Unusual suspect
Years ago, the architect and designer Tobia Scarpa was asked what he dreams about. He replied, ‘One of my dreams would be to have my own little boat next to my house, or a boat big enough to hold me for a lifetime and drift away.’ Now 87, Scarpa’s boat-owning days are over, though his passion for boatbuilding remains undimmed. The image of water, as well as the sense of sunlit solitude that one associates with sailing, continues to be present in his work.
The son of leading modernist architect Carlo Scarpa (1906-1978), Tobia Scarpa was born in Venice in 1935, and has always had a privileged relationship with water. Fittingly, his current studio in Treviso is located near the Sile river, which was once used to transport goods to and from Venice. Water imposes a sense of isolation and privacy, and Scarpa does not yearn for the spotlight. He has never been
