladio's, in this respect, are rubbish. In treating columns and trabeations, only Greece has reached the pinnacle of pride. Only in the Parthenon do the silhouettes live like music… At Castelvecchio, everything was false… The Museum could be accessed from above and below, from in front and behind. I, instead, said: the museum is accessed from a single entrance – you go all the way around, go up to the upper floors, come back down and exit from where you entered. It's a "rational" problem: ushers cost money – that's how it turned out better. I put in some water and two large hedges; I decided to adopt some ascending values, to break the unnatural symmetry: Gothic required it and Gothic, especially Venetian Gothic, is not very symmetrical. Something else had to be done here, but then I got tired… yes, because I never finish my work… If there are original parts, they should be preserved; any other intervention must be designed and thought in a new way. You cannot say: “I’ll make it modern – I’ll put steel and glass”; wood might be better, or something modest might be more suitable. How can you say certain things if you are not educated? Educated, as Foscolo says, “to histories”, that is, to a vast knowledge? If there is no education in the past?

Source: http://www.negoziolivetti.it/lectio-magistralis-di-carlo-scarpa