Brion Family Cementery

Carlo Scarpa, Purple Magazine

Brion Family Cementery

Carlo Scarpa, Purple Magazine

purple MAGAZINE — F/W 2011 issue 16
photography by OLIVIER AMSELLEM

The last masterpiece of the legendary Italian architect, CARLO SCARPA (1906-1978), was the BRION FAMILY CEMETERY — located in San Vito D’Altivole, in the Veneto — for which he designed tombs, chapels, gardens, and pathways. Like Frank Lloyd Wright, Scarpa had a passion for Japanese gardens, paper screens, and the natural surfaces of wood and stone. Honoring his Venetian roots, while following his own intuition, Scarpa fused modern geometry with architectural fragments, and integrated his works into the landscape. His stone and copper structures recall not only Japanese teahouses but also the very color of tea itself, and his lattices translate Japanese paper screens into metal doors and panels. Architectural fragments and odd geometric progres-sions, such as the number 11 — the number of letters in his name — are also leitmotifs in his gardens and landscape architecture, his buildings, and the figure-based glassworks he designed. Scarpa himself is buried in the Brion cemetery, wrapped in linen sheets, standing upright.