Carlo Scarpa

Scarpa is the modern architect on this list, and the one whose work is hardest to photograph. Born in Venice in 1906, he trained at the Accademia and spent his career almost entirely in the Veneto, much of it inserting modern interventions into old buildings.

That is the work he is known for. At the Castelvecchio museum in Verona he stripped away nineteenth-century restoration, left the resulting gaps visible, and hung the Cangrande statue on a concrete cantilever in the opening between two parts of the castle — refusing to disguise either the medieval fabric or the new work. The method became enormously influential on how Europe treats historic buildings: repair as legible addition rather than seamless imitation.

His detailing is the other half of his reputation. Scarpa worked in stepped concrete profiles, water channels, brass and Venetian plaster, at a scale that rewards standing close — junctions, thresholds and handrails are where the design happens. It is architecture that does not reduce well to a photograph of an elevation.

He never held a formal architecture licence, which caused him professional trouble in Italy. He died in 1978 after a fall in Japan, and is buried at the Brion cemetery at San Vito d'Altivole, which he designed.