Carlo Scarpa, Architect

Book excerpt: Between 1953 and 1978 the Italian architect Carlo Scarpa produced an incredibly varied range of works that challenge our notions of what modern architecture might be. Foremost in that work was the need to reconcile a wholehearted embrace of the new with the longstanding traditions of local craft and of universal practice to create an architecture that would clearly express its own machine-driven times without abandoning the psychic and sensual forces of place, materiality, and memory. Carlo Scarpa, Architect: Intervening with History illustrates, through abundant reproductions of Scarpa's drawings, the ways the architect created a dialogue with light, space, and architecture within the historic fabric of Italian cities. Presenting these projects as they exist today, the patient eye of contemporary photographer Guido Guidi deepens our understanding of this timely approach to architectural dialogue.