Repair

New ways of seeing the world

In 2018 at the Australian Pavilion, Venice Biennale, artist Linda Tegg and architects Baracco+Wright collaborated on a living installation, Grasslands Repair, that presented more than 60 plant species of the Western Plains Grasslands of south-east Australia. Only 1% of this plant community remains from pre-European settlement times, having been removed through urbanisation, agriculture, grazing and industrial land use.

As part of the installation a second, integral element was installed: Skylight - a life-sustaining light installation providing the necessary light spectrum denied to the plants by the fabric of a building. It channelled energy from the Italian electricity grid into the bodies of plants.

Talking about the installation, architects Baracco+Wright said: "Since we've been making buildings and cities in Australia, it has mostly been to separate us from the natural environment. Consequences of the disregard of natural systems are now being felt and there is a shift of thinking amongst built environment disciplines towards repairing the natural environment as a meaningful and enduring framework for urban form - an expansion of the natural environment in a sort of reverse order of urban sprawl."

The architects felt that there is a role for architecture to actively engage in the repair of the places it is part of: soil, hydrology, habitat, connections, overland water flow, microorganisms, vegetation, and so on. The first move was the repair of the natural environment. How architects can do this will be an exciting development of an architecture not yet fully imagined.

Repair aimed to expand the point of view from the object of architecture to the way it operates in its context, and to advocate a role for architecture among the many players it takes to repair something.

Repair presents what is displaced when we occupy land.

Repair, featuring: Grasslands Repair, 2018 by Linda Tegg with Baracco+Wright Architects, and Skylight by Baracco+Wright Architects with Linda Tegg. Photographs by Rory Gardiner.

Website: www.baraccowright.com