Carl Pickering

When a young Carl Pickering moved from his birth city of Sydney to Venice in 1980 to study Italian postwar architecture, he told his parents he’d be away for a year. Now, more than four decades on, he’s still in Italy. The pull of the country’s layered history and its ability to wear this history on the sleeves of its buildings created a lifetime love affair for Carl, who, alongside his husband and business partner, Claudio Lazzarini, has built a phenomenal global architecture firm. Together the duo travel the world designing cozy Swiss ski chalets, contemporary French seaside villas, and Ottoman-inspired mountain spas in Lebanon.