Architectural Theory Review

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Constructing Tales
SAM RIDGWAY INTERVIEWS MARCO FRASCARI(WASHINGTON/ALEXANDRIA
MAY 2004)

Sam Ridgway

To cite this article: Sam Ridgway (2005) Constructing Tales, Architectural Theory Review, 10:2,
66-88, DOI: 10.1080/13264820509478542

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13264820509478542

Published online: 22 Jul 2009.

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 Ridgwa} & Frascari

Constructing Tales
S A M RIDGWAY INTERVIEWS M A R C O FRASCARI
( W A S H I N G T O N / A L E X A N D R I A MAY 2004)

Introduction

Scanning a 200n version of Marco Frascari's CV for this article left me slightly light-headed, revealing
as it does the vast trajectory of his appointments and teaching in top architecture schools and. of
course, the extent of his publications. There are approximately eighty papers and three hooks, with
two more works in progress on topics including the relationship between lood and architecture,
architectural drawing, the body of architecture, semiotics, architectural synaesthesia. Carlo Scarpa
and Vincenzo Scamozzi, to mention just a few. For me, the thread that ties this vast theoretical opus
together is its poetic and finely crafted phenomenological exploration of the material nature of
architecture. Arguably his most famous and influential article. "The Tcll-thc-Tale Detail." published
in 1981 and now translated into Spanish. Japanese and Mandarin, examines the architectural detail
in precisely this manner. Born, as he says, "under the shadow of the dome of Albert i s Sanl'Andrea
in Mantua." educated in Venice, receiving his first degree from the Accademia di Belle Arti ami his
second, a Dotlorein Architettura, from theIslitulo I niivisitariodiArcbiltetumdi Venea'a (WAV),
and subsequently working as one of Carlo Scarpas assistants in both teaching and in practice, it
was difficult for him to avoid this approach. As he said during the interview. "Of course you haw t<>
realize that I grew up in the School of Scarpa. I worked for him and I studied with him, so that was
pan of the way I think. I couldn't avoid it." Carlo Scarpa is perhaps most well know for his obsessive
attention to detailing, in other words for an understanding that construction embodies significant
meaning. As Frascari notes in his writing on Scarpa'suse of the numbereleven,"[i]nSearpa\s buildings,
the power of a tectonic imagination is the core of the architectural metier^ Scarpa s determination
to give construction a voice, primarily, as Frascari writes, through "the adoration of the joint."2 put
him at odds with mainstream modernism, which was obsessed, often in contrast to the realities of
construction, with the neutrality, univcrsalityand instrumentality of materials, const ruction techniques
and detailing. In many ways Scarpa and Frascari are two sides of the same coin, one in practice and
the other in the academy. Both figures embody a powerful antidote to the jaundiced modern project
in which neutrality of space and materials are the ideal. Instead, their work promotes a richness of
architectural expression and insight that is embedded in the corporeal and which displays a deep
understanding of its historical context.

I recorded the interview that follows in May 2004, when Frascari was (i. Ward Truman Professor ol
Architecture at the Washington Alexandria Architecture Centre (WAAC), an off-campus College site
of Virginia Tech. He has since been appointed Director of the School of Architecture at Carleton

(>(>
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I nivcrsitj in (>ttawa. Prior to his appointment ;ii Virginia Tech he was professor of architecture ai
the I nivcrsitv of Pennsylvania from 1988 to 1997 and before that he taught at schools of architecture
throughout North America. Canada, Europe and the UK, including Columbia, Harvard, The University
ol Barcelona and the AA in London. After moving to the L'S he received his Masters at the University of
Cincinnati in ITS and his Phi) at the I 'nivcrsitv of Pennsylvania in 1981. The interview was recorded
over several sessions and while ii touches on many topics it primarily explores our common interest
m construction and construction teaching. I was interested to learn, for example, that he wrote "The
Tell-the-Tale Detail" soon after he began teaching at Pennsylvania because he was frustrated with the
lack of construction content in the design studio with students showing "a beautiful design with a lot
(il space . . . but there was no construction." lie went on to explain that the same envelope built in
brick or wood is two completely different spaces. This is quite different to the usual gripe from design
tutors, win i expect students to demonstrate bow to construct their designs by applying materials and
building techniques in an instrumental fashion. Frascari believes that construction helps determine
the character of a space anil therefore should be thought about from the beginning. Similarly, writing
"The I.IIIIW Material? m the Architecture of Venice "3 was motivated in part by a concern that while
"The Tell-the-Tale Detail" was becoming a standard reference, ironically "not in construction. . . .
what was missing was looking to the material for its spiritual dimension, not only for its materiality."
Of all Frascari's articles, "The l.unic Materiale." literally 'material light." is perhaps the most poetic.
As he writes, the expression Untie Materiale "is intended to point out the palpable presence of
light—something born in the materials of construction and imprisoned in the body of an edifice as
the mind is imprisoned in the body ol a man."4 The beginning quote, taken from Antonio Conti's
Prose and Poesie, "Knowledge is the material cause of poesis." sets the tone for the article, which.
even though it focuses on the late medieval. Venetian palace Ca'Dario, once again reveals Frascari's
training with, and admiration for Carlo Scarpa. Dwelling on the fundamental but usually suppressed
architectural truism that buildings are revealed in light and conversely light is revealed as it touches
buildings, is not an attempt to give sight priority over the other senses. During the interview he
explain that. "|w |hat is fundamental is construction involves all the senses." He illustrated this by
referring to an article that he started to write but never finished, in which he wanted to explore how
to "design a church that makes palpable the presence of God." One of the many factors required to
achieve this would be to ensure the building has the right smell and to do this would require leaving
out vapour barriers in the construction so that the church walls are slightly damp. As he spoke, my
experience as an eighteen year old in the churches of Arre/.o where I had travelled to look at the Piero
della Franceses frescos, came flooding back to me and 1 realized that of course the smell of a building
creates a powerful and lasting impression.

One of the wonderful things about interviewing Marco was that, like all architects, when he started
to discuss a building he looked around for something to draw on. I'm glad that at the lime I bad the
presence of mind to offer my note pad for his sketches and that they can now form pan of an illustrated
interview. I have augmented them with drawings and photos of buildings to which he referred. For
example, we spoke about Palladio's additions to the medieval Basilica in Vicen/a and I have included
his sketch, Palladio's drawing from the Quattro libri, Serlio's drawing from Book I (On Geometry) on

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 Ridgway ik Frascari

which Palladio based his design and a photograph of die facade of the Basilica that 1 look fast year I
have included these drawings and photographs to help place our discussion about die construction
of the facade in context for those ol you win >. like me, did not really know much about this building,
Like all the drawings he did for me. this one revealed a way of understanding the building t hat I would
not otherwise have experienced. This was by describing how Palladio ingeniously married together
medieval anil classical construction. As he said, "|w | hat is beautiful about the Basilica is this technique.
How do you bring together two technological reasons one to the other in an act of construction so
that it takes on a meaning and (he meaning is so important that we call this window I'alladiana. which
is funny because the guy who invented the window is Serlio! Prior to ihe interview I did not know
that Frascari would reveal his thoughts through words and drawings, but it soon became evident that
this would be his mode of delivery! The interview would not therefore be complete, nor at times
make sense, without them.

