larry scarpa, architect

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104 LIFESTYLES MAGAZINE FALL 2011 Larry’s king If Oprah loves him, and Leo wants to be him, then why is Larry Scarpa feeling so unfullled? By Darren Gluckman B efore green became the new black, Larry Scarpa was drawn to sustain- able, environmentally conscious de- sign by what his mother referred to as “Jewish common sense”—use what you have, don’t waste, don’t complicate things for the sake of showing o. is pragmatic, conservationist approach to building put him ahead of a generational curve that sees clients demand- ing eco-friendly construction and design. And yet, despite the numerous accolades he’s racked up, the high-prole client list, and the time he was interviewed by Leonardo DiCaprio on Oprah, he’s not shy about expressing his frus- trations with the business. Although his Wikipedia prole picture suggests some- one you wouldn’t want to cross, in conversation Scarpa is warm and generous with his reections. But he isn’t gar- rulous. As bets a part-time academic (he’s held teaching posts at, among other institutions, UCLA, Berkeley, Michi- gan, Mississippi, and his alma mater, the University of Flor- ida in Gainesville), he thinks before he speaks; moreover, Scarpa.indd 104 7/19/11 10:18:55 AM

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He went to fetch a baseball and found a career.

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Page 1: Larry Scarpa, Architect

104 LIFESTYLES MAGAZINE FALL 2011

Larry’sking

If Oprah loves him, and Leo wants to be him, then why is Larry Scarpa feeling so unful!lled?

By Darren Gluckman

Before green became the new black, Larry Scarpa was drawn to sustain-able, environmentally conscious de-sign by what his mother referred to as “Jewish common sense”—use what you have, don’t waste, don’t complicate things for the sake of showing o!. "is

pragmatic, conservationist approach to building put him ahead of a generational curve that sees clients demand-ing eco-friendly construction and design. And yet, despite the numerous accolades he’s racked up, the high-pro#le client list, and the time he was interviewed by Leonardo DiCaprio on Oprah, he’s not shy about expressing his frus-trations with the business.

Although his Wikipedia pro#le picture suggests some-one you wouldn’t want to cross, in conversation Scarpa is warm and generous with his re$ections. But he isn’t gar-rulous. As be#ts a part-time academic (he’s held teaching posts at, among other institutions, UCLA, Berkeley, Michi-gan, Mississippi, and his alma mater, the University of Flor-ida in Gainesville), he thinks before he speaks; moreover,

Scarpa.indd 104 7/19/11 10:18:55 AM

Page 2: Larry Scarpa, Architect

105LIFESTYLES MAGAZINEFALL 2011

he speaks without extravagance. When asked how he prefers to be addressed (Larry? Mr. Scarpa?), he says “Larry’s #ne,” and then adds, in a deadpan, “but I’ll respond to just about anything.”

His son is named for the painter and sculptor Alexander Calder, whose work is also characterized by an economy of line, form, and color—as is the work of the great Italian architect, Carlo Scarpa, who bears no relation but was the subject of young Larry Scarpa’s master’s thesis. Indeed, Scarpa’s approach to architec-ture may be guided as much by this lean aesthetic imperative as by any currently fashionable environmental or ethical con-cerns—and it happens to be an aesthetic that echoes the old-school, blue-collar values of hard work and thrift that infused his childhood. If he has any special rever-ence for the values and aesthetic of that time, it may have something to do with having lost his mother, Saundra, to cancer when he was 9.

He dismisses the suggestion that losing her may have impacted his career choice (the child of a home broken by death growing up to build homes that sustain life?), asserting that, with three younger siblings, it simply forced him to grow up quickly. She weighed 65 pounds at the end, he says, and he recalls a devoted fam-ily friend—albeit one with questionable associations (“Let’s just say he lived on the edge of the law,” Scarpa says tactfully)—attempting to stave o! that end by going to dubious lengths to obtain various illicit “remedies.”

But the suggestion that his work is driv-en by an economical aesthetic risks the misleading impression that it is somehow austere or humorless. His use of materials proves the opposite: He’s found a way to ingeniously incorporate both Ping-Pong

PHOTO BY LUKE WOODEN

PROFILE Larry Scarpa

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Page 3: Larry Scarpa, Architect

PROFILE Larry Scarpa

balls (taking advantage of their weightless translucency) and Dixie Cups into client projects. "is aesthetic may be easier to accomplish in Los Angeles, where he has worked since the late 1980s, than the rest of the country. In 1991, he partnered with Gwynne Pugh (they parted ways last year after a fruitful two decades together); at the time, L.A. was then a fertile place for a young shop, and Pugh + Scarpa was able to generate steady work building o!-studio production facilities for directors and producers. Scarpa has said of that period, “We went from being busy to ridiculously busy.”

