One of Carlo Scarpa’s most iconic and seminal built works (and a project so close to his heart that a space in it was saved for his own use) the Brion family cemetery is host to this month’s stunning Wallpaper* fashion story ’Death in Veneto’.
Click here to see more of Scarpa’s cemetery and behind the scenes of the fashion shoot.
Scarpa (1906-1978) designed the Brion-Vega in San Vito d’Altivole, near Italy’s Treviso, as an extension to the family’s existing cemetery. The architect developed the geometrical concrete composition over a 10-year period, with works finally reaching completion in 1978.
The L-shaped plot includes a complex of five buildings; a small chapel, the entrance hall, a small steel-and-wood pavilion on an island in the site’s water pond, the main tomb, and an open-air structure covering the graves.
Aiming to create a poetic resting place as much as a sculptural memorial in a green, calming garden, Scarpa used well-thought-out design features; for example, the cemetery walls are not higher than the surrounding field’s plants, discreetly merging the structure into the landscape. Within the site, there is also a small island with no apparent access for visitors, which perhaps works as a metaphor for the afterlife.
The architect himself rests, vertically, in the cemetery walls, after passing away in 1978 during a trip to Japan - the same year that his last masterpiece was finished.