In this post- we’re having a short break in the next couple of weeks – I would like to speculate on connections between the architect Carlo Scarpa’s and the garden architect Fernando Caruncho’s use of water.
This is prompted by an interesting post by an architecture student at Curtin University, Australia, blogging at architecture moves us. I am indebted to him for the use of the images below:
courtesy yang@yangsquare
Here is his quote:
Born as Venetian, water is one of the greatest elements of Carlo Scarpa’s architecture. The cemetery is carved with a series of everflowing canals; sometimes flowing aside the path and sometimes within a pond surrounding the steps and pavillion.
This put me in mind of Caruncho’s equally impressive, but more positive and sundrenched water parterres, large and reflecting to Scarpa’s minimal but exquisitely detailed.
And in turn, there is something about how both these men imagine and build with water which reminds me of Calvino’s meanderings in recollecting the city of venice…
“Kublai Khan does not necessarily believe everything Marco Polo says when he describes the cities visited on his expeditions, but the emperor of the Tartars does continue listening to the young Venetian with greater attention and curiosity than he shows any other messenger or explorer of his.” So begins Italo Calvino’s compilation of fragmentary urban images. As Marco tells the khan about Armilla, which “has nothing that makes it seem a city, except the water pipes that rise vertically where the houses should be and spread out horizontally where the floors should be,” the spider-web city of Octavia, and other marvelous burgs, it may be that he is creating them all out of his imagination, or perhaps he is recreating details of his native Venice over and over again, or perhaps he is simply recounting some of the myriad possible forms a city might take.
Quote from review for Invisible Cities, amazon.com
Happy summer break, see you at the beginning of September.
