Artfully crafted

The book traces the history of Scarpa tables for Iuav, with many clues about their origin linked to an idea by Carlo Scarpa, and some questions still unanswered. They are the tables on which lessons are followed, drawings are made, models are created and revisions are made between sheets, books and computers, but they also act as chairs for teachers, and inside the professors' studies and in the offices of the administrative and technical staff they replace traditional desks. They are support surfaces and, when overturned, they become walls to display the project tables during the degree sessions, they are elements with which to build exhibition paths for shows and workshops, and when stacked one on top of the other they become sculptural fans that free up space, restoring it to new conformations. They have encountered pencils, ink pens, pins to fix sheets, but also tailor's scissors, cutters and hammers. In their formal essentiality, combined with a certain resistance to time and the unexpected, they have accompanied thousands of young people in over half a century of life. For those who study and work at the Università Iuav di Venezia they are simply the Scarpa tables.