During one session of the interview we looked through and discussed two large folders of Frascari's
articles that we had retrieved from the Vi'AAC library. prompted by my asking him specifically about
"The Tell-the-Tale Detail" and the "Lime Maleriale." It was a good way to gain insight into his huge
range of work, both published and unpublished. This sequence begins with the article he co-authored
with Livio Volpi (ihirardini5 on proportion, which prompted the sketch of Scrlio's famous drawing
showing how to proportion a temple door, which in turn led to the discussion of Palladio s Basilua
in Vicenza. This was followed by "Deciphering a wonderful Cipher: Eleven in the architecture of Carlo
Scarpa,"6 which reveals an otherwise hidden aspect of Scarpa's work.:showing how he generated many
of the details and dimensions for his buildings. Having been interested in Scarpa's buildings for years,
I found this knowledge added another layer of richness and complexity to the visit I subsequently
made to the Brion Family Chapel and Cemetery, one of the most consistent and highly detailed
modern buildings 1 had ever experienced. This session of the interview ends with a discussion of
the article "Tolerance or Play: Conventional Criticism or Critical Conventionalism in the Light of the
Italian Retreat from the Modern Movement."71 have omitted short comments he made about two
other articles, one dealing with the "Pneumatic Bathroom" (unpublished), and the other with "The
Construction Drawings of a Blind Architect."8 The discussion of tolerance and play is a good example
of the way Frascari employs etymology and philology, which he describes as "the k ive of how thinking
develops through the use of words," to reveal otherwise hidden meanings in the way we describe the
construction of buildings. Tolerance.' the word used nowadays to describe allowable dimensional
deviations from those shown on drawings and allowances that must be made to ensure that building
elements lit together, can. of course, also refer to something less than ideal, something that must
be tolerated. The machine-made, modern ideal is to produce buildings elements and materials that
lit together perfectly. 'Play,' on (he oilier hand, is a word used by previous general ions to describe
(he same phenomenon, but it evokes a more joyful and harmonious relationship between building
pans. Frascari used this difference as a means of describing Scarpa's approach to detailing, in which,
instead of attempting to hide joints or demand dimensional accuracies that could not be achieved,
he designed joints that revealed a joyful union between materials and elements. During die interview.

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Frascari sketched some of the motifs thai Scarpa used in his detailing, later, when looking at some
of his buildings, I wondered why 1 had never really questioned or understood these details before
()i course most people who enjoy his buildings would not know how the details were generated.
and to explain this a metaphor used by Frascari about good cooking springs to mind. When served a
wonderful meal often it is hard to tell exactly what the constituent flavours and ingredients are. how
it has been constructed or even what method of looking has been used. Karch are we privy to how
it was brought together but. we nevertheless get immense enjoyment from eating it. To be a good
Cook, however, it is essential to be able to analyse food cooked by others on the plate and the palette:
andsimilarh.forihearchitect.it isnecessan to acquire knowledge of the generative ideas, materials
and techniques that make great buildings.

It was fascinating to meet and interview Marco Frascari on his then home turf in Alexandria, as I
have admired his work and used his articles in my teaching and research for many years. For me. the
significance of his writing lies in its ability to continually reveal the richness and complexity of the
world of architectural knowledge. His writing does not eschew exterior pressures and influences on
architectural practice and pedagog; but it continually reveals his dee)) understanding and affection
for its corporeality. By concentrating on and expanding knowledge of their material nature in the
most poetic and delightful manner, he opposes, as did Carlo Scarpa, any attempt to reduce buildings
to functional and neutral objects.

SR: Recently I read your article "Architects, Never Hat Your Maccheroni Without a Proper Sauce."9
and you seem to be correlating the kind of imaginative process required to make good architecture
with that required to be a good cook. In relation to cooking, this means that it is hard to describe how
you really make a good dish. It's got to do with a feeling for the food, of how to choose and combine
ingredients and a sense of when things are cooked according to how they smell or sound rather than
just following a recipe, baking times and so on.

MF: M\ quest in that article w as tocxplain why Descartes fired his cook because you can't separate
mind and matter in a piece of food. The cook would come to him and say. this is the recipe; I
followed it exactly but it tastes really awful! My grandmother never followed a recipe completely
but her cooking was very good. The same is true of construction. A good building is not the result
of this perfection of mind and perfect CAD drawings that tell you down to the micrometre how
big the room is. It is the result of your interaction with the builder. My grandmother would say.
"OK. it will take three rosaries to cook that.'' I would say. "What, it's not twenty minutes?"' "No.
it's three rosaries." and you realise that three rosaries is a very precise system of measurement.
I was talking with a friend of mine who was working with photography, lie said he hated the
timer because in the beginning when 1 develop a photo it takes thirty seconds to do it. After a
three-hour session in the dark room developing for thirty:seconds doesn't give the same picture.
Why? Because the temperature of the room goes up. the chemicals are going down, and so on.
He said that he preferred to count, one thousand and one. one thousand and two and so on
because alter two hours in the dark room he is tired, and so he counts slower and the slowing

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clown that resulted corresponded exacth with the extra time it took to make the pictures from
the beginningol the session the same as those from the end, The same with my grandmother's
cooking, Three rosaries during the winter are different to three rosaries during the summer.
Three rosaries in front of the oven during the winter go slower because it's warm and you enjoy
it! During the summer they go much quicker because its too hot and you want to get the dish
cooked quickly. But of course the meat was much warmer when it went inside the oven. The
oven is keeping the heat much easier during the summer than during the winter and the roast
comes out beautifully every time.

SR: My mother cooked on a wood stove and it was similar to what you describe. She knew how to
stoke the lire lor each dish, a roast or a cake, so that it would took perfectly. It was also different in
the summer and the winter. In the summer she also would cook more quickly so that she could let
the lire die down to stop the kitchen getting too hot!

MF: So this article is basically a key discussii in ol that issue, but it's done in a funny way and not
really talking about architecture directly. I go through this dream of cooking. 1 low is Descartes
to hie his cook and 1 make a relationship between cooking with local food and building with
local technology and of course you can keep going. The analogy works out but that is my base of
thinking and that is really how do you deal with construction? Construction is a ven deep mental
process where you don't separate mind and matter. You cannot. So when you think a solution it
is related to that material and that material gives you back the materiality ol the building.

