In the year of 1964, Aldo Businaro acquired a Palladian style villa, outside of Monselice, a small town located in the near of Padua, based in the North of Italy. At the time Businaro bought the Villa, the old house was unliveable. In 1924 the house was bought by the father of Businaro. For decades the building was used for agricultural storage.

 Aldo was nevertheless determined to convert the Palazzo into a family home. So, one year later he moved in with his wife Lucia and his three sons. One of his sons still remembers how the whole family were sleeping in one room, or how his mother cooked their food on a camping cooker. 

Businaro not only wanted to restore the villa, but he also wanted to convert the house into a family residence, something special. 

In the late 60’s the two famous Italian designers named Carlo Scarpa and his son Tobia Scarpa stepped in and helped Businaro to fulfill his dream family house.

 A friendship for eternity developed between the two families. In a span of nearly 40 years, the remaking of the “Il Palazzetto” would bring together the lives of not just two generations of the Businaro family but also two generations of Scarpa’s.

At a Businaro family lunch, Tobia Scarpa described how he designed the villa. “Because I’m a lefty,” he said, “I design with both hands: serious things with the right, and things that don’t matter with the left.” For the young Scarpa the kitchen and the fireplaces were left-hand projects. 

There wasn’t a plan when Aldo Businaro invited Carlo Scarpa to start designing at the Villa in 1970. At that time, Scarpa was like a prophet in his own land. The architect was respected by a lot of American designers like Lloyd Wright or Louis Kahn.

 So, whenever Businaro knew that the “Professore” –  as he called Scarpa – didn’t have work to do, he would say “Professore, come and make me something.”

The last invention in 2006 from Carlo Scarpa and Businaro, who died during the final stages of construction, was the monumental external staircase that Scarpa had designed in 1970 but which had not been built.

Tobia Scarpa, who faithfully implemented his father’s drawings and ideas, also finished the impressive staircase. This represents the completion of that ideal path between the ancient and the modern.  That is today Villa Palazzetto, an admirable fusion of late Renaissance architectural thought with the genius of the 20th century modernism.

Der Beitrag Il Palazzetto” Designed For a Timeless Family Home erschien zuerst auf ohne-butter.

We find ourselves back again in the midsummer heat – this time with a gelato in one hand, you are invited to take a seat on our chic rattan sofa designed in the 1970s by Afra and Tobia Scarpa for their “Basilian I” furniture series, which is characterized by pure rectangular rattan frames based on squared decoration joined together with metal details. The “Basilian I” series includes a variety of furniture ranging from sofas, book shelves, side tables, dining tables as well as dining chairs to lounge chairs and coffee tables…forming a big “family” of stylistically related furniture pieces.

When it comes to the human concept of family, you can spot a kinship not only based on “looks” but also on shared gifts – maybe it’s a certain artistic talent, which is shared among siblings or passed down from a parent to a child. A closer look at the world of famous mid-century modern Italian designers reveals that, in many cases, a creative talent in the field of architecture and design appears to “run in the family”. Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni, for example, were not only professional colleagues but also brothers. Together, the Castiglioni brothers designed iconic lamps for Flos such as the revolutionary “Arco” floor lamp or the colourful “Light Ball” wall lamps, which are currently on display at our showroom.

The birth of famous Italian lighting company Flos itself was, in part, based on the creative input by the Castiglioni brothers as well as by Tobia Scarpa and his wife Afra Scarpa. Tobia Scarpa was born in 1935 as the son of acclaimed architect Carlo Scarpa, who designed major projects in Venice such as the Fondazione Querini Stampalia and the Olivetti Showroom or the Brion Cemetery in San Vito d’Altivole.

Being the son of a Venetian architectural maestro, certainly has an impact on your own creative trajectory…So, it might not come as a surprise that the young Tobia decided to study architecture at the Università Iuav di Venezia – where he also met and fell in love with fellow architecture student Afra Bianchin. In the 1960s, they opened their own design studio as a married couple in Montebelluna and started what later would become a very fruitful and hugely influential collaboration in the field of furniture design, until Afra’s death in 2011. Apart from the “Basilian I” series mentioned above, Afra and Tobia also designed for example the iconic “Soriana” seating ensembles in 1969 for Cassina. Due to their complex design achieved using simple tools, the Soriana series won the Compasso d’Oro in 1970. Nowadays, the extensive work by Afra and Tobia Scarpa is included in the permanent collections of major museums such as The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the V&A Museum in London, or the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.

At first glance, Tobia Scarpa apparently follows in his father’s footsteps by studying architecture and forging a very successful career – some would even say “Like father, like son.” However, we should also recognize the potential difficulty of dealing with a parent’s legacy. It’s perhaps for exactly this reason, that – relatively early in his career – Tobia Scarpa set is focus on becoming a designer rather than on becoming an architect. In an interview with Architonic in 2014, Tobia Scarpa emphasizes his deep respect for his father, Carlo Scarpa, and explains that he became a designer in order to avoid interfering or competing with his father’s architectural work. [1] While the extensive work of Carlo Scarpa also includes designs for furniture and Murano glass works, he worked first and foremost as an architect. Tobia Scarpa, therefore, managed to forge his on way by opting to become a designer in his own right and by forming a remarkable collaboration with his wife, Afra. Together, Afra & Tobia contributed their very own chapter to the success story of the Scarpa family.

We hope you enjoyed our little tale about kinship and we would certainly love to welcome you as part of our own furniture-loving family!

xx

ohne butter team

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[1] Reference: „Go your own way: Tobia Scarpa” interview with Tobia Scarpa by Simon Keane-Cowell. Zürich, Switzerland 09.02.14 https://www.architonic.com/en/story/simon-keane-cowell-go-your-own-way-tobia-scarpa/7000858

Der Beitrag “Family Ties”: A Tale About Kinship erschien zuerst auf ohne-butter.