Savina Zentner was 27 when her husband Angelo Masieri, a protégé of Scarpa, died in a car crash in Pennsylvania. They had come to the US in 1952 to meet Frank Lloyd Wright. She later married a Swiss banker, René Zentner, and asked her first husband's mentor to build the villa.
Scarpa rarely built outside Italy, but this commission got him to Zurich. Today the house is looked after by the eldest son, Edoardo, who helps restore temples in Ladakh and treats the preservation as close to a spiritual mission. In the photo, plants hang from the living room down to the garden room below.
