Athena Lecture – On housing justice: let’s talk about fixes that fail
Author: Anna Pagani
Tags: #Athena Lecture Series #Parity Talks IX
Blurb: The lecture examined the system structures hindering the provision of healthy and sustainable homes.
The 2024 Athena Lecture took place on Thursday, 7th of March and was given by architect and researcher Dr. Anna Pagani. In her lecture “On housing justice: let’s talk about fixes that fail” she critically examined the system structures hindering the provision of healthy and sustainable homes for all.
In this context, she offered an overview of how systems thinking can help bring to light the plurality of mental models guiding the design of ‘fixes’ that reinforce, rather than address, structural issues – such as the exclusion of racialised and minoritised communities. In doing so, her presentation provided insights into how to transform our ways of understanding and intervening in the housing system. The Lecture concluded the Parity Talks IX “On Inconvenience: Learning to listen”.
Anna Pagani is an Italian architect and a postdoctoral researcher in the fields of people-environment studies, housing studies, and systems thinking. Her work aims at disentangling the complex interrelations that hinder the achievement of a just transition towards housing sustainability. To this end, her investigations are based on systemic and transdisciplinary approaches, integrating qualitative and quantitative data and simulation tools. She holds a double Master’s degree from Politecnico di Torino and Milano in architecture and building engineering, and a PhD from Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). Her doctoral thesis, entitled ‘Towards sustainability through housing functions: a systems perspective for the study of Swiss tenants’ residential mobility’ was awarded the EDAR Doctoral Program Thesis Distinction. She has worked as a doctoral and postdoctoral researcher in the Laboratory on Human-Environment Relations in Urban Systems (HERUS), and as a member of the Executive board of the research field ‘Healthy Habitats’ at the Habitat Research Center (HRC). Since November 2022, Anna has joined the Institute for Environmental Design and Engineering at University College London (UCL) to work on a two-years research project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF Postdoc.Mobility) entitled ‘A just transition towards housing sustainability: where architecture and systems science meet’.