A Design Lover’s Guide to Venice

If one name has come up more than any other while surveying Venice’s design hotspots, it’s Carlo Scarpa—and for good reason, too. The various projects dotted around the city by this titan of 20th-century Venetian architecture are as wildly ambitious as they are beloved by the city’s inhabitants, but nowhere provides greater insight than Museo Querini Stampalia. Located on the charming square of Santa Maria Formosa, this shape-shifting cultural institution—at once a museum, library, and events space—is a fascinating microcosm of Scarpa’s wide-ranging architectural ambitions, with its porous design artfully blending inside and out, water and brick. 

For those whose appetite for Scarpa remains unsated after a visit here, make sure to stop by the Olivetti typewriter showroom on Piazza San Marco; and if you’re willing to travel further afield, head out of the city to the Tomba Brion cemetery near Treviso or to visit the architectural treasure chest that is the Castelvecchio museum in Verona.

Fondaco dei Tedeschi

With the scores of well-heeled tourists that pass through its calle and fondamente every year, it’s little wonder that Venice offers a luxury shopper’s dream along the temples of high fashion that stretch all the way from San Marco to Santa Maria del Giglio. But as of 2016, there’s been a new monument to commerce, housed in one of the city’s oldest monuments to commerce: the Fondaco dei Tedeschi. While the building takes its name from its origins as a trading post for German merchants (it’s situated right next to the Rialto bridge), its interiors have had a stylish revamp courtesy of Rem Koolhaas’s OMA, and it boasts a wide-ranging buy that includes both the most storied Italian fashion houses and a handful of buzzy, next-gen brands like Jacquemus, Ganni, and The Attico. An added bonus? In the central atrium, you’ll find another arm of chef Massimiliano Alajmo’s mini-empire in the form of Amo, a charming café-style eatery with the signature dish being his (more delicious than it sounds, I promise) steamed pizza.

Laguna~B