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MANILA, Philippines - Who is this 20th century Italian architect best known for integrating elegant glass, metal, and wood details into the architecture of medieval Venice?
He was born in Venice on June 2, 1906, the son of an elementary school teacher. When he was two, the family briefly moved to Vicenza where he attended the Technical High School, later moving back to Venice where he studied in the Royal Academy of Fine Arts.
During the late 1920s and 1930s, he became acquainted with a number of influential intellectual figures in Italy and abroad like Massimo Bontempelli, Carlo Carra, and Arturi Martini.
It was also during this time that he began a relationship with the Venini Glass Works in Venice, for whom he created many designs. He also painted avidly during the period in a Novecento-style reminiscent of Mario Sironi and Carra; and began a career as an interior and industrial designer.
His first important commission was the 1935 restoration and renovation of the School of Economics at the University of Venice. This project was a portent of the future with elegant glass, metal, and wood details subtly integrated into the architecture of medieval Venice.
Various commissions for renovations followed along with many installations of exhibitions in galleries and museums. His reputation, however, remained largely local until after World War II when he became known internationally.
The first important commission of this period was the renovation of the Accademia Museum in Venice, located in an old convent. This project was the first of his museum renovations to exhibit a minimalist style within historical building, a style that allows the existing context to pass beneath and behind the new work without being disturbed.
The extraordinary care in the execution of handrails, floor patterns, benches, pull doors, and the like set his work apart from others of his generation. It was not the invention of spatial themes with which he was involved, but rather the manipulation of materials in relation to the human body.
In the early postwar period, he began to receive commissions that would become his masterpieces. The most important are the Canova Plaster Gallery in Possagno; the Castelvecchio Museum in Verona, perhaps his most significant masterpiece; the Olivetti Showroom in Venice; the Querini-Stampalia Foundation in Venice; the Brion Tomb in San Vito d’Altivole; and the Banca Popolare di Verona in Verona.
In the Querini-Stampalia, he began by designing the traditional Venetian footbridge. The bridge is a kind of leaf-spring of steel supports holding a lacquered wooden handrail. The interior of the ground floor of the renovation holds channels that control and divert the water that periodically floods Venetian houses. A carefully considered and elegant play of rough concrete and more precious materials raises the concrete to the level of a more aulic material.
It is in the Castelvecchio Museum in Verona that his delicate handling of ancient buildings comes to its highest achievement. Floor patterns and materials interact to form a tactile play of pliant and hard surfaces. The new is held apart from the old by reveal joints and spatial slots that function as miniature conceptual “moats,” and each work of art is lovingly held up by a stand or a bracket that is almost human in its anthropomorphic configuration.
He resisted the postmodern and Neorationalist influences of the 1970s, preferring to elaborate a decorative system derived from the materials of modern architecture used in a craft tradition. Like many Renaissance architects, he rarely got to build an entire building.
The exception is the Brion Tomb complex in the cemetery of San Vito d’Altivole, considered by some to be his most fecund and important work. It is a complex and difficult work, filled with symbolic gestures and a myriad of interlocking forms. The major elements are an arched bridge that shades the tombs of the Brion spouses, a family tomb, and a chapel. His emblematic step motif and interlocking circular windows are the dominant details in this project along with a typical use of concrete with more precious metals.
The Brion cemetery is the culmination of his career, and it is appropriate that he is buried there. When he accidentally fell to his death in Japan in 1978, he was at the height of his fame and influence.
Last week’s question: Who is this Chinese contemporary artist who was the artistic consultant for the Beijing National Stadium in the 2008 Olympics?
Answer: Ai Weiwei
Winner: Marissa Maningat of QC
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