Carlo Scarpa © Svegliado and his son Tobia Scarpa © Riccardo Crosetta

Since 2003, the Museum of Decorative Arts of Bordeaux organizes regularly exhibitions of design. This year, the museum presents the work of the venetian architect Tobia Scarpa and the work of his father, Carlo, who died in 1978 and with whom he was first an apprendice, then a business partner. Tobia took an active role in the organization of this exhibition which gathers, for the first time, the work of both creators.

Carlo Scarpa - Monumental Complexe Brion, 1969-1978, San Vito © Alberto Vendrame, Studio Scarpa

More than thirty years after his death, Carlo Scarpa (1906 Venice–1978 Sendai, Japan) is still considered one of Italy’s more important architects. During his long career from the 20’s until the 70’s, most of his work is settled in Venetia. His name is renown due to the restaurations of historical buidings such as the Correr museum, the Castelvecchio museum, and the Querini fondation among others.

Carlo Scarpa - Sculpture Crescita © Alberto Vendrame, Studio Scarpa

One of his last projects, left incomplete at the time of his death, was completed in 2006 by his son Tobia: the Villa Palazzetto in Monselice. Besides the mentioned projects, Scarpa’s most significant works are the Gipsoteca Canoviana at the Canova Museum in Possagno (1955-1957), the Castelvecchio museum in Verona (1954-1956), and the Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Venice (1961-1963) where his great awareness of the city’s history provides a new dimension. One of the most ambitious landscape and garden projects of his career is the Brion Sanctuary at San Vito d’Altivole in Veneto, realized between 1969 and 1978.

Tobia Scarpa - Carafe Moretta, 1990 © Tobia Scarpa

Tobia Scarpa, Carlo Scarpa’s son, has been working in architecture and design for almost 40 years. First with Afra Bianchin, then alone, he has designed objects, furniture, lamps, office buildings, houses, factories, museums, and showrooms –more than 400 realizations–. In all his work we find beautiful experiments of the potential of the materials, the change of the relationships between forms and functions, and a new understanding of the space where they reside.

The first design pieces of Tobia Scarpa dates back to 1957 at the Paolo Venini's glass factory in which his father worked during years. In 1957, he meets Afra Bianchin (Montebelluna, on 1937 - Trevignano, on 2011) at the Istituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia. For a test at the Istituto, he designs a prototype of a wooden chair, the armchair Pigreco, an example of simplicity, that is edited first by Santabona, then by Gavina. During almost 40 years, they imagined design objects: furniture, lamps edited by big manufacturers (Knoll, Molteni, Maxalto, Flos), while leading at the same time architect's activity.

Tobia Scarpa - Pigreco, 1959, for Santabona © Giorgio Furla

In 1970, their armchair Soriana was rewarded with the Compasso d'Oro. Generally Tobia Scarpa's seats are made by elements such as construction sets. The chair Libertà from 1989 is an assembly of two parts folded and screwed. Afra Bianchin and Tobia Scarpa drew tens of lamps, most for a new brand: Flos. Thanks to the manufacturing process Cocoon, they created the lamp Fantasma, then the lamp Jucker. In 1968, they designed the table lamp, Biagio, made of Carrara marble; they also designed the floor lamp Papillona, and created a large collection of silversmith objects for San Lorenzo.


Exhibition: Carlo Scarpa & Tobia Scarpa - Dialogo sospeso
Musée des Arts Décoratifs de Bordeaux, France
From September 14 2012 to December 31 2012 

Abitare: 50 years of design: The best of architecture, interiors, photography, travel and trends 1961-2011

Abitare: 50 Years of Design is the first-ever compilation of the most innovative design magazine of the 1960s and 1970s. Launched in 1961, Abitare is a revolutionary lifestyle magazine, the source of all things hip, important, and avant-garde, covering a wide range of topics including contemporary design, lifestyle, and modern architecture.

Abitare was founded to cover the growing influence of Italian design but also to gather the most interesting trends worldwide, from the mod fashion in London, and the rise of alternative lifestyles in New York and San Francisco, to the development of industrial design in Milan. Classic articles from Abitare are reproduced in full, with their original English and Italian texts, while new essays by noted writers and past editors reflect on the influence of this avant-gardist magazine.

Contributors to the book, including senior curator of Design at the MoMA Paola Antonelli, are all former editors of Abitare, and are now considered arbiters of style and design worldwide. Their new essays, along with the classic original articles reproduced in full in English and Italian constitute an important milestone in the analysis and appreciation of design.

Book for sale on Amazon: Abitare: 50 years of design: The best of architecture, interiors, photography, travel and trends 1961-2011
Edited by Mario Piazza - Rizzoli New York

A historical renovation by Naço Architectures.

Hengshan cinema was founded in 1951. It was the first new cinema after the birth of new China.
In the end of 2009, when Naço joined the renovation competition, this was the situation: after 60 years of use, although there had been some renovated in 90's, the space and front of the building were very old; the place was messy and unfriendly for the guests.

The style of the main architecture is Art Deco. The building facade has homogeneous vertical lines of GRC (Glass Fiber Concrete). Those straight lines not only reduce the overall impact of heavy/high facade but also make dramatical change in terms of day lighting/shadow.

To replace the old image of "enclosed" garden cinema, the old boundary and gate were removed accordingly and recreate a new open space in front of the main cinema.

Douglas Rollins and Tim Boyle, founder and co-founder of brinca dada, design "toys that parents love to look at and children love to play with".

