Larrys king

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

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By Darren Gluckman
efore green became the new black, Larry Scarpa was drawn to sustainable, environmentally conscious design by what his mother referred to as Jewish common senseuse what you have, dont waste, dont complicate things for the sake of showing o . is pragmatic, conservationist approach to building put him ahead of a generational curve that sees clients demanding eco-friendly construction and design. And yet, despite the numerous accolades hes racked up, the high-pro le client list, and the time he was interviewed by Leonardo DiCaprio on Oprah, hes not shy about expressing his frustrations with the business. Although his Wikipedia pro le picture suggests someone you wouldnt want to cross, in conversation Scarpa is warm and generous with his re ections. But he isnt garrulous. As be ts a part-time academic (hes held teaching posts at, among other institutions, UCLA, Berkeley, Michigan, Mississippi, and his alma mater, the University of Florida in Gainesville), he thinks before he speaks; moreover,

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Larry Scarpa

PROFILE

he speaks without extravagance. When asked how he prefers to be addressed (Larry? Mr. Scarpa?), he says Larrys ne, and then adds, in a deadpan, but Ill 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 coloras is the work of the great Italian architect, Carlo Scarpa, who bears no relation but was the subject of young Larry Scarpas masters thesis. Indeed, Scarpas approach to architecture may be guided as much by this lean aesthetic imperative as by any currently fashionable environmental or ethical concernsand 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 reverence 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 family friendalbeit one with questionable associations (Lets 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 driven by an economical aesthetic risks the misleading impression that it is somehow austere or humorless. His use of materials proves the opposite: Hes found a way to ingeniously incorporate both Ping-Pong

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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 mothers 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 renovationsroom additions, mostly. He wasnt a designated tradesperson, per se, but he was from SantArsenio, a small town in southern Italy (current pop. 2,714), which meant he did everything: block work, concrete, 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 SantArsenian, had always enjoyed cooking, and when an opportunity presented itself, he left the postal service and opened up a restaurant. Marios 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 HAVENS HIGH SCHOOL backed up against a line of tall hedges obscuring what lay beyond. One afternoon, hoping to retrieve some baseballs,

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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 magni cent. e house had been designed by Gene Leedy, the best-known architect in Florida and a former protg of New Yorkbased architectural powerhouse Paul Rudolph. When Scarpa discovered that Leedy also happened to be a regular at his fathers 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 architectural sketches. (I forced myself on him, Scarpa chuckles.) His determination paid o : He wound up with a job in Leedys 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, Leedys former mentor. Leedy hadnt arranged an introductionScarpa claims he hadnt wanted one, preferring to do it on his ownand Rudolph 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 wasnt an upscale residential 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 bosss buildings, Scarpa had long been entranced byand had tried to mimicthe architectural drawings that preceded them. Now, under Rudolphs tutelage, 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 Rudolpha devout modernist who had fallen out of favor stateside as postmodernism took holdbegan 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 masters degree and, though he didnt 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 ip108
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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 didnt do him justice: He was an architect, yes, but also did beautiful industrial design, joinery, xtures, and even atware. (He died in 1978, 10 days after falling down a set of stairs in Sendai, Japan. A rather macabre ending with a particular stingamong his noteworthy works, as part of his restoration of Veronas 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 commonalitywhether that shared experience 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 hed already immersed himself in studying the man and his work. is immersion involved a two-year stint in Vicenza, Italy, where, in the course of his research, he was introduced to Carlos elderly widow, Nini, who gave him remarkable access to Carlos 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 Carlos projects. Two months before his departure for Italy, however, he encountered a young undergraduate architecture student by the name of Angela 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 Pughs 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 professional body bestows. Scarpa admits that, as a young architect, sustainability wasnt 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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beautifulit was a solar panel, and one of his rms 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. Its 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 ones wife can be treacherous. As a boy, he watched as his father and stepmother almost killed each other when they both worked in Marios restaurant. But harmony doesnt 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 family business). eir styles, though, are complementary. Angie is a very focused, driven person, very precise, he says. Im more of a broader, conceptual thinker. eir di10 oors are solid. Despite the success, the abundance of professional recognition, and Oprah and Leo, the business has become increasingly ckle. After Colorado Court, Scarpa says, they basically became experts overnight on that type of project, notwithstanding it was the rst one theyd done. Now, he adds, before clients will engage a commission, they want to know how many schools youve 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 couldve made a small fortune, he notes, creating that sort of cookie-cutter business model doing either commercial interiors or housing. Instead, hes pursued a range of projects, often with di culty. Now, he says, hes 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 Californiabased architects dont have the requisite professional gravitas or budgetary consciousness of their colleagues on the East Coast, that proximity to Hollywood 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. Modern house with a view in the Hollywood Cherokee mixed-use lofts, West Hollywood, e constraints are immensely Hills, California. California. frustrating. Professionally, its verse sleeping schedules (shes a night owl; he tends to rise still a daily struggle for me, he sighs. Although Scarpa has at 4 . .) also help ensure that theyre not stepping on each reached the point in his career where he no longer has to others toes. For her part, Brooks notes in an e-mail that, fearas he once didthat he may have to one day work after some 25 years together, I nd myself a little bit more for someone else, he doesnt yet have the pro le that would like him (taking life as it comes, not worrying so much, allow him to express himself to the limit of his abilities. As etc.) and he is a little bit more like me (it is a good idea to a result, while aware of his talent, he says, I feel like Im sign that contract, not just have a verbal agreement). atrophying inside due to a lack of opportunity. And hes Scarpa says he wants to do more work in the public hardly elitist about the opportunities hed consider. As he realm. Asked about work he admires, he cites the New puts it, Ill do a doghouse if you let me do it well. York Public Library and Grand Central Station, along with Perhaps as a means of combating these feelings, he Louis Kahns Salk Institute, and the Sarasota School resi- teaches, drawing energy from the enthusiasm of his studential developments of Paul Rudolph from the 1950s. But dents, and does sculpture and painting. He has a studio in hes blunt about 1 World Trade Center (formerly the Free- the rms new o ces. Its more immediate, he says of the dom Tower); not that the building is a monumental exer- artwork, whereas a building can take ve to seven years of cise in hubris, as some have decried. Scarpas problem is your life. And you can put it in the closet if you dont like it. its design. I dont like it, he says. I dont like that the rst
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