After the loss of a chunk of my library in a warehouse fire, I was touched to read what Carlo Scarpa’s brother said of his library after his death (he had over 1,000 works of fiction): ‘It was not just a library made up of books, but of relationships lived with friends, with conversations and exchanges of ideas and arguments with artists and men of letters, colleagues and friends, who used to drop by and for whom his house and library were open at all times and to everyone’.