Three houses by Carlo Scarpa to discover in Venice

The most widely told Carlo Scarpa is the one of the Fondazione Querini Stampalia and the Olivetti showroom in Venice, or of the Brion Tomb and works such as Palermo’s Palazzo Abatellis: in short, the Scarpa of maturity and later decades. Yet the long career that precedes these landmarks is no less rich in masterpieces. It reveals, on the contrary, less familiar facets of the Venetian master, the story of a designer who, by the end of World War II, turned to reflections on the domestic realm, on dwelling in what is probably the most famous lagoon worldwide.
Research into this “Scarpa as a designer of homes” began as early as the 1980s, landed at Caffè Florian in Piazza San Marco during the 1996 Biennale, and now expands with new materials in a further chapter at L’Era gallery. Curated by Luigi Guzzardi, Sergio Ballini, and Cecilia Zavagno, the exhibition focuses on three Venetian houses.

From the Capovilla woodworking workshop come thirty drawings for the Casa Pelizzari, a restoration Scarpa took on between 1942 and 1945, especially on interiors, photographed one last time in the 1990s before being dispersed. If Scarpa is about detail as the generator of space, here that principle reaches its peak in the furnishings: chairs, armchairs, small tables, and cabinetry conceived down to the depth of their finishes and color systems.
With the end of the war, came the Casa Bellotto (1946), again with Capovilla, where an enduring archetype – the live-work house – was reimagined. A textile store occupies the ground floor, with storage and offices above, and the residence on the upper levels: a layered interior, fully integrated into a landscape of wood and stone from floor to ceiling. Some original pieces of furniture are on display, lent by the clients’ heirs. Then there is Casa Vianello, the house that might have been, but never was, since it was never built. The 1951 design nevertheless clearly lays out a grammar of elements that runs throughout Scarpa’s work in connecting inside and outside – asymmetrical windows, the corner loggia, the roofline – documented here by plans and elevations, here again held by the client’s family.

Between his early dialogue with Le Corbusier, then with Frank Lloyd Wright, and the gradual distillation of a practice that would become emblematic of a place and an era, Carlo Scarpa could also tell his story through houses. This is therefore one of those rare occasions to cast light on the network of relationships, exchanges, and, above all, ideas on how to inhabit the world, from which architecture truly emerges.

Opening image: Carlo Scarpa. Casa Bellotto, 1945-47, second floor. Courtesy l'Era gallery.