The Emerson House is a great home for the modern family. The home has six rooms including a living room, kitchen, library/office, master bedroom, bathroom and child's bedroom.

With its large, open floor plan and floor-to-ceiling windows, the modern house features many extras including mitered-glass corners, two fireplaces, sliding glass doors, solar panels, and recessed LED lights.

Finally, the house is easy on the environment with only non-toxic and lead-free wood stains and paints.

The living room set creates the perfect atmosphere for entertaining guests, reading a good book or relaxing with family.

Not just any doll would feel at home in the Emerson House. The Modern Family is sleek and minimalist.

Arkitekturmuseet presents the first major retrospective exhibition on Swedish-American designer and architect Greta Magnusson Grossman. The exhibition includes architectural commissions in Sweden as well as Northern and Southern California and designs for the many companies she worked with including Barker Brothers, Ralph O. Smith and Glenn of California. The exhibition also includes exemplary pieces of furniture and lighting, prototypes and textiles, original drawings and photographs, film clips as well as a 1:1 reconstruction of an interior.

The exhibition is produced in collaboration with R20th Century Gallery, New York.

Greta Magnusson Grossman (1906-1999) maintained a prolific forty-year career on two continents, Europe and North America, with achievements in industrial design, interior design and architecture.     ( Portrait c 1950)

In the late 1920s Grossman finished a one-year woodworking apprenticeship in her hometown of Helsingborg, Sweden and was awarded a scholarship to enroll at Konstfack (then known as Högre Konstindustriella Skolan), the renowned Stockholm arts institution. At Konstfack she excelled in her mastery of technical drawing and focused her original design work on furniture, textiles and ceramics. In 1933 Grossman received second place for furniture design from the Stockholm Craft Association , becoming the first woman to receive an award in that category.  In 1934 the Swedish Society of Industrial Design awarded her a scholarship to travel throughout Europe and she filed reports of her observations on interior design and architecture for the “Women and Home” section of the Swedish paper Nya Dagligt Allehanda.   

In 1933 Grossman and Konstfack classmate Erik Ullrich opened Studio, a store and workshop, at Sturegatan 12 in Stockholm.
From Studio, Grossman took on numerous commissions designing unique furniture and interiors, garnered abundant press attention and accolades and exhibited frequently at Galerie Moderne, a cultural mecca in Stockholm at the time.

'Good Design' chairs, USA 1954

The unique approach to Swedish modernism that she brought with her when she moved from Stockholm in 1940 proved to be incredibly popular in the United States. She opened a much-publicized shop in Beverly Hills in 1940 selling her own designs billed on her business card as “Swedish modern furniture, rugs, lamps and other home furnishings.” She attracted celebrity clients such as Greta Garbo, Joan Fontaine and Gracie Allen and began making connections that would lead to a number of projects both from her own shop and from Barker Brothers’ Modern Shop launched in 1947, for whom she was designing exclusive pieces and taking interior design commissions.

'Cobra' table lamp, USA, 1948-49

In the late 1940s Grossman designed a groundbreaking and successful line of lamps for Barker Brothers, later produced by Ralph O. Smith.

'Grasshopper' floor lamp, USA, circa 1947

Over the next twenty years she produced work for companies like Glenn of California, Sherman Bertram, Martin/Brattrud and Modern Line. The work for Glenn of California is arguably her most sophisticated and best known. These pieces were characterized by the materials she used, such as rich, colorful textiles and woods like California walnut paired in surprising and elegant combination with black plastic laminate and wrought iron. The uniquely petite proportions and asymmetrical lines of her furniture also set her work apart.

Desk, USA, circa 1952 - Designed for Glenn of California

Grossman’s most enduring work in Los Angeles came in the form of her built architectural commissions. Between 1949 and 1959 Grossman designed at least fourteen homes in Los Angeles, one in San Francisco and one back in her native Sweden. Of these, at least ten are still standing. The homes were often perched on stilts at the top of a hill, overlooking a canyon, with magnificent views through curtain walls of glass. The homes featured extensive built-in shelving and the uniquely open and free flowing floor plan popular at the time.  She worked several times with celebrated landscape architect Garrett Eckbo on the outdoor spaces. Grossman’s houses are designed to the diminutive scale of the Los Angeles based Case Study House program—most of them have a footprint of less than 1,500 square feet (ca 140 square meters).

Her architectural work, as well as her design work, was featured extensively in Arts & Architecture, the magazine edited by Case Study program founder John Entenza.

Throughout the 1940s and 1950s Grossman’s designs were included in numerous international exhibitions and exhibited at institutions such as The Nationalmuseum (Stockholm, Sweden), Röhsska Museet (Gothenburg, Sweden), Museum of Modern Art (New York, United States), Museum of Industry and Science (Chicago, United States) and the de Young Museum (San Francisco, United States). Articles about her work were published during her career in American, British, French, Italian, Dutch, German, Polish and Swedish magazines and newspapers. In 1952 the United States Department of State distributed an article about her in 75 different countries to present “a true picture…of the American way of life.” In the 1950s Grossman taught industrial design courses at the University of California, Los Angeles and at the Art Center School in Los Angeles. She retired from design and architecture in the late 1960s.

Exhibition: Greta Magnusson Grossman
Arkitekturmuseet, Stockholm, Sweden
From February 10 to May 16 2010

All photos © R 20th Century