The acclaimed survey of the life and works of the celebrated Italian modernist master, Carlo Scarpa, from the highly regarded architectural author, Robert McCarter

The work of Carlo Scarpa challenged, and continues to challenge, accepted notions of modern architecture. While several books have been published on his work, none has approached the breadth and depth of this classic monograph by Robert McCarter, who is celebrated for his meticulously researched, experientially based, and jargon-free accounts of key figures in modern architecture. This book is the definitive study of Scarpa’s many accomplishments, including such works at the Canova Museum, the Castelvecchio Museum, and the Brion Cemetery, among others. It features in-depth ‘walk-throughs’ of a selection of Scarpa’s key projects, embracing Scarpa’s approach to experientially based design and presents sketches and architectural plans, together with a complete list of works, realized and unrealized, including his much-loved interiors and glassware, as well as the buildings themselves.

About the Author:

Robert McCarter is a practicing architect and has been Ruth and Norman Moore Professor of Architecture at Washington University in St. Louis since 2007. He taught previously at the University of Florida, where he was Director of the School of Architecture from 1991–2001, and Columbia University, among other schools. He has written for numerous international publications, and his books include: Grafton Architects (2018); Marcel Breuer (2016); Steven Holl (2015); Alvar Aalto (2014); Carlo Scarpa (2013); Understanding Architecture, co-authored with Juhani Pallasmaa (2012); and Louis I Kahn (2005), all by Phaidon Press. He has also published The Work of MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects: Economy as Ethic (2017); The Space Within: Interior Experience as the Origin of Architecture (2016); and Aldo van Eyck (2015), among other books.

A tribute to a great master of postwar Italian architecture, through a photographic journey with high visual impact.

Carlo Scarpa was one of the great masters of postwar Italian architecture. This book proposes a photographic itinerary that unfurls through Venice, Treviso, Verona and Bologna, before reaching the Dolomites,

His most significant projects have been photographed specifically for the book, including constructions and installations in public spaces, such as museums, shops and offices. Each example illustrates Scarpa's ability to approach the architectural volume as a whole while at the same time tending to its interior layout down to the smallest details, exploring the potential of the material, giving rhythm to the volumes through light, and expressing the poetics of the shape, even in its simplest lines.

The projects featured in the book alternate between overviews and close-ups, with a very high photographic quality. They are all briefly introduced by a text that describes their genesis, explains the context in which they were made and focuses on the details that best represent Scarpa's style, with a summary and clear key to understanding the architect's work.

The volume ends with a postscript by his son, Tobia Scarpa, who is currently designing the forthcoming Scarpa Museum in Treviso.

About the Authors:

Patrizia Piccinini is an interior design journalist who has written for several Italian newspapers and has been on the editorial staff of Marie Claire Maison since 1998.
Lorenzo Pennati is an interiors and advertising photographer. He collaborates with many Italian and international publications, and also with furniture and design companies.

This volume reconstructs the fifteen years of the remarkable artistic collaboration between Carlo Scarpa and the Venini glass-making company, from 1932 to 1947.

The pieces featured represent a significant part of his early activity. They are often prototypes or one-offs that document Scarpa’s extraordinarily inventive designs and the variety of techniques and decoration he used.

This was made possible by the intense research carried out especially at the glass-making company’s historical archive, which had at last been rediscovered. The whole production designed by the Venetian architect is illustrated in about six hundred works divided into the different types of glass — around thirty — either used and/or invented by Scarpa in order to breathe life into his refined creations. The types of glass are classified as a mezza filigrana, sommersi, lattimi, corrosi, tessuti, granulari, murrine, incisi, battuti, pennellate, a fili, and are the product of the untiring experiments the artist performed on material and colour.

Precious and unprecedented documentary materials, which includes original drawings and period photographs, complete this catalogue raisonné, providing an accurate account of one of the most important phases in the golden age of 20th-century Venetian glass-making.

The prestigious scientific committee appointed for the volume counts among its members Giuseppe Pavanello, Director of the Fondazione Giorgio Cini Institute of Art History and Nico Stringa, Professor of History of Contemporary Art at the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, as well as leading experts on the art of glassmaking, such as Rosa Barovier Mentasti, Laura de Santillana, Marino Barovier and David Landau.

Carlo Scarpa (1906–1978) was never fully appreciated during his lifetime. Instead, his work was dismissed as being "just" art, and only after his death did people begin to understand the exceptional quality of his oeuvre. This book shows the development of his individual architectural language by linking aspects of the arts with architecture. From his sensitive consideration of the urban context to the composition of stunning details; the author manages to give the reader an insight into this outstanding architect's work. In particular, Scarpa's exhibition designs illustrate his extensive knowledge of materials and ability to solve complex structural problems. Meanwhile, Scarpa designs like the Castelvecchio Museum in Verona have become a Mecca for those seeking the ultimate refinement in exhibition design and elegant restoration.

About the Series:

Every book in TASCHEN's Basic Architecture Series features:

• approximately 120 images, including photographs, sketches, drawings, and floor plans
• introductory essays exploring the architect's life and work, touching on family and background as well as collaborations with other architects
• the most important works presented in chronological order, with descriptions of client and/or architect wishes as well as construction problems and resolutions
• an appendix including a list of complete or selected works, biography, bibliography, and a map indicating the locations of the architect's most famous buildings