SR: One of the big issues in architectural education at the moment is Descartes' separation between
mind and matter represented by the current split between design and construction. Construction has
an instrumental relationship with design.

MF: Exactly. Over here we design and over there the guy gives you the construction diagrams.

SR: What originally interested me about your work was your non-instrumental, phenomenological
way of conceiving the materials ol construction. The "iiime Materials" is perhaps an even more
profound example of this than The Tell-the Tale Detail." proposing as it does that light is a material
of construction: that a building can be thought of as a construction in and of light.

MF: The question is. in-materiality' is in-the-material.' because in language the n doesn't stay
there but becomes an in.' so the word becomes immateriality. But really the Latin root of that
is in-materiality so if you put in a dash or just separate immateriality' it is in-materiality.' That
is the issue 1 was discussing in "The Liunc Materiale," that you are dealing with the immaterial
but through the material. And that is the key question. In design the first thing I do is ask what
is going to be the material, which is not the way we are taught architecture. You are taught to
design the building and then you figure out the materials. But. if I'm going to do a brick building
with steel and glass. I don't know what it looks like yet but choosing the material will give me
all different levels of imagination that deal with its non-instrumental nature. The problem is that
if I have a shape already then materials and structure are only instrumental. So this is basically

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 ATR \U:2 OS

going back to constructing archetypes. In a village, surrounding trees don t grow more than
1(1 feet so their beams are going to be 10 feet. And that wood will not allow the span on top of
the window more than so many inches, Of course there will be slight variations because every
i rce is different and every builder is different. But in reality, since they had the materials before,
they can rcai h the level of immateriality much better than thinking. "Oh yes, this is going to be
a perfect church where you feel the palpable presence of Cod." And you can deal with all this
level of immateriality. Boloney! When you walk into a Romanesque church, they got to a level
of feeling the palpable presence of God because they were dealing with the raw materials. And
the materials they were looking at were, yes, of course, light, darkness, humidity.

SR: I've taught construction for ten years and I've used your articles from the beginning, since 1994.
Prior to that, through research towards m\ Masters. I had begun to understand the really severe
problems that treating construction in a purely instrumental fashion posed for architecture. I was
](inking lor an alternative t hat didn't fun her entrench divisions between const ructii in and design. Your
articles were a way of introducing students to the relationship between construction and imagination,
the meaning of materials and so on, and this is quite alien to most construction courses that I know
about. 1 don't know what it is like in America.

MF: It's the same!

SR: The question I would like to ask relates to how this alternative view of materials might be applied
or used, if that's not a too instrumental way of putting it. in construction teaching. 1 wanted to ask a
question about the writing of. in particular. "The Tell-the-Tale Detail" and "The Lume Materials" if
you thought about their application in that way?
MF: OK. Well let me tell you the stor\ before the "Tell-the-Tale Detail." It was something I
wrote as soon as I finished my PhD. I was leaching at Perm, and 1 was frustrated by what was
going on in the studio and of course what was going on in construction. So 1 felt the \v:a\ to say
something about what, of course, Kenneth l-'rampton would call itectonics, but really from my
point of view it was construction. The term tectonics is fine. I don't have any problem with it. It
was used because it was more fashionable. But I was really trying to explore the fact that in the
act of construction there are meanings and those are the fundamental meanings of architecture.
The problem was that students would show a beautiful design with a lot of space, within their
understanding of whatspaceis which was within the lineofmodem understanding, but there was
no construction. My argument is that space changes completely with the system of construction.
The same dimension, the same envelope, if you build it in brick or if you build it in wood, is a
different space. It is not the same space and that was why I wrote the "Tell-the-Tale Detail." Of
course you have to realise that I grew up in the School of Scarpa. 1 worked for him, 1 studied
with him. so that was part of the way I think. I couldn't avoid it.

So that was The-Tell-the-Tale Detail.'' The "Lume Materiale* was again a reaction, because I saw
the "Tell-the-Tale Detail" becoming a standard reference for many courses, not in construction,
but what was missing was looking to the material for its spiritual dimension and not only for its

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 Ridgway & Frascari

nialenaliiy. 01 course, the source was Venice where I spent several years of my life, including my
time as a student. So that's wh\ I selected Ca Dario to talk about, since this is a perfect example
of Venetian architecture, and behind that there is also a little bit of Raskin and his The StonesoJ
Venice. The problem is you cannot get people to read Ruskin nowadays because it is a romantic
discourse. But basically Ruskin is behind "The Unite Maleriale" because The Stones of Venice is
dealing witlithequalityofthematerialityofVenetian architecture. The problem is (hat Ruskin talks
about everything and therefiire it becomes a mess. So that's win I wnite "TheLiiineMaleriale"
focussing on one building and one issue rather than the totality of Venice. So I was trying to get
to the materials, and of course stone is a basic material in architecture, its fundamental, and
that's why I selected stone as the fundamental element. Light is the other element you reveal
through stone. Of course, this is very difficult to explain. I was planning to write another article
about religious architecture, but it never came about. I started it several times but I never goi the
time to finish it. especially because I had to figure out where to publish and it's always difficult
to publish something on sacred architecture. My argument was to deal with the question of how
do you design a church that makes palpable the presence ofdod? This is the fundamental issue
of sacred architecture and the argument was going to be that the only way to do it is through
construction. It's not space that does it, but the physicality of the material and how that material
is put together. So my argument there was going to be thai when you do the construction of
the church you don't put in vapour barriers because the humidity has to be in the church, it
has to smell right. The argument there was going to be against the building codes related to
stopping vapour. Sure they are understandable, I don't want humidity in my bedroom, but 1 do
want humidity in a church. The question was how do design a church in such a way that the
building doesn't go rotten but at the same lime you have a building the construction of which
Ls addressing all the senses and not just the visual. And that is the fundamental element.

SR: 1 remember a long time ago when I was eighteen going into churches in Arcz/o to look at the
Piero Delia Francesca frescos. I'm not a religious person but I remember feeling almost faint just
walking into those spaces. There is something palpable there, it's so intense, the flickering candles,
the frescos, the space, the stone, the sounds and the smell, it's very intense.

MF: Yes. All the senses are involved and what is fundamental is construction involves all the
senses. When you are designing and figuring out how to build something you have to think
which senses besides the visual should be involved and that is the key element. So the decision
of how do you make a joint or how do you place the layers of material is related to the senses.
It's not related to the optimised idea that you don't want humidity to go through thai wall. It's
completely absurd. I think a sacred stone building where you have water dripping on the walls
because of condensation is perfect. Sure you will tell me it's cold. First of all, you don't stay in a
church 2-1 hours, Only the priest does that and generally they always have a scarf around their
neck and their nose is dripping, but that is an old tradition and it's part of the materiality of the
church.