After his mother’s death, his father, Mario, moved the family from New York to Florida, eventually settling in Winter Haven. Initially, Mario worked as a letter carrier for the United States Postal Service. On the side, he did small household renovations—room additions, mostly. He wasn’t a designated tradesperson, per se, but he was from Sant’Arsenio, a small town in southern Italy (current pop.

2,714), which meant he did everything: block work, con-crete, framing.

Scarpa would accompany his father to job sites. (“I thought I was there to help,” he says of his boyhood, but looking back he suspects his father “was probably just babysitting.”) He was an eager errand boy who would use scraps to fabricate his miniature architectural models.

But his father, like any good Sant’Arsenian, had always enjoyed cooking, and when an opportunity presented it-self, he left the postal service and opened up a restaurant. “Mario’s” was an immediate success, and Scarpa began working there after school. And it was there that he met the man who would provide the #rst link in the chain of his career.

LEFT FIELD AT WINTER HAVEN’S HIGH SCHOOL backed up against a line of tall hedges obscuring what lay beyond. One afternoon, hoping to retrieve some baseballs,

A MODEL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO PARKING STRUCTURE.

PHOTO BY CALDER OLIVER106 LIFESTYLES MAGAZINE FALL 2011

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Page 4: Larry Scarpa, Architect

PROFILE Larry Scarpa

108 LIFESTYLES MAGAZINE FALL 2011

Scarpa climbed the left-#eld fence and made it through the hedges. "ere he saw a house, made entirely of industrial, prestressed concrete, that struck him on the spot as “mag-ni#cent.” "e house had been designed by Gene Leedy, the best-known architect in Florida and a former protégé of New York–based architectural powerhouse Paul Rudolph.

When Scarpa discovered that Leedy also happened to be a regular at his father’s restaurant, he made up his mind that he was going to work for the man, and soon began pestering the unsuspecting customer with his own archi-tectural sketches. (“I forced myself on him,” Scarpa chuck-les.) His determination paid o!: He wound up with a job in Leedy’s o%ce that saw him through his undergraduate studies.

He stayed with Leedy for another year before, in 1982, heading back to New York, single-mindedly focused on securing a position with Rudolph, Leedy’s former mentor. Leedy hadn’t arranged an introduction—Scarpa claims he hadn’t wanted one, preferring to do it on his own—and Ru-dolph initially rebu!ed the young Floridian. Scarpa lived in the Staten Island basement of a friend of a friend and found work with another architect (Walter Blum, in Great Neck, Long Island) before Rudolph #nally succumbed to the same persistence that had previously worn down Leedy.

Manhattan in the early 1980s was, as Scarpa describes it, “exciting, but extremely scary.” SoHo wasn’t an upscale res-idential address; it was the dangerous center of a whirling art scene, and Scarpa loved it. And New York is where he learned to draw. Rudolph was an inspired draftsman, and, more even than his boss’s buildings, Scarpa had long been entranced by—and had tried to mimic—the architectural drawings that preceded them. Now, under Rudolph’s tute-lage, Scarpa #nally learned to draw in the manner of the master. “"e proverbial lightbulb went on,” he says, once Rudolph instructed him in how to wield a pen.

But when Rudolph—a devout modernist who had fallen out of favor stateside as postmodernism took hold—began to accept commissions from abroad, and from Southeast Asia in particular, Scarpa realized that he could either relocate to Indonesia, or, as he ultimately decided, head back to Gainesville to pursue both his master’s degree and, though he didn’t know it yet, the woman he would ultimately marry.

IT WAS 1984, AND AS A GRAD STUDENT IN SEARCH of a thesis topic, Scarpa found himself in the UF library $ip-

ping through various art journals. When his eye fell upon some stunning $atware by Carlo Scarpa, his namesake, Scarpa (the student) knew he was seeing the Frank Lloyd Wright of Italy. Of course, Scarpa immediately sensed that the description didn’t do him justice: He was an architect, yes, but also did beautiful industrial design, joinery, #x-tures, and even $atware. (He died in 1978, 10 days after falling down a set of stairs in Sendai, Japan. A rather maca-bre ending with a particular sting—among his noteworthy works, as part of his restoration of Verona’s Castelvecchio, he designed a clever concrete staircase that exhibits his masterful simplicity.)

As it happens, Carlo also lost his mother as a boy. When asked about the commonality—whether that shared ex-perience may have increased his a%nity for his subject—Scarpa is quick to deny any psychoanalytical signi#cance, insisting he only stumbled upon the connection after he’d already immersed himself in studying the man and his work. "is immersion involved a two-year stint in Vi-cenza, Italy, where, in the course of his research, he was introduced to Carlo’s elderly widow, Nini, who gave him remarkable access to Carlo’s artifacts (including the snu!-box that formed the basis for his signature design of two interlocking circles) and introduced him to the craftsmen who had worked on Carlo’s projects. Two months before his departure for Italy, however, he encountered a young undergraduate architecture student by the name of Ange-la Brooks. When he left, she drove with him from Florida to New York to see him o!.

