Biography

Anna Pagani is an Italian architect and Postdoctoral Researcher in the Laboratory on Human-Environment Relations in Urban Systems (HERUS) and the Habitat Research Center (HRC) at EPFL.

She obtains her PhD on February 10th 2022, with a thesis entitled "Towards sustainability through housing functions: a systems perspective to the study of Swiss tenants' residential mobility".
 
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...

Current work

Shrinking Housing's Environmental Footprint (SHEF)

The project goal is to identify and promote practical measures that dwellers, property owners and public authorities can implement to reduce the use of primary resources and the environmental impacts of housing. These measures cover the construction, use and refurbishment phases of the buildings and must be effective while preserving the social and economic qualities of housing. The core product of the project will be an agent-based model allowing to represent housing-related decisions, eventually testing the feasibility and impacts of SHEF strategies.