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 ATR 10:2 OS

SR: I guess for mc that's primarily what "The Unite Materials' is about, the sense ol sight, Trying to
deal with a single sense and in my construction course that's where the revelation comes forstudents,
They struggle and struggle with this concept, then suddenly they will begin to understand that it's
about the sense of sight. All architects deal with light because they deal with shadows and colour and
all of these things. I can point out the window of the classroom and ask wh\ the architect designed
the overhang in that way so the shadow does that on the facade.

MF: It' all a game of shadows, you should read my article on Scamo//i. 10

MF: I wrote this article "Contra Divinam Proportionem in 1998 with I.ivio Volpi Ghirardini.
The argument basically is that you know people in art history who take a photograph of an
ancient building, trace lines from certain points on the facade to other points anil they find the
Golden Proportion. The problem (hat we found is how do you decide which are proportions?
Proportions are the result of construction, not something that you can superimpose on top of

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I
Figure I Sketches made by Marco Frascari during the Figure J: Sketches made by Marco Frascari during the
interview Clockwise from top left: Serlio's drawing inlerriew Clockwise from top left diagrams of Scarpa's
showing bow to proportion a temple door: Carlo Scarpa's detailing of the joints between the form work of concrete
grareslone. Italian hollow tile construction: relationship columns: column capital detail from Hntnaleschi's
between base and height dimensions of Gothic. Ogiral church of Saint Lorenzo: genesis ofScarpa '$ detailing
anlvs. Palladiana/Serliana, sketch of bedroom section by based on construction techniques: column capital
Sam Ridgwax showing mniola attached lo column.

~3
 Ridgwa\ & Frascari

a photograph. They relate to the builder who has a plumb line and he has to work out how to
build it. I'll give you an example. There is tlv.it famous drawing of Serlio which purports to show
how a door is inserted in a wall according to the proportions of the wall, (figs.1,3) Why are these
proportions Important? It's very easy. The builder has begun to build the room, he hasn't put the
stuff on top yet but he has to order the stones to make the door for the wall. How do I measure
the stones for the door? It's very simple, I take rope and a piece of wood with a nail in it and I
make the measurements for the door. Then I call my stonemason and give him the dimensions
for the piece of stone! So in this article basically we are arguing that there is no such thing as
golden proportion using building. It's only the proportion coming out of the making of the
thing. Alberti. and basically we are looking at Alberti here, did things by (he normal traditional
way that builders make construction, and construction is linked to this act of measuring of the
building. It has nothing to do with golden proportions!!

SR: In the Renaissance there was a lot of discussion about the harmonic proportions between the
planets.

MF: Yes. but the proportions they are using are the builder's proportions.

SR: So in fact the planets resonated according to how the building was built rather than the other
wav around.

Figure ■
.>■' Seiiio's drawing of temple door proportions. (Source: Figure 4: Carlo Scarpa, preliminary sketchfor (be iwi
Sebastiano Serlio on Architecture. Volume One. Hook I. On pillars, Banco Popolare di Verona. /Source: Carlo Scar
Geometry! Betiedikl Taschen)

14
 AIR IO:2/rn

MF: 1 es and in m \\ e f< iundall thesebciiuciful things by takingy picture and picking up points that
clon'i make am sense from a construction point of view! These buildings were never measured
[his way. They were measured so the builders could make the drums to make the column, the
capital and so on. so die whole proportional system is determined by construction. There is
no other wa\. so that when you are going to measure the building, you have to measure the
building in relationship to the way it's been constructed, not the way you think the proportional
system fits.

SR: Now thai you mention it. the bedroom ceilings in my house are an example of that. 1 really wanted
the curve to extend from wall to wall but the centre of that curve is below the floor so the builder
couldn't set it out. ffig.l)
MF: Exactly. No builder will do that.

SR: so in the end I made the biggest curve I could with the centre at floor level. The carpenter used
a chain and a pencil to set out the curve.
MF: Yes, you did a trick that a classic ol construction. When I explain to students why I'alladio
used the Serliana. which is an instruction in construction, for his arcade around the Basilica in
Yicen/a... Give me your book I will draw ii for you dig. ]). The Basilica is built with this rhythm
of arches and columns. 01 course if you look in [he Four Hooks tfig.T). these are all equal. When
\ou go on site you discover that these distances are all different. The reason was very simple.
This facade is applied to a pre-existing Gothic building. The Gothic building is built with ogival
arches that intersect like this. From a construction point of view with this type of arch you can
keep the height the same but narrow and enlarge the width of the opening (lig. 11. So the Gothic
builders never had that problem. Now Palladio was asked to put a classical building in front of
it and the structural points where you can attach this to the Gothic building are at the bottom
of the ogival arches. If one opening is three metres and the next is two and a half metres you
are in complete trouble because you cannot vary a classical arch in the same way without also
changing its height. So what I'alladio did was to keep the arches constant and he changed the
dimension between the columns and the centre point between the columns. Why? Because he
discovered what is a problem of construction. The story of the Basilica is that there was another
gin before him that built this arcade around it and it collapsed because he couldn't relate the
structural points of the existing with new. So this is a classical trick of construction. The Serliana
allows you to correct every dimension if you get into trouble.

SR: And you don't notice it.

MF: NO you don't. The only one who notices i t . . . .

SR: Is someone who measures it.

MF: Well if you are an architect you see it. Other people will never notice it. Goethe got very

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 Kidgway & Frascari

upsei when he saw the Basilica. He travelled to Italy and the first thing he did when he got to
Vicenza was logo tosee the Basilica. When he got there he ran with his body and he immediately
measured between these things and he got very upset because they kept changing. But basically
Goethe didn't know how to build. He was one ofthe.se guys who theorised architecture without
ever having built anything. And basically all the discussion we haw conlraproportion! is against
people like Goethe who think proportion is a divine thing. The reality is brutal. You have to cope
with a different system ol construction. This is a Gothic system and this is a Roman system. The
Roman with the arch requires that the distance between the arches has to be the same. With
the Gothic system you can tilt the angle of the ogival arch every time to match the dimension
of the plan without any problem.

SR: There must haw been a similar situation with Brunclleschi's dome in Florence because he built
a classical dome on an existing Gothic base.

MF: Yes but you just look at that building and you realise that these people didn't know how-
to build, but the result in Vicenza is an architectural result (fig.(>). What is beautiful about the

Figure 5 Palladio '$ deignfor the addition of a classical arcade lo a medieval basilica, i Source . \ndrea Palladia.
The Pour Hooks ofArcbilcclurc. Third lt<x>k)

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 ATR 10:2/0=;

Basilica Ls this technique. Palladio brought together

two technological reasons one to the oilier in an act of
construction and ii look on a meaning. And. the meaning
Is so important that we call this window Palladiana, which
is funny because the guy who invented the window is
Serlio. So some an historians called it Serliana. hut it is
only because they tend to give to Caesar what belongs
to Caesar. But generally it is known as Palladiana because
its Palladio who made it famous through that building
and probably Serlio, who also put in a proposal for the
Basilica, had the same problems.

