Back to the (retro)future: Carlo Scarpa’s Modernist Venice

This article is part of a new guide to Venice from FT Globetrotter

If there is one city you do not visit for its modern architecture, you might think it would be Venice — the seductive Serenissima, seemingly floating, ethereal and eternal, its cityscape completely recognisable to a visitor from the 17th-century. You would, however, be wrong. For the city that somehow manages to overcome a million clichés does indeed reveal a rich Modernist seam. 

It is the work of architect Carlo Scarpa, who over his lifetime made a series of interventions that are both radically modern in manner and also subtly evocative. His reservoir of ideas about how to work within the delicate fabric of history has remained cult in the profession. 

Scarpa was born in Venice and spent much of his childhood in nearby Vicenza. His work, at its best, twists together strands of history, sci-fi, Brutalism, Classicism and Art Deco. It gives occasional hints of Frank Lloyd Wright and the Viennese Secessionist Josef Hoffmann. His little jewels of Modernism tie together the fragments of the fading, sinking palazzi in plaits of pure gorgeousness. 

Most are also easily accessible, almost instantly recognisable (once you get the hang of it) and offer an invigorating change of scenery from all those Rococo altarpieces and Ruskinian Gothic arches. 

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1. Olivetti Showroom (1957-58)

Piazza San Marco 101, 30124 venice

Just as any tour of Venice must surely start in the Piazza San Marco, so does this one. Tucked away on one corner of the city’s theatrical main square is a gorgeously dense display of Scarpa’s scenographic approach. It was commissioned in 1957 by Olivetti, then the most-renowned maker of high-design typewriters and early computers, as a showstopping showroom in the most intensely historical surroundings.  

Situated under a 16th-century arcade, the building is simultaneously subtle and surprising. When closed, there’s not much to see, but it opens into an absolute Modernist jewel box. The long, narrow space is enticingly layered, drawing your gaze through its whole length, while a stone staircase — surely one of the great mid-century examples — appears to counter-intuitively float up to a mezzanine floor, spreading itself into a series of surfaces that might be used as desks, shelves or displays. 

The floor, now widely copied, is a mosaic of Murano glass squares set into terrazzo: a contemporary echo of the floors of the Basilica di San Marco, it also reminds us that Scarpa started out as a designer of glass for Murano-maker Venini. There are no simple surfaces here. Panels of gold are inset into walls; secret doors and vitrines are hidden behind sliding sections of stone. It is complex yet calm. Now open as a museum, it is the perfect introduction to this utterly unique architect’s work. Website; Directions

2. Museo Correr (1957-60)

Piazza San Marco 52, 30124 venice

Only a few steps away, on the upper floors of the Renaissance Procuratie Nuove (above Italy’s oldest café, Florian, which dates from 1720), is the Museo Correr. Of course, the real reason to visit here is not Scarpa but the museum’s collection of Renaissance art and decorative objects. But the architect’s systems and methods of display are also striking.

His approach may seem simple — taking works off the walls and placing them on easels and stands of his own design; making industrial-looking mountings for old church sculptures; and inserting modern, minimal rooms of light and clarity into the venerable Renaissance interiors without damaging the original fabric — but it was truly radical. Other groundbreaking museum displays, notably Lina Bo Bardi’s São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP), are unthinkable without Scarpa’s innovations in exhibition design.  

It’s also worth visiting the Galleria dell’Accademia across the Grand Canal in Dorsoduro to see more Scarpa interventions. These date from a little earlier (from 1945 to 1959) and give an idea of his evolving ideas about display and detail. (For the big, fully realised ideas, though, you’ll need to travel to the Castelvecchio in Verona: an absolute tour de force of the handling of historic art and architecture through a thorough contemporary lens.) Website; Directions

3. Fondazione Querini Stampalia (1959-63)

Campo Santa Maria Formosa 5252, 30122 venice

This is one of those buildings you may have found yourself in front of but never noticed. Situated only a short walk north-east of the Piazza San Marco, it’s announced by a delicate little bridge of steel and timber with wonderful bronze handrails — all designed and engineered by Scarpa.  

Inside is a very fine art gallery (mostly Venetian Old Masters) and a beautiful library, which is open to the public, but most of Scarpa’s work is characterised in a courtyard that elucidates the architect’s incredible ability to reconcile modern forms with archaic architectures. It also addresses the city’s reliance on (and fear of) water.

The space is designed as a sculpture garden and landscape project traced through with water features. They are always active but come to life during Venice’s acqua alta (seasonal high tides), which are not repelled by the building but instead welcomed in — the institution is raised above their level, while the garden becomes a flooded memory of Atlantis, soaking up the tide. Website; Directions

4. Giardini della Biennale (1952-56)

Calle Giazzo, 30122 Venice

Many visitors will be familiar with Scarpa’s interventions at the Giardini, even if they might not know they are his. The site of the world’s premier biennial for art and architecture is a remarkable landscape of condensed architectures: little pavilions struggling with the task of representing entire nations. Stitching them together is a connective tissue of even smaller buildings with more mundane functions, which are often just as architecturally fine — if not better.  

The tiny ticket booth at the entrance to the Giardini, for instance, is a rare example of a standalone Scarpa structure (now no longer used), its leaf-shaped canopy surmounting a glazed almond-shaped office contained in a moulded concrete base. It is both robust and delicate.  

The Sculpture Garden is another deceptively simple thing; in a green-walled courtyard, a scooped-out roof sits on super-chunky concrete columns, punctuated by the architect’s usual water courses — the presence of the lagoon is always brought inside. Scarpa seems to do very little but the effect is almost always powerful.  

Finally, there is the pavilion he designed for Venezuela. Sitting between the then Soviet Union and Switzerland, this was Scarpa’s first freestanding building as a solo architect (as opposed to the interventions in historic structures, which were his forte). Top-lit and beautifully detailed, the designer’s characteristic concrete steps reveal themselves in the walls and ceiling, as if layers of history are being peeled away. The building, clearly influenced by Josef Hoffmann’s austere Austrian pavilion, looks a little shabby now, but it’s still very lovely. Website; Directions

5. Brion Tomb (1968-78)

San Vito di Altivole, near Treviso

This one is not on the walk. In fact, it’s pretty much in the middle of nowhere, in the village of San Vito di Altivole, to the north-west of Venice. But if you’re in the area or have the energy for an hour’s drive, this is undoubtedly Scarpa’s masterpiece and a project he became so emotionally involved in that he had himself buried beside it.  

The tomb was designed for Onorina Tomasin-Brion, the widow of Giuseppe Brion, founder of revered electronics company Brionvega, which, like Olivetti, used the best Italian industrial designers to create desirable and durable products that were almost as much art as product. What Scarpa created feels like some kind of lost city from the future. The series of covered passages, rooms and chapels is somewhere between a Georgian landscape of mythical follies and a place of occult worship. 

The futuristic sarcophagus of Brion has sci-fi lettering (very characteristic of later Scarpa) and a vault of green and blue mosaic, echoing the watery colours of the lagoon. Everywhere, there are those stepped surfaces, as if slowly revealing an archaeology of the future below, and circular openings. There is something here of Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities (published in 1972, while this was under construction), in which the narrator describes a series of impossible, absurd and metaphorical cities, each of which turns out to be a version of Venice. All of the city’s strangeness and beauty is encapsulated here, surprisingly, in the most modern manner. Website; Directions

Photography by Cemal Emden for “Carlo Scarpa: The Complete Buildings” (Prestel)

Have you noticed any surprisingly Modernist architecture in Venice? Tell us in the comments below. And follow FT Globetrotter on Instagram at @FTGlobetrotter

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