Brion Cemetery: Carlo Scarpa

AbstractLate in his career, in November of 1976, Carlo Scarpa lectured at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. Entitled “Can Architecture Be Poetry?,” Scarpa's lecture acknowledged his respect for Oriental architecture as well as that of Hoffmann, Wright, Le Corbusier, and Kahn. Scarpa also defended his project under construction, a private cemetery in honor of the successful industrialist Giuseppe Brion and his wife Onorina Tomasin Brion. Opposition to the project was pronounced, especially within academia, where the extravagance of a memorial to a wealthy patron flew in the face of prevailing egalitarian ideology. During the discussion that followed his presentation, Scarpa bemoaned the graffiti that students had scrawled on the cemetery walls, yet closed with his typical equanimity, “Allow me a small personal idea. A large work of art is always small.”