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The Routledge Companion to Architectural Drawings and Models
From Translating to Archiving, Collecting and Displaying
Federica Goffi, Federica Goffi
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eBook - ePub
The Routledge Companion to Architectural Drawings and Models
From Translating to Archiving, Collecting and Displaying
Federica Goffi, Federica Goffi
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About This Book
Architectural drawings and models are instruments of imagination, communication, and historical continuity. The role of drawings and models, and their ownership, placement, and authorship in a ubiquitous digital age deserve careful consideration. Expanding on the well-established discussion of the translation from drawings to buildings, this book fills a lacuna in current scholarship, questioning the significance of the lives of drawings and models after construction.
Including emerging, well-known, and world-renowned scholars in the fields of architectural history and theory and curatorial practices, the thirty-five contributions define recent research in four key areas:
- drawing sites/sites of knowledge construction: drawing, office, construction site;
- the afterlife of drawings and models: archiving, collecting, displaying, and exhibiting;
- tools of making: architectural representations and their apparatus over time; and
- the ethical responsibilities of collecting and archiving: authorship, ownership, copyrights, and rights to copy.
The research covers a wide range of geographies and delves into the practices of such architects as Sir John Soane, Superstudio, Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, Frank Lloyd Wright, Wajiro Kon, Germán Samper Gnecco, A+PS, Mies van der Rohe, and Renzo Piano.
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Part IDrawing Sites/Sites of Knowledge ConstructionDrawing, Office, Construction Site
1A Well-Sited ArchiveThe Carlo Scarpa Archive at the Castelvecchio Museum1
Alba Di Lieto
DOI: 10.4324/9781003052623-2
The origin
Carlo Scarpa (1906–1978) once said: “I prefer to design museums than skyscrapers.”2 From the 1940s to 1978, Scarpa made about sixty projects for museums and exhibition design. He was known for his constant and intense drawing production.
The story of the Archivio Carlo Scarpa (Carlo Scarpa Archive) in Verona has its roots in England. After the Second World War, in 1950, Licisco Magagnato (1921–1987), the future director of the Museums of Verona, spent a few months at the Warburg Institute in London, where he researched under the mentorship of Rudolf Wittkower (1901–1971), starting to look at the method of art criticism from a different point of view. He was affected by Wittkower’s revolutionary research method, applied in Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism.3 This was not a traditional text solely based on esthetic theories; it contextualized Italian Renaissance architecture in its time and culture, under a critical framework relating to disciplines such as music and math. The young scholar Magagnato was also fascinated by Aby Warburg’s studies on the relationship between culture and visual memory and his archival methodology based on iconology.4 The Warburg experience had a lasting impact on his work and sparked his interest in architecture.
After this period in London, Magagnato focused on the study of the drawings of Andrea Palladio (1508–1580), which became a common thread in his lifelong career. It is not a coincidence that his first and last works were both dedicated to Palladio. As an art critic, his first academic contribution was “The genesis of Teatro Olimpico,” published in the Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, while his last essay, printed posthumously, regarded the Palladian Teatro Olimpico of Vicenza.5
The studies about Palladio remained his primary interest, along with the activities for the International Centre for Architecture Study Andrea Palladio in Vicenza (CISA),6 where he was a member of the Scientific Council since 1974. The intent was to create a research center on the history of architecture where the international community of scholars could come together to research and study.
After a short experience heading the Museum of Bassano del Grappa, in 1956, Magagnato became director of Verona’s Museums. One of the first steps he undertook was to write a letter to Giorgio Zanotto (1920–1999), mayor of Verona, concerning the restoration of the Castelvecchio Museum, to express the need to choose an architect specialized in museum design to begin restoration.7 Magagnato had thought about entrusting Scarpa with the renovation after seeing his project for Palazzo Abatellis (1953–1954), when he participated in the Italian Museums directors’ meeting (June 23–25, 1954), held at the time of the opening of the Abatellis Gallery in Palermo.8 Before deciding, Magagnato had also seen the other renovations by Scarpa at the Accademia Galleries and the Correr Museum in Venice, which were completed in 1953, as well as the Venetian exhibitions curated by Scarpa: Giovanni Bellini (1949) and Ancient Chinese Art (1954). However, the Abatellis Gallery’s museographical design must have been the decisive factor when choosing to work with him.
