Olivetti Showroom - San Marco, Venice, Italy - Architect: Carlo Scarpa - Completed: 1958
10 Photographs
We grew up surrounded by a lot of Italian culture and Italy in its various guises has always been close to my heart. Australia, and Adelaide, in particular, received a lot of post-war immigration from ‘the old country’, our mother speaks Italian, and we have extended family who are of Italian descent. My last job before architecture was in an old Italian cafe around the corner from the Skeleton House which was famous for it’s fabulously rude service, which in truth was all sorts of fun.
While I had been to Italy before, I had never visited Venice, something which seems to be something of a right of passage for young European architects. When I began to work on the Walmer Yard project, it became apparent to Peter and Fenella that this was a shortcoming that needed to be rectified. In order to understand the richly layered textural quality that we were trying to achieve and to grapple with the innovative and unusual problem-solving techniques these two wild-cards employed, I absolutely needed go to Italy, with no delay, and reinforce my colonial ways with a few critical pieces of architectural history. I was armed by these two with a long scribbled list of weird and sometimes wildly inaccurate directions to or descriptions of places that I absolutely must seek out. A couple of weeks and a few convenient coincidences later, I found myself riding along the Grand Canal, sitting on the back of a vaporetto with my backpack.
While I found most of the important ones on the list after considerable effort and cajoling of travelling companions, the Olivetti Showroom was the least difficult to find. An obvious choice for any architect in Venice, despite it being so discretely tucked into a corner on the edge of the Piazza San Marco. When I look back on the photos, it almost seems like it is night-time in some of them, but it was not. I recall flip-flopping about in the heat, seeking refuge in the shade of the colonnade lining the square, that first layer of protection against the Mediterranean sun.
In this exquisite piece of architecture, you can see hundreds of years of Venetian design and craft history, as well as the ubiquitous sense of calm imbued in most of Scarpa’s work, the kind of quality that is usually reserved for Japanese temples. It is an unusual place, like the tiniest museum in history to a set of products that no longer exist. The showroom and typewriters are a bit like Venice itself. They are old and polished and no longer flexible enough to adapt to a new and changing world, but intricate and beautiful, nonetheless.
HWLK
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