Carlo Scarpa

Carlo Scarpa Main Furniture And Product Designs

Through his collaboration with Venini, Carlo Scarpa designed numerous glass objects and lamps, that, to this date, routinely demand the attention of design enthusiast and museums.  Although glass was the primary focus of his product design practice while at Venini from 1932 until 1946, Scarpa also created other furnishing designs such as the 618 chair for Meritalia (1964); the Delfi terrazzo table, in collaboration with Marcel Breuer, manufactured by Simon (1969); the Samo marble table manufactured by Simon (1970); and the Kentucky chair for Bernini (1977).

Carlo Scarpa Architecture – Prominent Projects

With regards to his architectural projects, Scarpa created a limited number of new original structures, and most of his architectural work centered around interventions in pre-existing public buildings and palazzos. His design and architectural approach was markedly different than the then prevailing norm, as his appreciation for, and familiarity with, artisanal approaches and skills separated him from Italian Rationalism and International Style that had spread throughout Italy and Europe.

Between 1935 and 1937, Scarpa worked on his first transformational architectural work, the intervention at the Ca’ Foscari in Venice, home of the homonymous university. This work, for which he had a second intervention between 1955 and 1957, but which was later tampered with, turned out to be one of the most innovative restoration projects of that period, and won him national and international recognition.

From the mid 1940s until his death in 1978, Scarpa taught drawing and interior decoration at the Istituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia. While most of his built work is located in the Veneto, he also designed landscapes, gardens, and buildings across Italy as well as in Canada, the United States, Saudi Arabia, France, and Switzerland.

Among Scarpa’s most notable architectural and designs are:

• The reinforcing and intervention at the Palazzo Attabelis in Palermo (1953-1954).
• The Olivetti Showroom in Venice (1958), where Scarpa created a the Pop minimalist interior with slabs of marble and alabaster mixed with ingenious copper details and door and window hinges.
• The masterful intervention of the 1356 fortress Museo di Castelvecchio in Verona (1956–1964), where he excavated sections of the medieval structure exposing its foundation, inserted glass panels in the raw rocky walls, placed the 14th century equestrian statue of Cangrande della Scala on a concrete platform, and designed a new approachable museography where sculptures and paintings were made more accessible to the viewer.
• The museum garden of Fondazione Querini Stampalia (Venice 1961–1963), in which Scarpa designed multilevel water basins of copper and alabaster that allow the flow of water from the city to participate into an ever mutating inner atmosphere, and
• The masterful buildings and gardens of the Brion Tomb and Sanctuary in San Vito d’Altivole (1969­–1978). This tomb was built when Giuseppe Brion, founder of the prestigious Brionvega electronics company died–and who Carlo Scarpa deeply admired, died. It was built around two main buildings; the tomb and a meditation pavilion on a square pool surrounded by colored tiles and concrete mixed with local stones.

Carlo Scarpa was very interested in Japan, its culture, and, specifically, in the Japanese design sensitivity with the use of every-day materials such as reclaimed timber and rusted metal, and the preoccupation with details and hardware. He first traveled to Japan in 1969, and during his second trip in 1978, he died of an accident in Sendai.

For more information on Carlo Scarpa, please go to Biography of Scarpa at Cooper Hewitt

Last updated: October 30, 2020