Massimo Scolari: The Representation of Architecture

(Hardback)

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The artist's major monograph exploring every aspect of his career. Massimo Scolari, who has been Professor of Architecture, Design and Modelling in Venice since 1973, is also an internationally famous painter and designer. A versatile artist, Scolari was visiting professor in numerous European and North American universities between 1975 and 1993. He was and is editor of several architecture journals and a member of the Paris "Bureau de la Recherche Architecturale" international scientific committee. This publication presents a significant number of works - all analysed extensively - produced between 1965 and 2011 which trace the entire trajectory of Scolari's artistic production: oil paintings and watercolours, installations, ink and pencil drawings, elevations, sections, architectural models, and theatre sets and costumes. One of the main objectives of this edition is to clarify the central role played by representation in Scolari's work. In order to do this, the significant texts included in the book address Scolari's focus on the visualization of the architectural idea, a feature of his approach that allows him to detach the discipline from some of its more conventional procedures of embodiment, construction, and realization. This is important at a moment when a prevailing emphasis on digital technology and constructive technique has tended to obscure the role played by the imagination, and its indispensable corollary, the hand of the architect, in the design and production of architecture.

Reviews

"Scolari's paintings speak impassively, without rancor or remorse, for an impossible modernism that had kindled all of our young hopes with a passion for a better world. To live out these impossible dreams is not for Scolari. Unlike Tafuri's etui-menschen, who decorate the interiors of their attic prisons with layers of futile complexity, Scolari's disillusioned gaze countenances no such remedy. It remains steadfast and clear, reminding us that architecture is nothing else but the symbols that have stood for centuries, only now tumbled over and fractured by the wry hand of his intelligence." Peter Eisenman

"In his concentration on the logic of representation, Scolari detaches the discipline from some of its customary practices of embodiment, construction, and realization. This is important today, at a moment when a prevailing emphasis on digital technology and constructive technique has tended to obscure the role played by the imagination in the design and production of architecture. More specifically, Scolari's approach has revealed, if only implicitly, the unexpected significance of drawing, and more generally, the uses of a whole range of representations that can be produced by the hand of the architect." Daniel Sherer

-Scolari's paintings speak impassively, without rancor or remorse, for an impossible modernism that had kindled all of our young hopes with a passion for a better world. To live out these impossible dreams is not for Scolari. Unlike Tafuri's etui-menschen, who decorate the interiors of their attic prisons with layers of futile complexity, Scolari's disillusioned gaze countenances no such remedy. It remains steadfast and clear, reminding us that architecture is nothing else but the symbols that have stood for centuries, only now tumbled over and fractured by the wry hand of his intelligence.- Peter Eisenman
-In his concentration on the logic of representation, Scolari detaches the discipline from some of its customary practices of embodiment, construction, and realization. This is important today, at a moment when a prevailing emphasis on digital technology and constructive technique has tended to obscure the role played by the imagination in the design and production of architecture. More specifically, Scolari's approach has revealed, if only implicitly, the unexpected significance of drawing, and more generally, the uses of a whole range of representations that can be produced by the hand of the architect.- Daniel Sherer