On quiet materials

There is a kind of room that is impossible to photograph well, because its qualities live in slower registers — light on limewash across an afternoon, the temperature of oak underfoot, the resonance of a stone hallway.

For years we mistook 'restraint' for a style. We have come to think of it as a method: the discipline of removing everything that does not do a job, and finishing what remains with more care than it needs.

It is easy to add. It is much harder to subtract, and harder still to know when to stop.