ABSTRACT
Much has been written about the poetry in Carlo Scarpa’s work, his cultural narratives and articulation of new spaces in historic context and his close relationship to craft traditions. Much less has been published about the structural systems he designed and the relationships among tectonic performance, materiality and philosophical narrative.
This essay analyzes the structural systems and technical details that support or accompany the formal language of Scarpa’s buildings. Scarpa’s detailing makes use of abundance and redundancy (double columns, double beams and rafters) while communicating a personal synthesis of material and form. The staircase in the Olivetti Store in Venice, the gallery spaces in the Castelvecchio in Verona, and the façade of a housing complex in Vicenza, as well as the meditation pavilion of the Brion Cemetery in San Vito di Altivole, reveal structural logic and cultural narrative that simultaneously allude to traditional craft conventions and contemporary spatial configurations.
