Italian architect Irene Seracca Guerrieri believes in architecture with an improving mission. Her mission is to create spaces with a good spirit so the people will feel better by simply being there. And people who feel better behave better to one another.

Appropriately Irene’s studio is called Genius Loci Archittetura, the “genius loci” part often translated from the Latin as “the spirit of the place”. They have offices in Milan and Florence, two cities packed with beautiful spaces and boasting long histories, so Irene is familiar with adapting her work to an existing context. As she puts it, a project starts with listening to the space.

Being open and flexible is key to Irene’s practice. She talks about her mother and her father, an artist and an engineer. The two faces of her personality, the creative and, the rational, compete for dominance. She feels the creative is winning out for the moment, but she knows that her work requires both facets to be interesting More and more she finds her clients want her to build the possibility of change into the buildings they commission. The spirit will express itself while changing over time.

Irene relishes events like the World Architecture Festival for the chance to even more listening. Without this kind of exchanges, she feels her work can’t evolve. Through the ideas of other people Irene can evolve her one spirit and also that one of the space she imagines. She talks to Karl Lennon about the power of attention.