The Deconstructivists sought to get at the essence of objects in a material sense. They wanted to fundamentally understand what makes a thing that which it is. The desire for depth exists in these architects, but it misses the mark. An object, while infinitely materially complex, does not necessarily mean that that object has any deep inherent meaning. This iconolatry of form leads to incredibly complex, and at times beautiful, almost sculptural forms. However, the forms are fundamentally disconnected from the human experience, as they often forgo all else for the sake of the form. 

The counterpart to Deconstructivism is Phenomenology. Where Deconstructivism focuses on the form above all else, phenomenologists instead focus on the human experience primarily, then molding the space to ensure that experience. This can lead to unassuming buildings that, through manipulation of light, darkness, material, and space, can create meaningful encounters between the living and the built. Where Deconstructavism is preoccupied with formal development, Phenomenology is instead focused on experiential development, with the hopes of raising questions about the human condition— life and death, spirit, love, questions of the Holy, etc. Not only to merely raise them theoretically either, but to confront the visitor with these qualms head-on, through their molded experience.

While not postmodern, Critical Regionalism is another result of the post-war paradigm shift. Many yearned to no longer be anonymously international any longer. This was a process that softly killed any pre-existing culture in its wake, leading to a global cultural hegemony and a homogenous built environment. Critical Regionalism was an architectural approach that reflects and responds to its local environment, culture, climate, mythos, and craft . Due to this, there are no distinct, definitive tropes that visually inform us that a building partakes in this philosophy. Rather, one must be acquainted with the site and its broader context in order to fully understand the impact of the building.

Carlo Scarpa (1906-1978) took his interests in Italian Renaissance history, the vernacular of the Veneto, and a phenomenological approach into account in all of his works. He took the fundamental experiential and spiritual aims of phenomenology and married it with a Venetian Regionalism, all while maintaining a heavy focus on the crafted aspect of his works. His magnum opus is generally agreed upon to be the Brion Cemetery (1968-1978). While the spaces are very noteworthy, Scarpa weaves his narrative and confronts the visitors with ideas of life and death primarily through his landscape.

Scarpa built the Brion Cemetery as an addition to a pre-existing cemetery in San Vito d’Altivole, Italy. The typical Italian cemetery is commonly described as almost urban in its layout. The intent is to gather and house as many tombs as possible. In this sense, it was a very functional design. However, besides simply existing on the landscape, this traditional cemetery design did not engage the landscape at all. It served as merely a resting place for the dead, with limited space for the living to visit and pay respects. The traditional cemetery design was a necropolis— quite literally a city for the dead. One of Scarpa’s only quotes on the Brion cemetery explores his intentions on this manner.

Scarpa’s response for tackling death in a more thoughtful manner was to introduce a garden, with a very philosophical itinerary interwoven. In essence, he designed both a garden for the dead inhabitants and for the living visitors to simultaneously interface with. Scarpa built three primary narratives into the environment (Figure 1, top). Two are accessed via the pre-existing cemetery gate (in purple and red in Figure 1), which Scarpa referred to as a propylaeum (an allusion to the entrance pavilion of the Acropolis), and the last being accessed via the Funerary gate (pink in Figure 1, top). All three itineraries have in common their ritualistic and processional functions, each designed to interface with a different narrative. The propylaeum is the bigger and more central entrance, thereby being the most commonly interfaced with. The funerary entrance is not prohibited— merely obscured and out of the way.

There is a hierarchy in paths that are intended to be taken. Through a variety of slight psychological moves, Scarpa subconsciously dictates visitors into a certain ambulation.  In the path most often meant to be travelled (red in Figure 1, top), an offset stairwell pushes the visitor leftward into a corridor, which is long and dark to the right, yet open and light to the left. In most cases, the visitor will go to the left because of these factors, where they will then be met with a water canal, once again informing their movement about it, leading to the Brion tombs. This predetermination of experience by Scarpa is a strong phenomenological trope— a strong and definitive interfacing accomplished through seemingly unassuming forms.

Once on the lawn by the tombs, landscape begins to be separated into zones. There are three main indicators in the landscape that inform this (Figure 1, middle). There is an opening in the wall, bringing in the pre-existing necropolis into the garden— further reinforcing the notion of this garden being for both living and dead. The low cable fence splits the lawn into two, and an elevation shift is yet another boundary to define the different zones as such. To understand the rationale and narrative for these three zones, the local Italian traditions must be taken into account. More specifically, Catholicism and their understanding of life and afterlife— of the three phases of an Earthly Existence, Purgatory, and Heaven (Figure 1, bottom).

Chronologically, one passes from living to afterlife when the funerary route is taken (Figure 1, top, pink). The landscape defined by the church is for the living, as a church is a space for the living. The lawn as a representation of purgatory is also a poetic moment. The bodies of the buried are still on Earth, but the souls are elsewhere. That is, they are both on this Earth and not— just as in purgatory. The isolated, separated, meditative space as a representation of heaven provides peace and calm from an otherwise hectic and chaotic world. This is a representation of an individual’s passage from life to death. It is also not coincidental that the section of Earthly Existence is almost labyrinth-like in nature, representing the complexity of the world of the living— and that the built environment gets less and less complex with every passing zone. The cable fence carves a Heavenly section out of the lawn, otherwise symbolic of purgatory. This may be a commentary on how a soul traveling from purgatory to heaven is a grey area— almost a threshold— which is expressed architecturally. It also makes that section of the lawn— although not occupiable by those in the heavenly zone— reserved for them exclusively to ponder upon. 

Through his phenomenological development of spaces and fields, Scarpa’s Brion Cemetery confronts the visitor with philosophical questions of life and death, all in a local Italian context. The careful crafting of light, darkness, complexity in spaces, and degrees of openness in fields dictate that the visitor interface with the field in a highly specified manner, one that recalls local beliefs in the questions that are posed by the landscape. This work, taken out of its cultural context, would lose significant amounts of its inherent meaning. By focusing heavily on experience, but one that can only be fully understood by those native to the region, Scarpa marries phenomenology and critical regionalism, two of the critical architectural movements in the post-war epoch, in an incredibly cohesive manner.

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(Figure 1)- Carlo Scarpa, Brion Cemetery (1968-1978)

Left- The three imagined itineraries.

Middle- The separation into three zones using three indicators in the landscape.

Right- The three zones representative of the Catholic beliefs on the procession through life.