Elan Barr
I’ve been with m3architecture since 2012 and a director since 2021. I’m passionate about ideas – about discovering concepts that are delightfully sensitive and specific to my clients’ cultures and values, and that result in built outcomes supporting their highest potential. A core element of my practice is the belief that good relationships underpin all great design outcomes. My practice is founded on care, collaboration, and clear communication through all aspects of client liaison and project delivery.
Architecture, making, and building have always felt like home to me. I grew up in many different houses along the east coast of Australia and the South Island of New Zealand. My father is an architect and builder,and first home was a house he designed and built; it was designed to be dismantled in case of rising sea levels.
My earliest memories are of scent: the sawdust from our home construction sites, and the sharp smell of ammonia from the plan printer and drawing film in Dad’s offices. My first ‘job’ was photocopying specifications for contract sets and colouring his hand-drawn elevations for presentations and development applications – I was ten years old. My siblings and I would help out with Dad's building projects however we could. That upbringing shaped not only my love of architecture but also my understanding of the care and labour embedded in every built outcome. Today I live in my own doer-upper cottage, and that lifelong familiarity with the making of buildings continues to inform the way I listen to clients and translate their stories into meaningful architecture.