MF: Another aspect of construction is covered in this

article I wrote about Scarpa's use of eleven. It was
published twice; the second edition is better than the
first. It's called "Deciphering of a Wonderful Cipher:
Eleven in the Architecture of Carlo Scarpa. "12 and this is
again about construction and how you get the connect ion
between construction and design. Scarpa used eleven
centimetres as a basic measure. Now eleven isa very funny
number. Scarpa'sargumcnt was this. Italians build internal
partitions in hollow tile. If you do a wall in hollow tile the
section looks something like this (fig. 1). 1 don't know if it
is common in Australia. The hollow tiles are built up into
a wall with mortar joints and then plastered over to finish.
The standard dimension of this wall is ten centimetres
Figtire 6: Palladia's Basilica in Vicenza. bin of course they never go up in a perfect plumb line.
Photo. Sam Ridgway) The dimensions arc-supposed to be a nine-centimetre tile
and then half a centimetre of plaster on each side. The
reality is. and I will draw it a bit exaggerated (fig. 1), they are always laid a little bit crooked and
the plasterer compensates lo make the wall true. The result is that the wall is nearly always eleven
centimetres. So thai is the argument of Scarpa. That is the basic module that he used. This is the
reality of construction not the absurdity of a building code. So even measure is one hundred
and ten millimetres or half that, fifty-five millimetres. 1 can tell you the measurements of every
building of Scarpa's without a mistake because they are all based on eleven. You might think
that a measurement looks like twenty centimetres; I can tell you that it is twenty-two. Eleven is
also a funny number it is made by one and one. If you look, everything in Scarpa is double. If he
does a down pipe, there are two of them. If he is doing a support for a handrail il is two pieces
of metal. There are usually two supporting columns and so on (figs. 4.9). So eleven takes on
this double meaning. Eleven is also an evil number by definition. It is a measure of the inferno.
The only two measures given by Dante in the Inferno are twenty-two miles and I think fortv-

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 Ridgway & Frascari

Figure ~. Detail of Carlo Scarpa '& lomb in the Brian FigureftCarlo Scarpa Detail ofBrion Family
Cemetery tl'hotti Sam Ridgway) Chapel (Photo Sam Ridgway)

four miles, both multiples of eleven. Ten is perfect, twelve is perfect, and eleven is in between.
There is another funny thing: there are eleven characters in the name Carlo Scarpa. His whole
proportional system is based on eleven, so he is embodying himself in all his buildings. Do you
know the famous picture of his tomb where there are all these dots (fig, 7)?

SR: I don't know it. Is it in the Brion cemetery?

MF: Yes. Of course the entire Brion cemetery design is based on eleven (fig. 8). But Scarpa's
tomb is in one of the corners of the cemetery and it is all a play on eleven. It was designed b\
his son after he died. And of course he is buried vertically!

SR: Vertically! Why?

MF: Well he wanted that.

SR: He wanted to stand up?

MF: Yes. But again, this use of eleven is pan of the discourse of construction, fie takes a very
simple problem of construction and he makes out ol it a system ol building.
Thisisa nice article. It iscalled'ToIeranceor Play: Conventional Criticism Critical Conventionalism,
In Light of the Italian Retreat from the Modem Movement."13 What happened was there was a
famous article by Banham against the Italian Nco-liberty. claiming that they were withdrawing
from the Modern Movement. Bbasically the discussion I had was thai from theconstruction point
of view the difference can be characterised as the difference between tolerance and play. If you
talk with an old cabinetmaker, at least in this country, l don't know if it's the same in Australia,
he will say that when he makes the door he has to leave some play. In Italian it's the same. The\
talk about gioco (play), otherwise the door doesn't close. That is a completely differeni mental
construct ion from talking about tolerance. Tolerance issomethingyou don't want. It'ssomething

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 ATR 1(1 2 0=5

Fig/ire') Cork) Scarpa. twin columnsfrom ibe Banco Popolare di Verona. < Source: Carlo Scarpa,
Kciiediki Tasehen)

you have to tolerate. Play is something that you want and it's a different thing. Of course die
Italian Modem Movement was moving in this direction, going hack, which Banham didn't like.
Modern architecture doesn't allow play. It has to tolerate the fact that you cannot cut the wood
exactl) so you have to figure out something to hide that.

SR: I've never thought about it that way, Tolerances are something that you have to tolerate

MF: Yes, something you tolerate because your dream is to be perfect or precise, whereas the
old way of thinking was to be playful. There was no question of being precise. So this article is
talking in general about architecture but in reality the basic concept behind it is the difference
between tolerance and play architecturally speaking.

SR: Does this fascination with words come from the fact that you are bilingual, or probably trilingual''
Etymology is a very important ingredient in your work,

MF: No this comes from my favourite philosopher. Giambattista Vico. It's not etymology, it's
philology, which is a different thing. It's love of how thinking develops through the use of words.
Of course you have to use etymology because it's part of the game. You have logo to the origins
and see how things move i ml. That will reveal a lot of things. I try to get to the common language
and figure out what people will think.

79
 Ridgway & Frascari

SR: Your work isvery rich in that sense. Getting back to construction teaching for a minute. I lisiorically
why do you think there is this division between mind and body?
MF: Descartes. He was the one who really defined the separation Then w hat happened was that
the School of Engineering came about, The French invented a different school for engineering
anil a different school for architecture. The realm of construction was more on the engineering
side. This happened slowly, it didn't happen over night, but it happened and slowly construction
was taken out of architecture, so when you get to the Romantic period architects are artists and
not builders anymore. There is a funny opera called \xi Boheme; architects became Bohemians
and therefore thej completely lost their relationship with construction. And what happened
was that, slowly, all the processes of construction in engineering became so rarefied that there
was no longer the physicality of construction from the engineering side. They would figure out
things not through the process of design but through analytical procedure. So the analytical
mind takes over.

SR: What I don't understand is where the power of that idea comes from, and why it is so pervasive.
There is almost no questioning of this current way of thinking about architecture, which nowadays
considers construction to be second-class to design.
MF: Yes. in architectural schools design is more important and construction is less important.
That happened because of the split and the fact that they realised that construction doesn't have
any impact on what the modern design was. this idea about purity, which is baloney. The reality
was that Corbu was a good builder: he was attempting a lot of things with construction. Frank
Lloyd Wright was always attempting things with construction. When he made the mushroom
shaped structure for the Johnson Wax I leadquaners he had to load one to prove 10 the city that
they would hold. The whole Falling Water house was again a powerful game ol construction
which, by the wa\. they had to spend a lot of money to fix up.

