lt is obvious that Monselice is just a small town, compared to neighbors such as Padua, Vicenza, Verona and, of course, to Venice, “the most serene city” in ltaly. However, in the history of the culture of our Veneto region, small cities and coutrysides have always played important roles, and Monselice is no exception. Its ancient walls and the buildings inside them, houses, palaces, the castle and the courts of lords, are also a part of the grand tapestry of the history and culture of ltaly. Therefore, it may happen that a man who feels the beauty as something indispensable to himself and to his existence, decides in his mature age, at the end of the wanderings in the New World (Mexico, BrasiI, Venezuela) to live again in the old house of his family not because he wants to indulge in the memory of his old days which don’t exist any more, but because he is still full of energy and young enough in order to apprecìate the benefits of a life led in the time, the colors, the seasons of the countryside of Veneto, and the ample space of a palazzetto (small palace) built in the seventeenth century. He would gather up the scattered pieces, have the ruins restored and readjusted, and desire to integrate the complex with new parts.
The love for tradition, which gives power and continuity to human activities, convinced Aldo Businaro of the necessity to restore the Palazzetto, but he was also aware that tradition is a chain that links the past and the present together as long as new rings can be added to it.
In ltaly, the history of art is such a great and solid heritage that you will remain overwhelmed if you don’t have enough strength and courage. And if you compare modern architectures which we make now with old ones which exist all over and have remained for centuries, the result is always so unfavorable to new ones that even the most bold architect may lose his courage. All the old buildings receive the power and the dignity from time itself (for the very reason that they have proved that they could endure for centuries). Every new building is powerful only because it is young, but it becomes dirty and damaged as time goes on. Modern materials easily lose accuracy of execution, and prove te be poor not only in execution but also, probably, in morality. Aldo Businaro, through his own experiences in the field of architecture, learned these problems and understood that, for the operation for the Palazzetto, he needed the help of a man who had unquestionable skill and would not dread facing the architecture of the past.
Carlo Scarpa was already old at that time and had received good recognition from all over the world. Although many things have been written on him, he had never cared to advertise his owtn works. Whenever he was asked the reason for keeping them secret, he replied, “if they are roses, they will bloom.” In other words, if they have real quality, they wilI bloom and bear fruit without his help. While many artists consider the brain superior to the rest ot the body, including the heart, he had learned from the old art and his work that direct experience and the vision are the only reliable tests of a work and that anything else should be condemned as degeneration.
Thus the encounter these two men, Businaro and the “Professor” (as we usually call Carlo Scarpa), had been longed for was realìzed in 1969 when a delegation ot italian designers visited Tokyo. It is most likely that two men who love deeply the great tradition of Japanese art grew close to each other while watching the supreme beauty of the garden of Ryoan-ji, both amazed. But I should also say that for all of us, and not only for them, old Japan has always represented a possible tradition of modem architecture. This old world is a source of our energy and inspiration with which we add some rings to the chain of our tradition of architecture.
After the encounter, many operations for the improvement of the Palazzetto were realized successively by Carlo Scarpa. They have various aspects as experiments concerning formal results, ritual activities, and the right manage­ment of a property, for the sake of true architecture. It is rather difficult to put stress on the symbolic meanings or on the aspect of formal structure. Carlo Scarpa would just smile at an excessively intellectual interpretation of his work, particularly of the Palazzetto.
