The Persuasive Gestures of Enquiring Minds – Baracco + Wright Architect’s Reparative Approach

Mauro Baracco and Louise Wright’s reparative approach to architecture is grounded by two distinct lines of enquiry – one into spatial conditions and the other into landscape. Whilst continuing to develop, these parallel interests have guided Baracco + Wright Architect’s work for 20 years, allowing Mauro and Louise to engage with architecture, or “building culture” as they refer to it, in both its built and non-built form.

“There are two trajectories in our work that I think you can trace from the early projects until now,” Louise explains. “The first is this idea around loose spatial conditions, often played out through verandah-type spaces and relationships with gardens and landscapes.” This quality is informed by many things, not least the pair’s extensive research into and enthusiasm for the work of 20th-century architects Robin Boyd and Kazuo Shinohara. It emerges continuously across their residential projects, installations and exhibitions through the use of multi-functional spaces, an often-ambiguous demarcation between inside and out and elemental materials.

“We both grew up in places [that] were quite formative – me by the ocean in Sydney and Mauro in the Italian Alps – and I suppose, over time, we’ve become more careful about the way we see landscape and nature as a sign of ecologies and their own systems rather than, say, something to simply be gazed upon from the architecture,” Louise offers.

Rose House 1 in coastal Victoria, for example, is defined by casual and flexible spaces set within a wide verandah, wrapping the interior perimeter of the building and creating, as Mauro explains, a “fluidity of programs”. Again, Fitzroy Community School Creative Space employs a similar verandah typology along three elevations. Encased in a polycarbonate shell, this notional verandah blurs the lines between interior and exterior, creating undercover areas for circulation and play and disintegrating the external skin.

The second trajectory strongly pertains to landscape and nature. Whilst it is, in many ways, independent to the first, it is inextricably linked to the office’s interest in spaces that are somewhat liberating and untethered in expression and experience. “We both grew up in places [that] were quite formative – me by the ocean in Sydney and Mauro in the Italian Alps – and I suppose, over time, we’ve become more careful about the way we see landscape and nature as a sign of ecologies and their own systems rather than, say, something to simply be gazed upon from the architecture,” Louise offers.

Commenting on Garden House, Louise says “it’s 10 years old now, and the garden has adapted a lot from being quite open to being quite dense. Trees have fallen down; things have died, and other things have opened up – it’s this total sense of life which is really unique for architectural conditions. You don’t usually have that dynamism coming into play spatially.”

‘Repair’ – an exhibition curated by Mauro and Louise with artist Linda Tegg for the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale – represented a significant moment of clarity around this rationale. Featuring an installation of 60 species of Victorian Western Plains Grassland plants within the Australian Pavilion, it explored the relationship between the built and natural environments. Perhaps most importantly, it served as a provocation for a reimagined architecture – one which considers existing vegetation and ecologies as equal to proposed built contributions.

These two trajectories effortlessly converge across the Baracco + Wright portfolio, yet no project illustrates these two singular yet interwoven interests quite as brilliantly as Garden House. “There’s definitely a spatial looseness but then there’s also this interest in how architecture can share space with an ecosystem and be less impactful,” Louise says. Conceived as a weekend retreat for themselves and their son, its conception was somewhat experimental. “Architecturally it’s the simplest thing,” Mauro attests with a hint of astonishment. “It’s a higher proportion of a shed, but its spatial condition is constantly surprising.” Clad in clear polycarbonate, the rudimentary structure – which is raised to minimise impact to the ground and allow floodwaters to move through unimpeded – exists gently within its context.

As Mauro offers, collaborations are “a way for us to consistently reflect on the same ideas – sometimes by researching, writing and publishing and other times – equally through research – but with a built or physical outcome instead.”

Extending the approach of Rose House 1 and Fitzroy Community School, the interior perimeter is part verandah, part garden. Notably, the gentle delineation between landscape and built form has allowed the indigenous vegetation to grow inside. As Mauro and Louise say, this project has been a trial of many things; not only does it represent a veritable meeting point of their office’s interests, but it has allowed them to continually learn from this very coalescence. “Something we’ve observed from being in the space is that the spatial condition changes according to how the plants are growing,” Louise reflects. “It’s 10 years old now, and the garden has adapted a lot from being quite open to being quite dense. Trees have fallen down; things have died, and other things have opened up – it’s this total sense of life which is really unique for architectural conditions. You don’t usually have that dynamism coming into play spatially.”

Whilst not strictly a third trajectory, Mauro and Louise also share a growing interest in querying how architecture is documented and perceived. “We worked on a series of films with Linda Tegg and David Fox about the representation of architecture and how it can be highly problematic because often, through photography, architecture is seen as an object, which perpetuates this heroism around it,” Louise says. The pair have continued to query architectural representation through ongoing collaboration with photographer Rory Gardiner, who has an affinity for documenting spaces in a verified, lived-in state as opposed to through highly stylised imagery. As Mauro offers, these collaborations are “a way for us to consistently reflect on the same ideas – sometimes by researching, writing and publishing and other times – equally through research – but with a built or physical outcome instead.”

The concurrent evolution of these trajectories and interests has brought Mauro and Louise to an interesting place of reflection. Critical thinking about their contribution as architects informed by their practice and research has prompted them to ask the question: “should we even be building anything?” As Louise swiftly verifies, “the answer is ‘yes’ because architecture is not about making objects or buildings per se – it’s about relationships between things, and actually that’s a really important future for architecture.” To this end, much of what the pair teaches to their students – Louise at Monash University and Mauro at RMIT University – places adaptive re-use and the informed and sympathetic removal of buildings at the centre of the future built environment.

Mauro and Louise’s willingness to query what is often considered legitimate takes their work to thought-provoking and unexpected places. As such, their contribution to “building culture” is at once enduring and stirring – not for its edginess or eccentricity but for its deeply convincing reinterpretation of familiar architectural notions.