A Light Touch

When reinventing estate buildings, less is definitely more

- Giles Kime

YOU don’t need to look far for examples of buildings that have been buffed with such enthusiasm that they take on an institutional air. An increasingly popular alternative solution is do as little as possible, other than making a building structurally sound, protected from the elements, functional and thermally efficient. This approach owes much to a cocktail of influences, in particular, the work of Italian architect Carlo Scarpa. He liked to allow buildings to tell their own story, notably, Verona’s magnificent Castelvecchio Museum, perhaps the most eloquent expression of this desire.