Brion Cemetery, Grappa Distillery, + Vicenza

09.06.2008

Milano, Italia

We left Venice the other morning and got on the bus. We drove a ways, then stopped in a town (the name escapes me) to see Carlo Scarpa’s Brion Cemetery. We’ve studied the project before as well as other works of his, so it was fascinating to see everything and experience it all. His attention to detail is absolutely exquisite and is the kind of thing that just left me wandering around jaw-dropped. He doesn’t just put a door knob on a door; he designs the knob specifically for the project. The same goes for wall connections, door hinges, stair placement….everything. I kept thinking to myself “Okay, this is amazing. I need to work on detailing my own projects more.” Because when you’re in a project, that’s such a major part of the experience, and when we’re just designing in rhino in studio, things like that are easy to overlook. So that’s my mission from now on: really pay attention to details.

Back onto the bus we went, and we drove to a grappa distillery. Four years ago, the 225-year old family-run company commissioned a space to hold meetings, give presentations, and extend their laboratory space. The meeting room and lab are two bubbles, suspended above the ground on stilts. A diagonal elevator (or stairs) takes you below ground to the presentation space. Everything was beautiful. The spaces are quite hard to describe, so I’ll be posting pictures later. We watched a video on the process of grappa-making (it comes from grapes, is distilled in large vats, then vaporized and condensed) in the auditorium. The woman giving us the tour took the opportunity to show off the space’s capabilities; the glass windows dividing the indoor and outdoor seating areas separate, rotate, and wheel off to the edge of the room, leaving a stage-like space in the middle. Overall, everything was beautifully simple and the way the architect plays with light was very delicately done and everything was just…stunning.

We drove further into town and had a grappa tasting and learned more about the history of the town and the drink. Grappa is sipped slowly and can often taste somewhat like whisky (given my minimal knowledge of both drinks). We tried many different styles: different ages, different flavorings, etc. The building they sell the products out of is situated right next to Palladio’s covered bridge in town, which we also spent some time looking at and sketching. According to Cinzia, we’re designing a “bridge building” this semester, but that’s all we’ve been told so far. I’m excited, bridges can be really beautiful and it should be a neat project.

We all hopped back on the bus and made our way to Vicenza, which was a neat Italian town. Our hotel was situated up on the hill, so although the view was breathtaking, it wasn’t as easy to just go into town and explore. We arrived in time for dinner and went to a restaurant nearby that Cinzia had recommended. Excellent food, excellent prices, and a beautiful view, all outdoors. The first night we were there, I got wild mushroom risotto and sautéed spinach. And of course, we order wine with every meal. Both were delicious, although the risotto was more saucy and cheesy than I’m used to at home. The spinach was great, because it’s been hard to get the amount of veggies that I’m normally used to over here (protein’s another story, I’m excited to have my own room and be able to go to the grocery store. Tofu, anyone?) One of the guys on our trip turned 21 that night, so Cinzia got tiramisu for everyone and we all left the restaurant totally stuffed. Once back at the hotel, we sat around outside talking and hanging out until our midnight curfew (the hotel is run by nuns).

The next morning we walked into town and went to Palladio’s Basilica. A lot of it was covered for renovations (which I’m sure is necessary, but it was very disruptive), but we did some sketches as we waited for everyone to finish making copies of their passports (we need copies of every single page for the Italian government, even if they’re blank. It took forever.) Once everyone was together, we went down to the Teatro Olympico, which was started by Palladio before his death. The theater was beautiful, with an extremely ornate stage, effective seating, and a ridiculously forced perspective set. We spent a while sitting there, taking in the space, and sketching. I did a sketch of the overall view (up until then I’d been primarily focusing on details and structural members) and was actually quite pleased with how it came out: very loose and sketchy, but I got a really good sense of how the space felt.

We had the rest of the afternoon off, so we did some sketching of the Basilica, got panini for lunch (mine was mozzarella, spinach, and goat cheese), got gelato (peach and grapefruit, delicious) and just walked around. I almost wished we’d held off for gelato though, because later we found a place that had Coca-Cola gelato, basil, and Disarono flavors. After regrouping, we got onto the bus and went to Palladio’s Villa Rotunda, another building we’ve studied extensively. There, we split up into two groups and met with our two professors (one RPI, one Italian) and went over our sketchbooks. I’d been getting a bit discouraged by looking at other people’s work, because it feels like everyone else took art classes and has an amazing sense of shading, texture, lighting…everything. I also have been working exclusively in pen, which has made it harder.

We handed in our sketchbooks and sat waiting while Riebe looked through them. He made three piles, and handed out the first stack, saying that they would have gotten Ds or Fs had he been grading. Mine was still sitting on the wall next to him. The second stack got handed out “These have one or two good drawings each”, and mine was in the last stack! He loved my sketch of the Teatro, because he was explaining that sketches shouldn’t be still lifes, because at that point you might as well just take a picture. Sketching should be a way to understand the architecture (think proportions, shapes, etc), and that was what I’d been capturing and working on. We had a long chat as a group about sketching, the progress of perspective years ago, and then he showed us how to mathematically draw in both one and two point perspective, which was fascinating. A lot of it I already knew instinctually, but some of it was new as well and really good to know.

That night at dinner (we all went out together again and actually fit at one table this time, there were 20 of us) I got a salad (mixed salads are relatively cheap at restaurants, woohoo) and pizza with the usual tomato sauce and cheese, but also fresh cheese (maybe ricotta, I wasn’t sure), spinach, and capers. I figured it was a crazy enough combination to be good, and I was right…so tasty! After dinner, 5 of us went down to a carnival in town. We went on some rides that were quite rickety and probably wouldn’t have been legal in the states and got greasy gross food…a round of dough fried, smothered with nutella, dusted with lemon sugar, and folded in half. With the long walk back to the hotel though, it was totally guilt-free.

We got up the next morning and went to Verona then Milan, more later.

PICTURES: circles at Brion Cemetery, interior of Grappa Distillery’s Bolle (Bubbles), the Grappa Distillery’s auditorium, Palladio’s Teatro Olympico, and Palladio’s Villa Rotunda.