Only by manifesting the present can one enable the past to speak.

Sverre Fehn

Renovation is among the most thankless tasks in architecture due to the necessary extensive expertise, as well as much restriction in terms of an architect’s desire to be original and avant-garde. In modernist architecture, renovation was therefore rarely compared favourably with the most significant achievements of the profession. Exceptions are famous renovations by Carlo Scarpa, the Castelvecchio Museum in Verona and the Querini-Stampalia Foundation in Venice, as well as the Hedmark Museum by Sverre Fehn in Hamar. More recently, these are renovations by Álvaro Siza, Eduardo Souta de Moura and other, primarily Portuguese, architects.