Architecture

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Architecture – Fondazione Querini Stampalia

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The Works of Carlo Scarpa, Valeriano Pastor, Mario Botta, and Michele De Lucchi

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Between the Past and the Present

The very structure of the Querini palace is like a billboard. It makes visible, in its stones, what the Fondazione is: a living place (where ancient and modern, past and present, have a constant rapport), where history is re-read in the light of contemporaneity. This is how the architectural works that have been grafted onto the historical sixteenth-century home over the years should be interpreted, starting with the spaces redesigned at the beginning of the 1960s by Carlo Scarpa, one of the undisputed leading exponents of twentieth-century architecture.
Between the 1980s and 1990s Valeriano Pastor designed a connecting system between the various floors of the palace and between the different buildings that make up the complex. Starting in 1994, Mario Botta would go on to delineate a profound renovation of the structure by reorganising the spaces and services. In 2018 Michele De Lucchi restored and rearranged the spaces that house the Collezione Intesa Sanpaolo.

Carlo Scarpa, the poet of architecture

The surprising modernity of the Scarpa Area has not been obfuscated by its more than fifty-year lifespan. Carlo Scarpa (Venice, 1906 - Sendai, Japan, 1978) is one of the greatest architects of the twentieth century. Between 1959 and 1963 he redesigned the ground floor of the Fondazione, creating a space for exhibitions and meetings, as well as designing a garden in the courtyard. It was a design that broke with the tradition of those times, a work of constant research and experimentation. There are two main elements: water, which reflects the palace outside, enters the building and is also found in the garden; light, reverberating on the water, vibrates and is refracted on the ceilings, dematerialising the contours and creating colour.

Valeriano Pastor’s architectural work

Valeriano Pastor is responsible for significant improvements to the palace, which were carried out between 1982 and 1997. A lecturer in architectural planning and head of the eponymous department at the IUAV, the University Institute of Architecture in Venice, he reimagined the functions and services of the whole complex. The clearest sign of his work is the new staircase, a strategic link that directly connects the spaces throughout the palace.

Mario Botta’s restitching

"Mario Botta graduated in 1969 from IUAV, the University Institute of Architecture in Venice, under Giuseppe Mazzariol and Carlo Scarpa. During his studies, the Fondazione – along with the library and the recently completed Scarpa Area – was an important reference point for him. When redefining part of the spaces, Botta also referred to that experience and to the teachings of the master architect. From the new entrance to the covered courtyard to the auditorium, the Swiss architect’s references to Scarpa are explicit in the essential lines, and in the combination or juxtaposition of materials and colours: stone and metal, black and white, grey and red. "

Michele De Lucchi’s visual telescope

"In 2015 the architect Michele De Lucchi was asked to restore the rooms chosen to house the Cassa di Risparmio di Venezia collections (entrusted to the Fondazione by Intesa Sanpaolo). The project, completed in 2018, leaves a new, indelible architectural mark that dialogues with the history of the palace. De Lucchi knocked down a series of partition walls, thus reinstating the spectacular visual effect of the doors, which are aligned to create a single visual telescope. The colour chosen for the walls gradually fades from one room to the next, delineating a chronological and visual emotional journey from the sixteenth century of Tintoretto to the twentieth century of Arturo Martini. "

Architecture