SR: There is the story that he had to personally remove some of the formwork from the concrete
because the builder thought it would collapse!
MF: Yes. but the mentality in the schools was that construction was ruled out. These people did
the spaces that they did and someone elsefiguredout how to build it. The engineer dimensioned
the building and the dimensioning of the building was completely unrelated to the process ol
construction. And ol course the technology evolved very fast in the last period. If you think ol it
most Modern buildings were aiming towards other systems of construction. The Rictvcld House,
which is technically the idea of slabs and free planes, is in reality the oldest traditional system of
construction because he knew how to do that. That's the point. But the propaganda that was
made wasn't showing that you can achieve that with brick and wood. No. these are concrete
slabs Hying! And therefore the whole thing of construction got screwed up.

SR: So in fact t he engineer became very powerful, and still is. in terms of their influence, theirpowerand
their authority, and the way they are paid, which is much better than architects. Then there is design.
and construction seems to have got lost in the middle somewhere. Which seems crazy t< > me.

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 ATR [0:2 OS

MF: Now (here arc building managers a ho are taking care of ii because they are the ones who
have to figure out how to build the building. Because the engineer has told them •'this is the
section'' and "this is the dimension" and these guys have to go around to builders and figure
out how to get things on site, how to erect them, which was the old part of architecture. One of
the things I teach my students is thai if you look at classical columns at the top they have a tiny
rim this is called a mutola. and then there is the capital (fig. 2). The muiola is attached to the
column; it is not attached to the capital. The reason is very simple. It's a construction problem
because when thecolumn was on the ground and had to be lifted you put a piece of rope around
the column and the muiola stopped the rope slipping off when it was lifted!
II you go io Brunelleschi's church of Saint Lorenzo in Florence there are these beautiful arches,
then [here is a cube and (hen a plate and there is the capital then the column (figs. 2,10). Vf In
do you have that cube there? Construction. What they did was put a temporary beam between
the columns and then erect the centring, build the arch remove the beam do the next. This is
the result of construction. No engineer would ever do that. Engineering will tell me what kind
of bricks I have to have, what kind of resistance they have to have, but it will never give me this
detail as the result of thinking about construction, whereas this is true architectural thinking
from m\ point of view. Then what Brunelleschi does is that he takes this and loads it with so
much meaning because (hen all (he plan of the building is based on (his game. So you can find
it in even' corner the building. Ii is the perfect grid controlling (he whole building.

SR: Did Scarpa do the same thing'

MF: Oh yes, a lot of things. I'll show you dig. 2). This is the result of construction. Scarpa always
has this kind of element. You see a piece of metal and he has this round element and he has a
nice piece of brass put there. Why? Very simple. You make this from a square piece of metal.
The guy has a saw and he cuts in from both sides. The result of this is two possibilities: either
you stop short or you go over, Neither gives a sharp corner. So w hat Scarpa did was he talked
to the guys and he said first you drill a hole and then you cut with the saw. So when you reach
the hole you hear immediately because the saw suddenly sounds different and you know w here
to stop, So these decorative elements are purely the result of construction. It's not the result
of afancyidea about doing something like that. 1 would say that if ornament is elegant ii is the
result of construction.

SR: You talk in the "Tell-t he-Tale Detail'' about Scarpa's adoration of the joint.
MF: Yes. The reason why he selects a special join! between marble and marble
was so the guy could move to put in the piece of marble. Of course the Modern
Movement would ask for that to disappear.

SR: Do you think that is one of the reasons that in a sense he was marginalised from the Modern
Movement and never quite fitted because of his ideas about joining? He worked with play, not
tolerance.
MF: Exacdy

si
 Ridgway & Frast ari

SR: It's fascinating, because when you look at his

work the joints are so beautiful, but it is hard to
understand how they were developed or why. But
then when you begin to understand how they were
generated it becomes clearer.
MF: 01 course Scarpa said. "I cannot do
columns. I'm a Modern architect!'' I'll give you
another example of a detail oft he two columns
in the bank in Verona thai is the result of
construction (figs. 2.9l.Therearetwocolumns:
you have a column like that, and then you have
a second column, and if you look at a picture
it's broken like this and it is filled with gold
leaf. Why? Simple. When they cast the column
this was the joint between the two castings
and the wood container of the column would piRure JQ BrunellescbVa Cbwch ofSainl
be one here and one there. When I take down Ijomw (Source-, unknown>
the form, concrete will do this. So the builder
had to go there and carefully remove the tiny
rough part of the joint because we want a clean column. Every time you east a column it's the
same and he will take a little bit of cement and patch up the column. In about five years if it is
very humid it will fall off and it becomes ugly. So what Scarpa did was to hammer the joint and
use gold leaf to create a beautiful joint between the two castings.

SR: In a lot of Modern Architecture, especially some Japanese architecture, there is a lot of off form
concrete used and they seem to make a kind of feature of the tolerance. Like the lifting, lasting holes
in the panel for example, which are made to be very regular. 1 imagine at some cost and inconvenience
to the builder because you would generally put them in the most functional location. This is in a sense
the reverse of what you are describing.
MF: Yes. it is the reverse of that because that is taking tolerance to the extreme

SR: Yesterday we went to the Building Museum and when we got out of the metro in China Town
there was this white stuff that looked like snow coming down in the air like little floating lumps. I
wondered what it was and when we got outside the station I saw that they were cladding a building
in polystyrene. I had never seen anything like that before, on the outside of the building! They were
sticking on panels of polystyrene onto some son of concrete structure.

MF: Yes it is insulation and they will put a skin of render over it. The basic game here is that the
building should look like (he drawings.

SR: Never mind how you build it!

MF: And as you say that kills construction completely.

.S2
 ATR 10:2 OS

SR: I was thinking about ihc role of theory in constaiction teaching and my experience is thai
construction teachers find it a bit threatening and generally they reject it. 1 was wondering if we were
in gei .1 debate going about theory in construction how would you try and describe the role of theory
in construction teaching? In my view it is currently undcr-thcoriscd. I have found il very difficult lo
talk to construction teachers about theory without appearing to be critical.

MF: Well. yes Basically you are taking away from them what they think is right. So it has to be
a slow process. It cannot be done immediately. There are several things I would do. The first
would be to rediscover two things that would help the students anyway: stereotomy because it
is a means of graphic representation related to the act of construction: and the other one would
lie descriptive geometry. The third one is something that is called static graphics. Not when I
was in school but when my father was in school you could figure out the structure of a building
through graphic means alone. It was something that died completely. At one time construction
was taught within the field of theory.

SR: History and theory in schools now have nothing to do with construction.
MF: No. but they were. If you take any Renaissance hook, it is all about construction.

SR: II you were to design a teaching program from scratch would you stream construction teaching
or would you integrate it with design?

