MILAN — Let a brick be a brick. To paraphrase the great American architect Louis Kahn, professional achievement at a fundamental level requires a practitioner first to consult the materials.

“If you think of brick, you say to brick, ‘What do you want, brick?’ ” Mr. Kahn said during a legendary 1971 master class lecture at the University of Pennsylvania. Perhaps brick spoke and said it wanted to be an arch. “And it’s important, you see, that you honor the material that you use,” Mr. Kahn said. “You can only do it if you honor the brick and glorify the brick instead of shortchanging it.”

If it would be overreach to liken the designer Neil Barrett to one of the greatest architects of the 20th century, it would also sell him short to suggest he is anything less than a master. Few in the current design landscape are more consistently exploratory than Mr. Barrett or deploy materials with anything like his confidence and restraint.