Carlo Scarpa

In the early days of my website, A Weekly Dose of Architecture, I featured Carlo Scarpa's Villa Ottolenghi in Lake Garda, Italy. I knew a good deal about Scarpa from spending a semester in Italy in the mid-1990s but knew nothing about this villa until I came across Francesco Dal Co's case study devoted to it. Being 1999, there was very little architecture online, so many of my "doses" started with books, such as this one, which I would scan – both literally and figuratively for photos and ideas, respectively. This book fits into Monacelli's One House series, which also include Richard Meier's Ackerberg House, Steven Holl's Stretto House and Antoine Predock's Turtle Creek House; this is the only book in the series I own. The villa was one of Scarpa's last projects, so therefore Dal Co compares it to the Brion-Vega Cemetery, another project that lasted until his death in 1978. Even with an apparent influence of one project upon the other, the villa has its own distinct character, much of it coming from the structural system he employed and expressed in his idiosyncratic way. In addition to Dal Co's text, the book has plenty of photos, plans, and no shortage of Scarpa's beautiful detail sketches.… (más)

First, the good: the oft-overlooked Villa Ottolenghi is my far and away my favorite work by Carlo Scarpa. This book is the only monograph I know of on the house. Unlike other monographs, which tend to contain only artful photographs of the finished work, this book contains dozens, if not hundreds, of Scarpa's sketches. It allows you to see how the house developed and how Scarpa worked (which is important as Scarpa has a reputation for frequent redesigns). The book also explains how the site and local zoning restrictions influenced the design, and how Scapra's freindship with the client gave him carte blanche in what would be his final residential design.

Now, the not-so-good: Well, a few of the pictures are blurry or out of focus. One full-page photo is so bad that I at first wondered if it was intended to be art piece. Also, out of the hundreds of sketches, there are no section drawings at all, and only one (unlabeled) hardlined plan. In a building with a floor plan as complex as the Villa Ottolenghi's, this left me feeling a little lost.

Overall, the book is rich in process and rationale. There's a lot to sink your teeth into. The best part for me was being able to peruse the hundreds of rough drawings and doodles, which must be the next best thing to rummaging through Scarpa's sketchbook.… (más)