Italy Series: Northern region// Brion Cemetery-Carlo Scarpa

The window of the pavilion of meditation is in the form of a vesica piscis, a repeated leitmotif in Scarpa's architecture.

After a few days in Venice and almost getting thrown out of our hostel because of how loud the students were all night, we boarded the bus to Vicenza. Before we actually made it to venice we took a detour and made two stops; one at the Brion Cemetery is in San Vito d'Altivole near Treviso whose addition was designed by Carlo Scarpa, and the second stop was at the Museo Gipsoteca Antonio Canova in Possagno also by Scarpa. The cemetery was designed for the Brion family, and is tucked away in an lush landscape, you actually can't see it until you actually arrive at the entrance.

Looking over the wall 

Entrance to Cemetery

The cemetery is an exemplary work of Scarpa, it includes the burial tombs, highly detailed semi- enclosed structures, water features and an island which is inaccessible to the public. Its materially a bit brutal but the cuts, slits, striations and transitions change ones perception of the space. At certain moments, there is a change in materiality to a more translucent material of to a metal. Openings are treated very carefully, the frame views or the viewer and concentrates light. Its relationship to its surrounding is almost one of a camouflaging, the walls are just below the height of the vegetation around but within, it complements the structure, provides shades while the water is reflective. 

Scarpa's resting place

One of the family tombs

Material transitions

detail of water feature

 

Canova 

Scarpa's hall exterior- protruding window box.

Scarpa was born in Venice. Much of his early childhood was spent in Vicenza, where his family relocated when he was 2 years old. After his mother's death when he was 13, he, his father and brother moved back to Venice. Carlo attended the Academy of Fine Arts where he focused on architectural studies. Graduated from the Accademia in Venice, with the title of Professor of Architecture, he apprenticed with the architect Francesco Rinaldo. Scarpa married Rinaldo's niece, Nini Lazzari (Onorina Lazzari).

However, Scarpa refused to sit the pro forma professional exam administrated by the Italian Government after World War II. As a consequence, he was not permitted to practice architecture without associating with an architect. Hence, those who worked with him, his clients, associates, craftspersons, called him "Professor", rather than "architect".

His architecture is deeply sensitive to the changes of time, from seasons to history, rooted in a sensuous material imagination. He was Mario Botta's thesis adviser along with Giuseppe Mazzariol; the latter was the Director of the Fondazione Querini Stampalia when Scarpa completed his renovation and garden for that institution. Scarpa taught drawing and Interior Decoration at the Istituto universitario di architettura di Venezia from the late 1940s until his death. While most of his built work is located in the Veneto, he made designs of landscapes, gardens, and buildings, for other regions of Italy as well as Canada, the United States, Saudi Arabia, France and Switzerland. His name has 11 letters and this is used repeatedly in his architecture.[2]

One of his last projects, left incomplete at the time of his death, was recently altered (October 2006) by his son Tobia: the Villa Palazzetto in Monselice. This work is one of Scarpa's most ambitious landscape and garden projects, the Brion Sanctuary notwithstanding. It was executed for Aldo Businaro, the representative for Cassina who is responsible for Scarpa's first trip to Japan. Aldo Businaro died in August 2006, a few months before the completion of the new stair at the Villa Palazzetto, built to commemorate Scarpa's centenary.

In 1978, while in Sendai, Japan, Scarpa died after falling down a flight of concrete stairs. He survived for ten days in a hospital before succumbing to the injuries of his fall. He is buried standing up and wrapped in linen sheets in the style of a medieval knight, in a private, semi-hidden alcove in the inside corner of his L-shaped Brion-Vega Cemetery at San Vito d'Altivole in the Veneto..(..via)