Anna Pagani | EPFL Graph Search

Anna Pagani is an Italian architect and PhD candidate (C. Binder, HERUS). In 2015 she graduates cum laude in Architecture and Building Engineering at both Politecnico di Torino and Politecnico di Milano in Italy. She obtains a Double-Master Degree for technology talents (ASP-Alta Scuola Politecnica) with a multidisciplinary thesis about the Turin Energy Centre.During her academic path she is the winner of multiple European Union scholarships, allowing her to study in Barcelona and Lausanne. Her Master Thesis entitled “Hutongs-Transformation: A Battle Between Memories” (2015) is awarded with honors by the Politecnico di Torino.Following the path of anthropology, architecture, and sustainability, Anna is the curator of the seminar “Chinese New TOwns: negotiating citizenship and physical form” at the Beijing Design Week 2016.In 2017 she moves to China and works as architect for DEDODESIGN, a sino-italian architectural and design firm based in Shanghai, which focuses on sustainable architecture projects. During her stay, she is the organizer of two international workshops around the topics of sustainability.Aside from university..Anna studies since the age of 4 in the Lycée Français Jean Giono in Torino, which allowed her to speak, today, 6 languages. With a strong passion for writing, she has published on the Italian Review Edizioni Zero, il Giornale dell’Architettura, as well as Babylon.When she's not in the office, Anna practices yoga every morning, dances contemporary dance, sings in a choir, studies German, and attempts to limit her environmental footprint...

Citizen Think Tanks: co-designing post-pandemic housing futures

Claudia Rebeca Binder Signer, Valentin Daniel Maurice Bourdon, Livia Bianca Fritz, Anna Pagani

During the first wave of COVID-19, Swiss residents found themselves spending most of their time in homes unable to accommodate the needs hitherto met by cities. While scholars and practitioners have proposed strategies to mitigate the effects of housing deficiencies on inhabitants’ wellbeing, the contribution of all citizens involved in housing production and use cannot be overlooked. Therefore, this research aimed to offer spaces for mutual learning to co-design post-pandemic housing futures. Two Citizens Think Tanks (CTTs) were organised in spring 2020 as part of the transdisciplinary project Swiss Corona Citizen Science, involving eight to ten participants in two online sessions. The first CTT aimed to discuss housing conditions before and during the confinement. The analysis of the recordings and whiteboards led to the identification of three variables, namely (i) space for oneself, (ii) physical private space, and (iii) space for social interactions, using which we developed possible scenarios for the future of housing. The latter were presented in the second CTT using short stories and images, shaping a shared imaginary. The most desirable scenario was voted on, followed by a collective reflection on pathways to achieve it. The scenario ‘reinvesting the community’, resulting from an increase in personal and social space and a reduction in the physical one, was voted as the most desirable. Obstacles and opportunities that this vision entails included sharing and learning to share; ways of recreating a neighbourhood ‘spirit’; designing housing that allows for encounters, welcomes different cultures, and addresses desires for appropriation. The CTTs highlighted how different types of knowledge can contribute to the production of strategies to cope with present and future crises, generating questions that open up new avenues of research. They offered an example of how scientists and practitioners can interact with and benefit from the multiple voices of inhabitants.

2022

Explore, engage, empower: methodological insights into a transformative mixed methods study tackling the COVID-19 lockdown

Claudia Rebeca Binder Signer, Garance Clément, Laurie Daffe, Livia Bianca Fritz, Daniel Gatica-Perez, Vincent Kaufmann, Anna Pagani, Melissa Pang, Ulrike Vilsmaier

