Architecture Chair, Marc J Neveu, recently published an essay in the second volume of the Montreal Architecture Review. The essay, entitled Re:Reading Scarpa shows that narrative temporal tactics described by Umberto Eco and Italo Calvino share uncanny similarities Carlo Scarpa’s architecture. It is my wager that a careful reader of Scarpa’s work will, inevitably, linger.
The essay explores two museum projects in particular—the extension to the Canova Museum in Possagno and the renovation of the Castellvechio Museum, in Verona—in both of which Scarpa intentionally posits disruptions in the uniform nature of processional time through the work and location of art. The essay demonstrates that the similarities between architecture and narrative are not only topical, thematic, or even spatial, but temporal as well.
Marc J Neveu is the Chair at the Woodbury University Architecture Department, Los Angeles.