What gives a house identity?
Distinctive houses offer more than a list of facilities. Their architecture responds to climate and landscape, materials carry local knowledge and the plan reflects a particular way of living.
Details worth noticing
Look at how shade is created, how rooms open to gardens or views, where people gather and how older structures have been adapted. Stone, limewash, timber, courtyards, verandas and terraces are practical responses before they are decorative motifs.
Reading change carefully
Renovation can preserve character or erase it. The most thoughtful work keeps the proportions, materials and relationship to place legible while allowing a building to remain useful.