Action-oriented, transformative, and transdisciplinary approaches are increasingly heralded as promising tools that enable researchers not only to produce new knowledge about a situation, but also to actively engage in tackling it; however, such approaches raise critical questions about the methodological implications and conflicts involved in pursuing multiple objectives concurrently. This article seeks to advance this debate by examining the methodological implications of pursuing both knowledge production-oriented (epistemic) and action-oriented (transformative) objectives in urgent and uncertain situations. It asks how far a transformative mixed methods research design can leverage the potential of research to achieve multiple objectives in times of crisis. This methodological inquiry is based on a transformative mixed methods study on housing conditions and well-being which was initiated during the first COVID-19 lockdown in Switzerland. The study was composed of a country-wide survey, mobile crowdsourcing, interviews and Citizen Think Tanks. The results of this methodological reflection illustrate how this research design made it possible to (i) explore the effects of the crisis on domestic living spaces, (ii) engage with the crisis in a joint research space, and (iii) stimulate empowerment through reflection and mutual learning. These insights suggest the multidimensional orientation of the transformative mixed methods approach is appropriate for acting upon urgent crises. However, it challenges core methodological values and research constellations including (i) tackling unequal engagement opportunities, (ii) navigating social and epistemic control, and (iii) paying attention to situatedness and positionality. The article concludes that, in anticipation of future crises, favorable conditions for multi-targeted, collaborative research need to be fostered, both on the institutional and on personal levels. These conditions should enable fast and adequate team formation, as well as reflection and negotiation of positionalities, and divergent interests and objectives, of both scientists and citizens.

2022

Towards sustainability through housing functions: a systems perspective for the study of Swiss tenants' residential mobility

Anna Pagani

Problem. Housing is a major contributor to Switzerland's carbon footprint and energy consumption, but it is also a basic need. Research on climate change mitigation strategies has so far paid insufficient attention to households' preferences and their contribution to housing sustainability. Depicting residential preferences requires an understanding of the multilevel, context-specific, and interrelated determinants of the match between households and dwellings, which are made explicit in the residential mobility process.Goal. The goal of this thesis is to clarify the determinants of residential mobility and their interrelations to illuminate the effects of measures aimed at reducing housing's environmental footprint while meeting the needs of its households. Methods. This research employs a systems and transdisciplinary approach to explore, dig into and disentangle the complex relations governing the residential mobility process. It starts by conceptualising residential preferences and dwelling forms as the manifestations of the housing human and material subsystems, which are determined by the system's function. The applicability of this framework to residential mobility is explored by sequentially gathering and integrating qualitative and quantitative data on the tenants of three Swiss multifamily housing owners. This empirical basis is used to develop an agent-based model (ABM) of households' residential dynamics for the exploration of the emergent effects of housing sustainability measures.Results. Firstly, the present work shows that several functions coexist in the housing realm, each of which determines, for given elements of the societal and environmental supersystems (e.g. culture, location), different residential preferences and dwelling forms. Secondly, empirical investigations demonstrate that the notion of function offers analytical support to the study of Swiss tenants' residential mobility, as it permits the identification of linkages between the qualities of residential environments and residents' characteristics, their residential satisfaction, and triggers to move. In particular, functions help explain the observed preference for larger dwellings and the low propensity of shrinking households to relocate. Furthermore, this notion enables the observation of the effects of the exceptional circumstances posed by the COVID-19 on residential preferences, and the increased desire for a place for 'self-representation'. Lastly, using this empirical and context-specific knowledge, the thesis introduces the agent-based model ReMoTe-S. Simulation experiments show that measures to reduce space consumption are insufficient if not accompanied by an offer of dwellings that simultaneously meet and reshape households' preferences. They also reveal that these preferences cannot be fulfilled via the direct correspondence between desired and current housing characteristics, as housing functions result from several compromises between them. These results invite practitioners and citizens to collectively reimagine the way housing functions express themselves in dwelling forms with a lower environmental footprint.Conclusions. This thesis offers a platform for systemic co-inquiry that enables researchers and practitioners to navigate the complex interactions at play for the provision of sustainable housing. To limit human-induced global warming, the approaches and tools used must rapidly permeate practice and teaching in architecture.

EPFL2022

Explore, engage, empower: methodological insights into a transformative mixed methods study tackling the COVID-19 lockdown

Claudia Rebeca Binder Signer, Garance Clément, Laurie Daffe, Livia Bianca Fritz, Daniel Gatica-Perez, Vincent Kaufmann, Anna Pagani, Melissa Pang, Ulrike Vilsmaier

2022

Towards sustainability through housing functions: a systems perspective for the study of Swiss tenants' residential mobility

Anna Pagani

EPFL2022

Citizen Think Tanks: co-designing post-pandemic housing futures

Claudia Rebeca Binder Signer, Valentin Daniel Maurice Bourdon, Livia Bianca Fritz, Anna Pagani

2022