Join us for the launch of two new books that explore ecological renewal through architecture and other forms of creative practice.

In 2018, Baracco+Wright curated the Australian Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale, with the collaboration of artist Linda Tegg. Their exhibition was based on a living installation, Grasslands Repair, that presented more than 60 species of Western Plains Grasslands plants from South-East Australia. By covering the floor of the pavilion with these plants, it explored the relationship between architecture and the natural environment, especially with regards to the ecologically sensitive landscape of Australia and the cultural importance of the land for its Indigenous people.

Baracco+Wright have now followed up this work with two publications further examining the questions it prompted: Knowing and Unknowing: The Lives of Repair, co-authored with Linda Tegg, and Buildings & Living Things: Garden House. Both books are focussed on the interrelation between human and non-human species.

In Knowing and Unknowing: The Lives of Repair, discussions revolve around stories of ecological and bureaucratic evolution following the Biennale, with new perspectives from Emily Potter.

Buildings & Living Things: Garden House, explores how a building – Garden House – can sustain life and share space with other living things, as an integrated part of an ongoing project of environmental repair on Bunurong land.

Contributors to these books include

Emily Potter, Professor in Literary Studies and Associate Head of School (Research) at Deakin University
Catherine Murphy, director of the Master of Urban Planning and Design at Monash University
Nina Bassoli, architect, researcher, curator and coordinator of the Architecture, Urban Regeneration and City sector at Milan Triennale; and
Rory Gardiner, photographer

To celebrate the launch of these two new books, join their authors Louise Wright, Mauro Baracco and Linda Tegg in a short discussion of their learnings from these various strands of research, art practice, curation, and architectural experimentation.

NOTE: Ticket holders will receive $5 off the price of any book purchase at the launch.

Participants

Louise Wright and Mauro Baracco, architects, both PhD, are directors of Baracco+Wright Architects (B+W, est. 2004) and their research laboratory B+W+. They both teach and research. Louise is a Practice Professor at MADA (Monash Art Design & Architecture) and Co director of Monash Urban Lab. Mauro was an Associate Professor at RMIT (1996-2020) and is a Visiting Professor at Polimi Milan; he is currently University Fellow to RMIT and Teaching Associate at MADA.

Linda Tegg is a Melbourne-based Artist who makes work out of inhabiting and reconfiguring the conditions of spectatorship. Within her immersive installations, images, plants, animals, and the built environment are brought into unlikely proximities to generate new points of orientation and relation. She was a co-creative director of the Australian Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale with Baracco+Wright Architects, and Artist in Residence at the School of Geography at The University of Melbourne (2018).