Description
The two-hundredth birthday of the neo-classicist sculptor Antonio Canova (1757-1822) was the occasion for the expansion of the existing museum, a thermal baths hall, erected in 1834-36 by Guiseppe Segusini in the classical style and attached to the house in which Canova was born. Carlo Scarpa, who, due to his designs for exhibition rooms in Venice and Palermo, was already regarded at the time as one of the most sensitive museum architects, created a sophisticatedly articulated extension, whose filigree formal language contrasts radically with the nineteenth-century barrel-vaulted museum room opening onto an apse.
Scarpa’s extension, which follows to a great extent the sharply-angled, tapering form of the slightly sloping site between the old Gipsoteca and a small street, consists of three spatial forms. Entered from the vestibule of the old museum is a room with a rectangular ground plan that functions as an articulation and opens on one hand into a high cubic space, and on the other hand, into a low, extended trapezoid space that is separated from the old building by a corridor that alternates between exterior and interior space. While the funnel-shaped exhibition room descends in several sets of steps to open onto a glass wall that allows the sole view of the landscape across a pool of water, the cubic room that rises above the ensemble like a tower is raised above the normal level inside too by a carefully staged podium. The really decisive design and connection element of the rooms – which also have a sophisticated variety of floorings – is introduced by the incidence of light coming through windows in unusual places and in unusual forms. Thus, for example, the transparent prisms cut into the corners of the cubic room allow light to come in without glare, the changes in natural light during the course of the day casting changing reflections on the walls. Together with the diffuse light generated at other spots and indirect side lighting, the sculptural quality of the plaster models effectively mounted on special pedestals and in display cases designed especially for them is thus emphasized and at the same time, visitors are encouraged to walk round and observe them from different angles.
Casabella 222/1958, pp. 8-14 • Roberto Aloi, Musei. Architettura – Tecnica, Milan, 1962, pp. 343-348 • Antonio Piva, La fabbrica di cultura. La questione dei musei in Italia dal 1945 ad oggi, Milan, 1978, pp. 17-23 • Carlo Fonatti, Elemente des Bauens bei Carlo Scarpa, Vienna, 1983 • Francesco dal Co/Giuseppe Mazzariol, Carlo Scarpa. Opera completa, Milan, 1984, p. 117 • Christine Hoh-Slodzyk, Carla Scarpa und das Museum, Berlin, 1987, pp. 15-22 and pp. 56-69 • Sergio Los, Architekturführer Carlo Scarpa, Stuttgart, 1995, pp. 46-49 • Bianca Albertini/Sandro Bagnoli, Scarpa. Museen und Ausstellungen, Tübingen, 1992 • Carlo Scarpa Carlo Scapa Architect: Intervening with History, New York, 1999, pp. 60-65 • Carlo Scarpa. Mostre e musei 1944-1976. Case e paesaggi 1972-1978, Exhibition Catalogue, Verona, 2000, pp. 136-145 • Carlo Scarpa a Possagno. Disegni per l’ampliamento della Gipsoteca Canoviana (1957), ed. Gianna Ghizzoni, Possagno, 2001 • Judith Carmel-Arthur/Stefan Buzas, Carlo Scarpa. Museo Canoviano, Possagno, Stuttgart, 2002
Drawings
Ground floor
Cross sections
Axonometric view of the extension
Carlo Scarpa: sketch of the entire complex
Photos
The view from the “articulation room” between the square tower and the funnel-shaped exhibition hall enables one to recognize the cascade-like graduation in room height used for the provision of light.
The transparent prisms in the corners of the tower-like room create a unique incidence of light.
Originally published in: Paul von Naredi-Rainer, Museum Buildings: A Design Manual, Birkhäuser, 2004.