If Carlo Scarpa were as well known as Le Corbusier, modernism might not be so reviled. This architetto poeta grew up in Vicenza, whose 21 buildings by Palladio surely had a formative influence on his fast- evolving artistic intelligence.

Scarpa studied building design at university, but, instinctively disobedient, never bothered with a licence to practise as an architect. So connected was he to his native territory that when Frank Lloyd Wright first visited Venice in 1951 he insisted on Scarpa being his guide. Most of Scarpa’s working life was spent in the Veneto, but he died in 1978, aged 72, in Sendai, Japan, after falling down a flight of concrete stairs. This added his own distinctive chapter to the story of curious deaths of great architects.

Federica Goffi’s finely illustrated book is not a biography nor a formal catalogue. (There is already a comprehensive monograph by Robert McCarter.) Instead, Scarpa becomes an exemplar of very topical ‘creative re-use’. Since he was not a licensed architect, he made few standalone buildings, preferring startling interventions and ingenious adaptations. Thus it is a timely manifesto as we become increasingly aware of how environmentally reckless demolition and new build are. Chemical processes in making one ton of concrete release nearly the same weight of carbon.

Yet concrete became Scarpa’s medium, though glass came first. He began working with the Venini glassworks on the island of........

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