At a time when the theoretical bases of restoration were being laid, Magagnato realized that Scarpa was raising the issue of the coexistence between different historical periods in Italian monuments in a clear-sighted way.9 The entrusting of the Castelvecchio Museum restoration to Scarpa began almost undetected in 1957, while the preparation for the Veronese Middle Ages exhibition Da Altichiero a Pisanello was taking place.10 In Scarpa’s career, exhibitions often served as a testing ground for future restoration works. In the case of Castelvecchio, built in Medieval times (1354–1356), the setup of the exhibition in the earliest wing of the Castle (Reggia) represented an opportunity to connect two parts of the Castle, leading to the discovery of the ancient Morbio’s city gate, which predates the construction of the Castle.
Until the last century, the primary use of Castelvecchio was for military purposes. Its structure was altered over the centuries, particularly during the Napoleonic period.11 The first intervention aiming to turn the Castle into a Museum dates back to 1923–1926 when Antonio Avena (1882–1967) made an in-style restoration to create the illusion of a historical palace. To this end, he used a series of wealthy domestic interiors to recreate a period museum (Museo d’ambientazione) in which the art collection could be displayed.12
Drawing and restoring
Scarpa intervened in a Castle rigged by a previous restoration. His intervention involved removing the additions to allow the original parts of the fabric to reemerge. The restoration went hand in hand with the museographical project. After discovering the Morbio’s gate—a medieval door, and the inner moat (rampart) of the castle—Scarpa carried out an urban intervention connecting the two parts of the castle with a road underpass, while the courtyard garden was linked to the Castelvecchio Bridge, and the center of Verona through a slender walkway structure. The design arose from the critical reading of history, laying the foundations for a new museological model, which Scarpa later adopted in Castelvecchio.
Despite the almost two-decades-long renovation works (1957–1964, 1965–1975), the intervention was consistent with the initial idea. This cohesiveness is demonstrated by the balance between restoration work and museum layout that became exemplary. The idea of converting a building in Scarpa’s work goes side by side with the discoveries of the oldest parts hidden by centuries of transformations and the continuous dialogue with the existing construction:
However, there was no real change of use there, because Castelvecchio already was a museum. Furthermore, even though museum spaces epitomize the concept of historic preservation, which aims at maintaining a historic building as is, the ambiances envisioned by Scarpa engage in an active dialogue with the artwork and are not neutral containers […]. The terminologies of ‘conversion’ and ‘conversion architect’ were used to discredit the work of modernization in a historical context. Conversely, it is suggested here that the idea of architecture in conversion can be read into multiple levels to account for the meaningful assimilation of unexpected chance events, material transmutations, multimodal reception of synesthetic experiences and the turning of corners to unravel a story.13
The 657 project drawings by the Venetian master currently preserved in the Carlo Scarpa Archive at the Castelvecchio Museum are a demonstration of the design process. They show the continuous adaptation of Scarpa’s project due to the archeological dig and the discoveries that brought back to light the monument’s original structures as they were before Avena’s 1924 intervention according to the method of “critical restoration.”14
Scarpa used drawings to transmit his thoughts to collaborators. His labyrinthine and stratified drawings were mainly addressed to those in charge of the project’s material execution—those who held the knowledge of constructing architecture.15 As argued by Robin Evans (1944–1993), we could not have architecture without drawing: “the subject matter (the building or space) will exist after the drawing, not before it.”16
The case of the Carlo Scarpa Archive at the Castelvecchio Museum is a site-specific one. It is a small and valued archive conserved inside one of the greatest and well-preserved museums restored by the Venetian master, representing a unique link between a container and its content.
Before the end of the restoration works, in 1973, Magagnato purchased 439 drawings from Scarpa using an administrative ploy. The acquisition of the drawings was included along with the payment of an invoice related to the professional services of “Professor Scarpa.”17
Magagnato was well aware of the value and the high quality of each sheet, as well as the entire collection being kept as a whole in situ. He was a connoisseur of the art of drawing and was mindful of their importance for the construction and development of the building as a museum. In a historical video, he emphasized that drawings are the first instrument of knowledge for the conservation of the monument.18 Therefore, even if it was quite unusual at the time, it is not a surprise that he went to such length to ensure their keeping in situ beyond the time of renovation.
These drawings were conceived as moments of reflection to solve specific design conjectures, such as the placement of the Cangrande I della Scala statue. Other materials included working drawings made for the construction company and craftsmen, such as carpenters and blacksmiths, and were destined for the construction site.
With the exception of the few drawings that were lost because they were given to the craftsmen who carried out the work, Arrigo Rudi (1929–2007) recalled that the Castelvecchio’s drawings were collected throughout the renovation by two collaborators of the Museum, technologist Angelo Rudella and vice-director Angelo Aldrighetti.19 They were kept without a precise order or the intention of historicizing the project’s complex development, saving the drawings beyond the time of their practical use (Figure 1.1). The care shown in keeping the drawings prevented their disappearance, allowing us today t...