Ponte Vecchio in Bassano del Grappa -2012.07.18

Ponte Vecchio in Bassano del Grappa is a wooden bridge, which was designed by the architect Andrea Palladio in 1569. The bridge was destroyed many times, the last time during WWII. The Alpine soldiers have always revered the wooden bridge and Bassano del Grappa. After the destruction of the bridge, they took up a private collection and had the bridge completely rebuilt. Often soldiers flock to the bridge to remember and sing songs from their days as alpine soldiers. The grappa shop of Nardini Distillery is located on the bridge, known as Ponte degli Alpini.

Architecturally thinking, what interests me most is that the bridge has varies detailing and a strong rhythm for the users.  The bridge uses of Tuscanic columns as the support of the lintel that holds the cover. It has varies detailing and a strong rhythm   At its base it’s characterized by large breakwater wooden pylons featuring a trapezoid shape.

perspective sketch of the bridge

From this photo, we can strongly feel the rhythm of the wooden truss supporting the roof and the wooden columns on the side

Detail showing the condition when three members are meeting: the columns, the side beam and the trusses

Detail showing the steel joint between the beam and the truss

Detail shows the connections between two members

Details showing the joint between the base of the bridge and the lower trusses supporting the body of the bridge

All in all, this bridge has the same character as Palladio’s style: symmetrical,  strong sense of order and perfect proportions, it is a great place to visit.

Tempietto Barbaro in Maser-2012.07.18

Tempietto Barbaro

photograph showing the side arcade

The Tempietto at the Villa Barbaro in Maser was completed around 1580, and as such is considered to be Palladio’s last work (along with the Teatro Olimpico). This is the first religious structure built to be attached to a Palladian villa. The tempietto is refined, as it filled the function both of villa chapel and parish church. It is based most evidently on the Pantheon in Rome, but architecturally the plan of the building is innovative because it combines a cylinder and a Greek cross, with four massive piers buttressing the dome. From reading I learned that the idealism of the tempietto’s centralized plans were religious and philsophical in nature.

Villa Barbaro in Maser-2012.07.18

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Site plan diagram showing Villa Barbaro and Tempietto Barbaro, including the 1/4 mile radius walking distance.

Photograph of Villa Barbaro

The farm opposite to the villa barbaro across the street

Villa Barbaro, also known as the Villa di Maser, is a large villa at Maser in the Veneto region of northern Italy. It was designed and built by the Italian architect Andrea Palladio, with frescos by Paolo Veronese and sculptures by Alessandro Vittoria for Daniele Barbaro, Patriarch of Aquileia and ambassador to Queen Elizabeth I of England, and his brother Marcantonio an ambassador to King Charles IX of France. The villa was added to the list of World Heritage Sites by UNESCO in 1996.

Architecturally, the building has a rectangular massing with perpendicular rooms on a long axis, The central block, which is designed to resemble the portico of a Roman temple, is decorated by four Ionic columns.

The central block is flanked by two symmetrical wings. The wings have two floors but are fronted by an open arcade. Usually Palladio designed the wings to provide functional accommodation for agricultural use. The Villa Barbaro is unusual in having private living quarters on the upper level of the “barchesse” (the rooms behind the arcades of the two wings). The Maser estate was a fairly small one and would not have needed as much storage space as was built at Villa Emo, for example.

The wings are terminated by pavilions which feature large sundials set beneath their pediments. The pavilions were intended to house dovecotes on the uppermost floor, while the rooms below were for wine-making, stables and domestic use. In many of Palladio’s villas similar pavilions were little more than mundane farm buildings behind a concealing facade. A typical feature of Palladio’s villa architecture, they were to be much copied and changed in the Palladian architecture inspired by Palladio’s original designs.

This is a sketch of the villa.

This is a plan diagram drawn to show the symmetrical nature of the villa.

This is a section diagram to show different layers of space on a central axis,including the villa, the street, the front yard and the working farm, thus indicating the nature of the site itself.

Carlo Scarpa’s addition to the Museo Canova-2012.07.18

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In 1955 the Monuments office commissioned Carlo Scarpa an extension of the old canova museum  and in 1992 the new wing was built.

For my own opinion, the addition part relate to the original museum perfectly, one of the reason is the consideration of light.

Light in the Canova Museum is the important aspect of the spatial composition that is designed to animate the collection of the plaster  figures that are displayed. Scarpa, with the introduction or the corner window, was able to create a well-modulated and varied light throughout the gallery spaces.

Corner windows, an invention of the modernist movement, produce a room in which the glazed apertures – the light sources – and the walls – the surfaces which diffuse this light-are at right angles to each other. This solution avoids the dazzle resulting from a window in the middle of the wall, where the only diffusers are well away from the light source. Once it is realized that light can be modulated by an opportune combination of sources and diffusers, a new level of architectural quality becomes possible.

In the same manner as described in Wright’s ‘Destruction of the Box’, the corner window in this case also becomes a device through which the collection can conceptually inhabit the surrounding environment and vice-versa. Scarpa goes one step further by making it an inverted corner window. The view of the hillside is thus pulled into the interior while the space of the gallery is projected outward on to the hillside.

The relationships between the figures of the collection are also of note. Because it is a permanent collection, it affords the possibility of creating juxtapositions that give life to the figures. A bust, cantilevered from the wall, can be said to be in conversation with the reclining figure below it. The tension that is created by such a placement is one that is suspended between presence and absence. Unlike the modern diorama which takes this tension and frames it, the visitor in this context can fully navigate through this viscous space.

The sketch showing the “re-entrant corner”

“For Scarpa, criticism was an experiment on the work of art, awakening the reflection by which the work becomes aware of itself. Scarpa’s architecture functions as a system of symbols, as an architectural language, which, being a language, becomes a ‘means’ for the recognition/production of reality rather than the ‘object’ of such a recognition/production” – Sergio Los, 1994.