MF: I would stream it. You have to investigate a little bit what was the structure of leaching in
Italy. It was based on the French tradition. When I was at university the idea of character was
verj strong. Character is a French idea, coming through Violet l.e Due. In Italian teaching there
were three courses in character. One was called the character of distribution or arrangement.'
So the character of the building is determined by the arrangement and distribution of elements.
basicalh functional, but it was not done functionally, it was done because it gave character.
The other one was stylistic character.' This was character created by the style. For example, a
government building has to be Classical or Gothic. The third was constructed character.' The
lust exercise that we had in our course on construction character I will never forget. They gave
me the plan, section and elevation of a building that was built in wood and they said, you do
exactly the same building: you can't change anything but you have to do it in concrete. There was
no design involved but I had to change completely the system of construction of the building.
That was quite an exercise and i will never forget bow much 1 learned from it. It was a year-long
exerciseand the resulting building had completely changed its character. By changing the material
il looked completely different. It was the same building but il was completely different. Now
years after, reading Lodoli, I realised that this was a basic understanding of architecture. Lodoli
called it the process of substitution, which is the basic argument of Greek architecture. Greek
architecture is about substitution. Why? Because they were seafarers. When you have a boat in
the water some parts rot quicker than other parts so you have to remove the rotten piece and
replace it with another piece to fix it or make it better. The same worked for Greek architecture:
they replaced pieces, With Greek architecture it was very easy to replace parts. You can take out
a column and replace it. You cannot do this with Roman architecture. Roman architecture works

83
 Riclgway & Frascari

in ;i different waj: it's a different system. If you take out one piece of an arch it collapses. So the
Greeks substituted pieces and they wentfromwood buildings to stone buildings by substituting
stone for wood Now you can understand that all Greek decoration is the result of construction.
Take the triglyph for example. There are thousands of interpretations of how the triglyph came
about, but my argument is ven simple. It is the head of a beam in a society that doesn't have a
saw. \\ ith an axe you can square the tree, ven simple, but when you want to cut the beam you
cannot do it you have to make what I call a pencil point, and you lose too much wood. There is
noway 1 can go down straight. So what thej did is very simple, they took a piece of iron, heated
it until it was red. and pushed it down through the wood three times. Then the) put a wedge
under the beam and hit the beam and it breaks. What is the result? A triglyph. The Greeks then
kept this as a memory w hen they built in stone (fig. II).

SR: George Hersey has a very different interpretation of the triglyph. He talks about the thighbones
of oxen cut up into three pieces with the guttae being the sacred marrow draining out ol them.
MF: Yes, and Joseph's interpretation is that thc\ had planks, but I don't buy that because
planks are much more difficult to achieve. He says that the triglyphs were the mitred ends of
the planks but then the grooves would go down to the bottom, but the) don't. But maybe it
is some combination of these and they are questions of theory, not questions of construction.
When I was studying architecture and I learned these things I realised that through my process
of construction I can achieve meaning and that is the game. Eleven is the name of Carlo Scarpa:
eleven is the game of construction.

SR: If you had to point to the historical moment when the split between construction and design
took place in the academy, what would it be?
MF: The invention ofthe Polytechnic. The time when themilitary school becomes thePolytechnic.
That is the ke\ moment.

SR: So that's Durand?

MF: Yes. that is the moment. When it gets out of the hands of the architects and becomes
the realm of the engineer. It's not immediate in the sense that the architect is not giving up
construction but finally when industrialization comes about the profession is ready. In Italy, for
example, after the reconstruction architects knew how to build and there was no industrialization.
Even; window had to be built one by one but when industrialization came about, windows,
doors, floor dimensions, beams and so on, are all produced outside. It is not the result of the
architect but is a result of the production industry. What the Polytechnic had done prepared
for that to happen. What was happening before in the education of the architect was that they
went out on site and the builder told them how to build. It happened to me. When I started my
first building, this builder had just lost his son in a car accident. He was a small contractor and
he had all this knowledge that he had to give to someone, so I showed up with this job, and he
said to me: "Even' morning at 8 o'clock I'll be in front of your door; you come in my car to the

Si
 ATR lQ:2Afi

site anil I'll tell you whai I'm doing today." Thai's how 1 really learned how to build, not in the
office. 01 course, I had a good training in die office with Searpa.

SR: Nowadays, of eour.se. you would have to he very careful of a relationship like that with a builder
because you would learn how to build polystyrene buildings!

MF: Yes. He was an old man; he had just lost his son who was probably about 25 when he died
and he was ready to be told the trade.

SR: Do von think that we are really just fighting a losing battle against the lories of industrial
production?

MF: No. I think the battle is that the architect has to deal with industrial production and they
don tdo it. We have to make students aw are ol what industrial production is and how we can use
this stuff realh rather than be constrained by ir. Ml tell vou about one of my experiences. When I
came to America I did a design for a building in Cincinnati Ohio. I was working in an office there.
I had a pretty big area of using glass blocks. My drawing went down to the specification writer. It
was a big architectural/engineering office, and he called me and asked me was I crazy, using so
much glass block? I asked him why and he said to me there was only one factory that produces
glass hli nks in this country anil to produce this quantity would take so long that we would have
the building finished before they could deliver them. Ten years after there was going to be no
problem at all. Why? Because a Princeton architect made a kitchen with a glass block wall and
suddenly it became fashionable.

SR: So suddenly there were glass blocks everywhere.

MF:Yes.

SR: Well, that's another question as well.

MF: I low is an architect going to influence industrial production? Not just by being consumers,
which is really what the profession does now. Vou have to fight the battle, then they will do it.
because you are the one determining it. Otherwise it's giving up your role as an architect, which
is a really bad thing. It seems to me
that the Australian profession is a little
bit better than here. Here it is getting
really had. bad, bad. Tell me who is a
really good architect in America. Don't
think about the old.

SR: Is Steven I loll loo old?

MF: I le's been on the market for a
while. He was on the market when Figure II: Sketch oftrigtypb andguttae made by Marco
I started. Frascari during the interview.

N-S
 Ridgway & Frascari

SR: Well. Gchry's definitely too old.

MF: Gehry's too old. There's no new generation coming up.

SR: Which is why I asked die question aboui lighting a losing battle,

MF: The\ lost ii here. My feeling is dial you siill have die possibility in Australia. The Japanese still
have the possibility of shaping things. Italy has lost the battle. Aldo Ros.si died, (here are no new
Italian architects coming. There is still something going on m England. France has lost the plot.
The north European countries are still producing and making dear that industrial production
follows them rather than us following industrial production.

SR: Then what do you make of the current interest in the resurgence of die lectonu . For example
Peter Zumthor and I lerxog and de Muron.

