Director, Baracco+Wright Architects, 2004 ongoing

Practice Professor, Architecture, Monash University 2022 ongoing

Co-director, Monash Urban Lab, Monash University, 2024 ongoing

Interior Design (Hons) University of Technology Sydney, 1996

Architecture (Hons) RMIT University, 1999

Registered Architect ARBV, 2003

PhD Architecture, RMIT University, 2012

Design Review Panel, Office of Victorian Government Architect, 2019 ongoing

Fellow, RAIA, 2022

Louise Wright (PhD) is a Practice Professor of Architecture and co-director of the Monash Urban Lab at Monash University. She is also a co-founder and director of the architectural practice Baracco+Wright Architects, based in Melbourne, Australia (est.2004). Louise is interested in a role for architecture that can extend its relationship with the natural world towards one that supports all life.

Louise investigates reparative approaches to the built and natural environment in her academic and practiced work through deep collaboration with ecologists, landscape architects, and artists. In Monash Urban Lab she leads projects such as ReCity that aims to develop an alternative metropolitan plan for Melbourne that privileges natural ecosystems.

Research at Monash Urban Lab is developed through teaching modes and Louise’s teaching is collated under the theme Buildings & Living Things. Programs include themes such as: Minus – developing architectural skills around assessing and removing buildings where they shouldn’t be; Shared Ground – research and design of the ways that buildings can more equally share the physical ground with other species including footing systems, form and materiality; Buildings and Trees – the relationship of buildings with vegetation; and The Ecological Transition – applying these learnings to retrofitting at an urban scale.

Research and practice are integrated and have formed the basis of several major exhibitions. In 2025 Baracco+Wright Architects with Monash Urban Lab represented Australia at the 24th Milan Triennale exhibition Inequalities with the theme Land Use Inequality that presented inefficient land use in Melbourne developed from the ReCity research.

In 2018, Louise, Mauro Baracco and Linda Tegg were appointed Creative Directors of the Australian Pavilion at the 16th International Venice Biennale of Architecture 2018 with the theme Repair. The theme explored the role of architecture in the repair of the natural environment. Unpacked in the catalogue Repair published by Actar, it was recently described as a ‘landmark’ exhibition in MMXX Two Decades of Architecture in Australia edited by Cameron Bruhn.

In her early research career Louise was a lead researcher in an Australian Research Council project Ageing of Aquariuswith Professor Shane Murray exploring the ways housing design can be flexible to support retirement in place. This deep knowledge has been fundamental in her practice and initiated the academic-practice relationship. Following this work, Louise’s PhD titled Architectural Knowledge, explored what architects know and the ways they know it and deepened her disciplinary knowledge and capacity to teach architecture and research through design.

She has been an invited guest at national and international architecture schools, including Sydney University, UTS, Melbourne University, RMIT University, Turin Politecnic, Italy,  Milan Politecnic, Italy; TU Berlin, Germany and Mendrisio Academy of Architecture, Switzerland.

Founded in 2024 with Mauro Baracco, Baracco+Wright Architects are a small experimental architectural practice. Their work sits between academia, practice and multiple creative fields such as art and landscape architecture. They work on houses, small public works, schools, exhibitions and urban design and aim to include landscape as a central part of the design response.

Baracco+Wright follow a whole of world view where architecture is not seen as an isolated object but as a strategic tool for environmental and social repair. Their approach is closely linked with their academic work and defined by two primary trajectories that have guided the practice for over 20 years: a reparative approach, prioritizing vegetation and ecosystems as equal to, or more important than, the built contribution; and  spatial ‘looseness’ where the practice explores ambiguous and flexible spatial conditions frequently explored through the use of veranda type spaces that lack defined boundaries, creating a generous connection between the interior and the surrounding landscape.

Their approach has been influenced by their interest in the natural environment and place. Mauro’s PhD on the work of Melbourne architect Robin Boyd which began from an itinerary of his work they produced for Domus magazine in 1998 has been formative in the practice. In this legacy they continue to develop approaches to working in an Australian and Victorian context. In 2017 they documented many years of their research in the book published by Routledge Robin Boyd: Spatial Continuity.

In 2020 Actar published the first of a series of books on their work: Geometry, Simplicity, Play exploring these concepts in Magistretti’s and their own work prompted by an exhibition they designed for Magistretti’s archive. In 2024 they followed up with two more titles that bring together their varied interests through their work: Buildings & Living Things which documents the project Garden House and Knowing and Unknowing: the lives of Repair that revisits and expands the 2018 Venice Biennale exhibition Repair.

Since 2017, Baracco+Wright have continued to collaborate closely with artist Linda Tegg on projects that work between art and architecture. In 2021 they collaboration with Tegg to guest edit Issue 56 of Antennae: The Journal of Art and Nature titled Spaces for Species around architecture and nature. In 2019 they were invited with Tegg by Paola Antonelli to exhibit in Broken Nature at the 22^nd Milan Triennale.

They consistently write about architecture and their work is published widely. They have won several architectural awards including Australian Institute of Architects Kevin Borland Award for Small Architecture and the Harold Desbrowe Annear Award for Residential Architecture.