studio

Barreca & La Varra is an architecture, urban planning, and interior design studio based in Milan.

FOUNDING MEMBERS

Gianandrea Barreca and Giovanni La Varra founded the firm in Milan in 2008, but they have been collaborating since 1999 (when they established Boeri studio). They have deep roots in Italian design culture but looks to Europe as a horizon of stimulation and comparison. Being teachers in different university institutions, Italian and international, enriches and contaminates their work.They understood that they teach in order not to stop learning.

SERVICES

Driven by research-based experimentation, we design spaces for living and working – with few boundaries – spaces for healthcare, education, and leisure. We offer to private, institutional, and public clients all services, involving architectural and urban design, in a synergistic path that leads us to the artistic direction of works on site. We relate to administrative agencies, and we are used to work in multidisciplinary, national and international teams.

ORGANIZATIONAL CHART

The firm is led by a board of partners, which oversees three main areas — design, sales, and support — complemented by external consultancy and partnerships.

TEAM

Our team is inclusive, has a horizontal shape, and is enriched by the exchange of experiences between heterogeneous generations. It has evolved and updated over the years. We understand Barreca & La Varra as an environment human of personal growth and comparison, between skills ranging from interior design, architecture and urban planning, to landscape design and graphic design. Several training initiatives enrich the calendar of studio activities. A constellation of external collaborations enriches and contaminates expertise.

PHILOSOPHY: OUR ARCHITECTURE

Imagining behaviors, enabling affection, suggesting possibilities // Our projects are the tangible sign of a vision that, in shaping places of coexistence and habitation, aims to stage a better everyday life. We pursue the process of appropriating the places we design with an interest at least equal to that of the physical construction: we always seek, with our architecture, to activate unexpected questions and unforeseen opportunities. We nurture the hope of participating, through our work, in the construction of a consciously sustainable future.

Eclectic, tainted, optimistic // Our design aspires to give a material place to the culture that is being expressed at that moment. Our creative process is shared, and it has different outcomes due to places and relationships, people and by the unexpected, which become further suggestions. We pursue an idea through the long time of the design: this is the goal of our architecture, trying to achieve higher quality living spaces.

Respectful, disruptive, suitable // We act in every context with the ambition to be part of the construction of new urban ecosystems, preserving what is existent and without consuming new soils. We recognize ourselves in a city-building dynamic that goes beyond the specific needs of each function and tends to respond to collective needs. Maximum exploitation of local and natural resources and potential: we think that the future of cities will be a new deal between nature and artifice, a social, economic and aesthetic deal.

Hybrid, flexible, sustainable // We understand the needs of contemporary society, which aims to represent itself in a new way, with an architecture that tends to the contamination of spatial experiences. Fluidity of the relationship between interior and exterior, depth of vision, transparency: the new geometry of living and habitation is reflected in flexible spaces, while still adhering to requirements.

Experimental, contemporary, detail-oriented // The constant tension for experimentation, typological and morphological, leads us to welcome every project, at every scale, as an opportunity to challenge ourselves. Our architectural language is the outcome of the best synthesis of available technologies, materials and resources. Chromatics, solids and voids, and patterned details find the space of extreme synthesis in the facade. Nature merges with architecture, which welcomes and intensifies it: from an element to be “challenged,” it becomes an integral part of the project, and natural DNA to be maintained when it represents a pre-existence.

 

AWARDS (2008/2025)

COMPETITIONS WON (2020/2025)

2025 Design competition for the new MACS building of the Central-Northern Adriatic Sea Port System Authority of Ravenna, mention / Competition for the participatory masterplan for the Scintille district announced by the Municipality of Trieste / Competition for the adaptation services of the technical and economic feasibility design and the executive design of the major regeneration project of the Moncucco area of ​​the Municipality of Sondrio / 2024 Competition for the redevelopment of the Bergamo Prison / C40 Reinventing Cities Venice Madonna Nicopeja, first phase / Competition for the redevelopment of the UN Building in Turin, first phase / Competition for the expansion of the Archaeological Museum of Cividale del Friuli / 2023 Competition by invitation for the design of the residence of the Italian ambassador in London, first phase / 2022 Competition for a feasibility study for the construction of a school gym in the ex-SPIMAC area, Forni di Sopra (UD) / Competition for the housing project of ERS in via Capitanata in Foggia / PINQuA Competition for the BIM design service for the Urban Redevelopment and Regeneration project of the San Domenico public housing complex – Lot 1 in Udine / International Competition C40 Reinventing Cities Milan Zama Salomone, first phase / International Competition C40 Reinventing Cities Rome Ex-Mira Lanza, first phase / Competition for the construction of a multipurpose hall/theater and reorganization of the interview area and green area for outdoor interviews, Udine prison / National competition by invitation for residential interventions in the ex-Trotto masterplan, Milan / 2021 International Competition C40 Reinventing Cities Ex-Macello Milan / International Competition C40 Reinventing Cities Lambrate Milan, first phase / National competition by invitation for the renovation of an office building in via Oglio 21 in Milan / 2020 Competition by invitation for integrated design services on the MIND West Gate area, Milan / Competition by invitation for integrated design services in the MIND West Gate area, Lot 10 / Tender for the construction of new public housing units in “lot H” of the “former fruit and vegetable market” area in the Navile district of Bologna / Tender for the multipurpose hall for the Civil Protection in Palmanova (UD) / International competition by invitation for the design of two social housing buildings in Unione 0 Cluster 5 of Milanosesto in Sesto San Giovanni (MI) / INVITALIA Tender for the reorganization of the Italian hospital network, lots of Borgosesia and Orbassano

BLV ARENA: A PLACE OPEN TO CREATIVITY

Not just architecture: since 2023, the studio and its BLV arena—which can be opened onto the courtyard in front—have been available to host various events and presentations (workshops, seminars, conferences), with the support of technological devices and a catering space.