For the first thing, the big wall, which encloses the whole villa, was made of stone from Monselice. It defines the home space and distinguishes the activities in the house from those of the cultivation out in the field. Then the large door of the gate was made of simple boards of fir, not planed, using square nails. They were arranged according to a design which yields a perspective effect of a series of gates, just 1ike a long gallery of torii (Japanese sacred arch). The next problem was the large space of the western entrance in front of the villa. After all the studies and considerations, of which we can imagine a very difficult process from the many sketches left, it became a space called aia. (a farmyard for the threshing) raised on the external walls ot concrete and plastically designed with triangular planes paved with hand­made bricks. The planes meet at the two highest points marked by two circles made of stone produced in Vicenza. Scarpa calIed these circles the sun and the moon, and we all have interpreted them as a metaphor of conjugal love of Lucia and Aldo. The image of “a house sunken into the earth” appeared again in the roof of the Villa Ottolenghi in Bardolino by the Lake of Garda. This house was also made with the aim of realizing an underground building. It would take much time only to describe its process of execution. And if you read the notes written by Scarpa in the erecting yard, you will find it an important document which makes you reflect upon the impersonal and inhuman nature of our technical description that is now accessible even in a ready-made software. The method of tamping several Iayers of concrete, its problems, and the final effect of the execution were explained in detail over and over again to the bricklayers and were controlled wìth attention during the execution. Although it may seem too much, Scarpa told many times about the extraordinary beauty of the walls made of lime and oil in the garden of Ryoan-ji, and about the technique of execution and its formal result, which he considered insuperable.
The aia was realized through two successive periods. An external staircase had been planned as an addition, as it is the custom with many villas of Veneto to have a direct approach to the second floor (noble floor). There are many versions of this project with beautiful stairs of stone that require a complex execution.
Then the arbor placed against the eastern wall of enclosure was realized. It is a fine open-air room with ivy and other climbing plants in place oh a ceiling and with a big fireplace far cooking. Perhaps it is the only part of the Palazzetto that can be called the true architecture of Carlo Scarpa. The way of using forms and formal qualities prove his conception of home as a place where you can relax and forget about everyday concerns. The colors used here are those of the harvest and the vintage: golden yellow of wheat and violet of grapes. The simple materials create a comfortable feeling of intimacy and protection, and the geometric structure of beams of the roof and the walls is wisely balanced by the plants that were designed by the same standard as the disposition of the tables made of wooden molds used for pouring cement or of the placement of the glass pieces of mosaic on the chimney of the fireplace.
What we have seen so far is the most substantial part of the operations for the improvement of the Palazzetto, and a number of directions can be added to it as appendix: directions for the restoration of the historic building, for the disposition of trees of the large garden, for the selection of furniture. They serve to form a homogeneous and consistent complex in which it is difficult to tell the contributions of Scarpa from those of Businaro, a collector and a man of taste.
I would like to mention finally the paving in front of the garages which is completely covered with black wood. It is paved with bricks of the same form with three holes stuffed with white lime, disposed with a design that resembles a big murra [a kind of stone constituted probably of fluorite, used by Romans to make cups, vases etc.). It is a game of composition (which relates this paving to the more famous one of the imperial Villa Shugaku-in in Kyoto where you find the pattern of “one, two, three pebbles” [hifumi-ishi) made in order that “there may be no part without form” and that in the simplicity ot the rural dwelling we may enjoy the game and the sense of architecture, that is “ the fixed scene of the human comedy” shall give measure and lightness to our existence.
Crlo Scarpa was involved in the restoration of “Il Palazzetto” for ten years, from 1969 untiI his sudden death in 1978.
“Il Palazzetto’ was built in 1627 as a hunting villa by a Venetian aristocrat and was bought by the grandfather of Aldo Businaro in the early 1900’s after beìng in the successive hands of a farm owner and a monastery. During its days in the possession of the monastery, part of it had been used as a hospital, and during the two World Wars, ltalìan and German troops were stationed there.
One day in his childhood, Aldo Businaro had discovered the villa’s “secret’ by chance. When he was playing by himself, he found an old “fresco” under the white lime wall. It was covered for hygienic reasons at the time when the plague was spreading through the region.
After moving around in South America, and following his father’s death in 1962, he came back to reside at the party ruined villa. Three years later, he removed the lime wall and resurrected the fresco, realìzing the ‘dream of his childhood’. From then on, this house with 300 hundred years of history began to thrive under his plans to bring it back to life. Soon after, this project for “resuscitation” was entrusted to the hands of Carlo Scarpa.