Querini Stampalia Foundation at First

Querini Stampalia Foundation

At first glance, the Querini Stampalia Foundation in Venice, Italy, designed by architect Carlos Scarpa, is not an especially impressive edifice. Its muted brown tones and its very rectangular structure make the building appear almost industrial, and though it blends in quite well with the surrounding buildings it is neither especially evocative of Venetian history or a groundbreaking departure into new forms and styles of architecture. In short, the building appears rather plain and ordinary when first viewed. It does not grab the viewer's attention, but glides past like so much gondola on the canal. There is something to be said for this quality of blending in; certainly something more audacious, even if conceived on purely historical terms, would be more an interruption of the city's basic landscape than an addition to it. Yet the almost boring first impression of this building's facade quickly fades upon closer examination.

The outside of the building provides many of the details that make the Querini Stampalia Foundation stand out as an excellent example of historical integration without constraint in modern architecture. The arched windows and their metal greats give the building a much older feel, recalling a time when buildings in the powerful city-state of Venice might need to safeguard themselves against invading armies or militant merchants. Even the surrounding brickwork, which on one hand lends to the industrial and rather plain feeling of the building, helps to create this impression of age and solidity. This perspective gives the building an incredibly solid and fortified appearance, which the canals of Venice help to accentuate both by appearing as a sort of moat, and by providing a contrast in both color and solidity to the building itself. The way the building matches and flows into its neighbors can also be seen as a continuation of this solidity -- the building does not need to assert itself.

The interior architecture of the Querini Stampalia Foundation also provides a connection to the more historical details of Venetian and Italian architecture while at the same time not tying itself to the restrictions of an historic reproduction. Something as simple as a staircase has become, under Scarpa's careful design and guidance, something of strange geometric beauty that almost crosses the line into sculpture. The odd split in the stones that make up the stairs, and the spaces left in the faces of the stairs, look almost Moorish in their design. They could also be seen to draw from far more ancient sources, like the Romans who occupied Italy long before the Moors were ever heard of in Spain. The regular geometry of the stairs makes them appear both very strong and also simple and easy to build, which would definitely have been favored qualities of older civilizations working with other materials and tools. The way that Scarpa interrupts this solid geometry, however, gives the building a sense of aesthetic design that takes into account modern sensibilities, melding tradition and history together.