The new “queens of Venice” are Shelley McNamara and Yvonne Farrell of Grafton Architects, a practice that’s been doing the work without getting starchitect status – but that could change now. Their philosophy: “The unsolicited ‘spatial gifts’ that architecture can add could be at the scale of city – a free public garden, for example – or at the scale of a surface you touch. It may not involve construction – ‘sitting under a cherry blossom is as happy an architectural space as you’ll find’ – but these ’emotional components’ are what make architecture worth doing.