MF: Oh yes. the whole hunch, but that is because Kenneth Frampton hammered that. When
Studies in Tectonic Culture came out he had already been talking about it for ten years. Sure.
he made the use of the tectonic more sophisticated, hut basically ii was construction, Basically
w hen I leidegger talks about Building Dwelling, Thinking, he's talking about building and he's
not talking about tectonics, lie's talking about the an of construction. Just about everyone read
that article but no one really understood what he meant. It is a very sophisticated article. But
that's line. It brought back the idea of building.

SR: An idea that interests me in Building. Divellmg. Thinking is that we don't dwell because we build
bin we build because we dwell and are dwellers. That seems fundamental lo me. but I think in fad
most people would see it as the reverse, that in fact, dwelling comes about through building. Not that
we build in fact 10 respond in some way to a place. This leads me to a related question and thai is that
in the same article Heidegger raises the issue of nurturing and dwelling. 1 suppose you have 10 be a
bit careful of the nostalgia of that view but actually it's a WIT powerful idea and the way I think about
ii now is how it relates to construction because the idea of susiainabilily and nurturing and so on is
very topical at die moment and yet we seem to be going backwards there as well. We seem to be losing
thai battle because we're creating more and more pollution and there is less and less of the natural
environment left and so on and so on. And I see that susiainabilily is taught in schools of architecture
in a very instrumental fashion, focusing on calculating how heat moves through walls and so on

MF: Yes. and again it's a mistake. I'm saying nothing's wrong with those things.

SR: You have to know them.

MF: You have to know ii. Bui ai the same time you have 10 know what is die meaning of doing
dial, because we fall again into the same mistake. You want a cold wall or a warm wall. What is
the meaning of that?

SR: Bui one of the fundamental problems, ii seems to me. is dial you can't sell the idea of Misiainabiliiy
through being instrumental, People will not understand ii. they will not buy ii and they will not see

so
 ATR 10:2/05

it as meaningful.
MF: No. Oneofthefunnythings is when you are talkingtostudentsthey say that different materials
haw different temperatures. Wood and ceramic floors for example. When you ask them to take
the temperature of both materials in the same space thev find out that in fact both materials are
the same temperature. When the\ say they fee] different temperatures and you explain to them
that wood is a good insulator so vou don't lose heat and ceramic is a poor insulator so you lose
heat. You have to he very careful w hen you dosustaxability because vou can do the numbers but
what is the architectural effect of doing that? Do you lose meaning or do you keep the meaning
of that architectural event? So by using that analogy they stall to figure out that the K value of
the room is very good but it doesn't mean that the room is going to be that temperature. They
ma\ want to haw a room where they lose heat rather than just keeping it. Or I want a room that
I want to do this and that, and slowly they get to understanding and meaning. The way it is now
they just want the temperature to be the same and they don't touch it because if they do the\
will discover something about it they don't want, so the meaning is lost.

SR: I think we already talked about rammed earth. Peoplefindrammed earth meaningful in terms of
sustainabilih because it's become a symbol of susiainability. But in fact the science of it or the physics
of it don't actually work.
MF: Yes it's a symbol. Because they are like the guys who say that a ceramic floor is cold and
therefore they don't want it. It's a symbol; it's a perception.

SR: 01 course, everything is relative depending on what you're used to and your expectations, and
the cost ofenerg) to heat and cool.
MF: Yes, but we are losing the battle and I think the reason why we are losing the battle is
because the architect has given up being an intellectual. I'm not talking about the professor.
but the architect.

SR: Why do vou think that is? Is it because construction knowledge is seen as second-rate? Ben to
know much about it seems to reduce one's artistic credibility. The design architect does the design
and someone else less important works out how to build it.
MF: Yes but it wasn't always like that. That has been the modern tradition, especially in the English
speaking countries. In Fiance. Italy and Spain the architect is still an intellectual.

SR: I don't know about America but in Australia architects often talk about their professional base
being eroded by other professionals like project managers and so on and that they are having less
and less influence.
MF: Sure, but the kev element is that we design the building and they don't.

SR: But it seems to me that construction is central to design yet in education it's become marginal.
MF: Yes, I think this is the core of education. It doesn't mean that we necessarily have to know
all the important svstems of construction. If 1 learn one. I can adapt myself to other systems of

87
 Ridgwaj & Prascari

construction. When 1 came to this country 1 went from wet construction to tin construction. I
will never forget myfirstcontract. In Italy when we do a contract with a builder one of the kev
elements is who's going to pay for the water because the quantity of water is really a lot. \\ hen
you build in brick, it means everybody on site has to haw access to water, like your sti memasons
who have to wash, to wash, and to wash So, for instance, if I had a well, it's cheaper lor me to
give the water to the contractor because it would cut the cost. If I have to buy the water from the
city it's worth it to me for the contractor to buy the water because he gets a better price. So. that
was a fundamental thing w hen 1 began working as an architect in America. 1 remember working
with a client to sign the contract with a builder and I asked w ho was going to bring water to the
site and who's going to pay for it?He said. "My guvs drink cokes at work!'' And I felt so stupid
because 1 was only used to wet construction'

SR: Well that seems like a good place to Finish. Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts with me.
ME: You are most welcome.

Endnotes
I Marco Frascari. "A Deciphering of a Wonderful Cipher; Eleven in the architecture ol Carlo Si arpa." QZ, 13
(1991): 38
I Man c) Frascari, "The Tell-the-Tale Detail." Via 7. (1984): 29.
3 Mario Frascari. "The l.unie Mctlcrialc in the Architecture of Venice. Perspecta, 24 (1988): pp. 137-115.
i Marco Frascari. "ThelioneMttleruile." 137.
5 Marco Frascari anil Livio Volpi (ihiranlini 'Contra DMnam Proporlionem" Nexus, - Architecture and
Mathematics (1998): 65-72.
(> Marco Frascari. "A Deciphering of a Wonderful Cipher.'
Marco Frascari. "Tolerance or Pla\: Conventional Criticism or Critical Conventionalism in the Light of the
Italian Retreat from the Modern Movement."Milgard, 1.11 I9K<>): 7- It) '
8 Marco Frascari "The Construction Drawings of a Blind Architect." in M. Angelil ledi On Architecture the
City and Technology, Stoneham: Butterworth Architecture, 1991, pp. Si-Si.
9 Marco Frascari. "Architects. Never Fai Your Maccheroni Without a Proper Sauce! A Macaronic Meditation
on the Anti-Cartesian Nature of Architectural Imagination," NordiSk Arkileklurforsklling, 1 (2QQ3): 41-53-
in Marco Frascari, "A Secret SemioiicSkiagraphy: The Corporeal Theatre of Meanings in VincenzoScamozzi's
Idea of Architecture." Via, 11 (1990): 32-43.
II Marco Frascari and Livio Volpi (ihiranlini. "Contra Divhtam Proporlionem."
12 Marco Frascari, "Deciphering of a Wonderful Cipher"
13 Marco Frascari. "Tolerance or Play."

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