From the very beginning, Brooks sensed that “this might be the one.” He was generous, she recalls, “even when he had nothing.” "ey corresponded; she visited. After two years he returned. He taught at UF while she #nished her degree. "en they moved to San Francisco, where they married, and where he got a job at the emerging #rm of Holt Hinshaw. Less than two years later, they were in L.A. and, interested in forging an independent path, Scarpa answered Gwynne Pugh’s ad in a newspaper seeking an architectural collaborator.

Pugh + Scarpa went on to win dozens of awards and prizes, including the American Institute of Architects’ Architecture Firm Award, the highest honor the profes-sional body bestows. Scarpa admits that, as a young ar-chitect, sustainability wasn’t always a guiding principle, but his interest was reignited in the mid-1990s. “I saw a piece of glass that was absolutely beautiful,” he says. It was blue polycrystalline; and it turns out it was more than just

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Page 5: Larry Scarpa, Architect

PROFILE Larry Scarpa

111LIFESTYLES MAGAZINEFALL 2011PHOTOS BY CALDER OLIVER

beautiful—it was a solar panel, and one of his #rm’s most acclaimed projects. Completed in 1998 is a low-income residential development in Santa Monica called Colorado Court, which made innovative use of the technology. “It’s people in a!ordable housing,” he observes, “who spend the highest percentage of their income on utility bills.”

Pugh + Scarpa is now Brooks + Scarpa, as in Angela Brooks, a.k.a. Mrs. Lawrence Scarpa. Working alongside one’s wife can be treacherous. As a boy, he watched as his father and stepmother “almost killed each other” when they both worked in Mario’s restaurant. But harmony doesn’t have to mean distance. For Brooks and Scarpa, their desks share the same o%ce, positioned face-to-face (with the space in between reserved for their son, Calder, now 11, and on guard against being recruited into the fam-ily business). "eir styles, though, are complementary.

“Angie is a very focused, driven person, very precise,” he says. “I’m more of a broader, conceptual thinker.” "eir di-

verse sleeping schedules (she’s a night owl; he tends to rise at 4 &.'.) also help ensure that they’re not stepping on each other’s toes. For her part, Brooks notes in an e-mail that, after some 25 years together, “I #nd myself a little bit more like him (taking life as it comes, not worrying so much, etc.) and he is a little bit more like me (it is a good idea to sign that contract, not just have a verbal agreement).”

Scarpa says he wants to do more work in the public realm. Asked about work he admires, he cites the New York Public Library and Grand Central Station, along with Louis Kahn’s Salk Institute, and the Sarasota School resi-dential developments of Paul Rudolph from the 1950s. But he’s blunt about 1 World Trade Center (formerly the Free-dom Tower); not that the building is a monumental exer-cise in hubris, as some have decried. Scarpa’s problem is its design. “I don’t like it,” he says. “I don’t like that the #rst

10 $oors are solid.”Despite the success, the abundance of professional rec-

ognition, and Oprah and Leo, the business has become in-creasingly #ckle. After Colorado Court, Scarpa says, they “basically became experts overnight” on that type of proj-ect, notwithstanding it was the #rst one they’d done. Now, he adds, before clients will engage a commission, “they want to know how many schools you’ve done, how many schools on a corner lot, how many K-6 schools.”

But Scarpa has never believed in doing the same thing over and over. He could’ve made a small fortune, he notes, creating that sort of cookie-cutter business model doing either commercial interiors or housing. Instead, he’s pur-sued a range of projects, often with di%culty. Now, he says, he’s often forced to partner with #rms that specialize in a particular type of building (museums or schools) just to provide prospective clients with the reassurance they seek. He also bristles at the perception that California-

based architects don’t have the requisite professional gravitas or budgetary consciousness of their colleagues on the East Coast, that proximity to Holly-wood has somehow corrupted their integrity, diminished their capacity for serious work. As a result, “we still work really hard chasing projects,” he says. “We hustle.”

"e constraints are immensely frustrating. “Professionally, it’s

still a daily struggle for me,” he sighs. Although Scarpa has reached the point in his career where he no longer has to fear—as he once did—that he may have to one day work for someone else, he doesn’t yet have the pro#le that would allow him to express himself to the limit of his abilities. As a result, while aware of his talent, he says, “I feel like I’m atrophying inside due to a lack of opportunity.” And he’s hardly elitist about the opportunities he’d consider. As he puts it, “I’ll do a doghouse if you let me do it well.”

Perhaps as a means of combating these feelings, he teaches, drawing energy from the enthusiasm of his stu-dents, and does sculpture and painting. He has a studio in the #rm’s new o%ces. “It’s more immediate,” he says of the artwork, “whereas a building can take #ve to seven years of your life. And you can put it in the closet if you don’t like it.”

Modern house with a view in the Hollywood Hills, California.

Cherokee mixed-use lofts, West Hollywood, California.

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