UAH Better Living &
Transformation

3 p.m. - 6 p.m.

UAH! GOES BIENNALE 
Talking about Unconventional Affordable Housing!

3 p.m. - 4 p.m. Can’t we just demolish it?
4 p.m. - 5 p.m. Who manages and takes care of it?
5 p.m. - 6 p.m. What if no one owned it?

Guests: Constanze Wolfgring (Vienna, Milan), Francesca Serrazanetti (Milan), Gennaro Postiglione (Milan), Angela Barbanente (Bari), Massimo Bricocoli (Milan), Elena Marchigiani (Trieste), Daniele Petrosino (Bari)

The exhibition repeatedly raises the question of existing buildings. How can former administrative and office buildings work as spaces for unusual living concepts? How can existing residential buildings be adapted for new ways of living, working, and loving? What can we do with derelict sites and dilapidated buildings? And could existing buildings be a decisive resource in the realization of a BETTER LIVING for all? The pavilion hosts a research team from Italy together with a network of design studios from European universities. UAH! – Unconventional Affordable Housing – explores new possibilities for contemporary housing and living at the interface between affordability and unconventionality. Starting from a reflection on existing housing practices, policies, and projects, the project experiments with transformative reuse in three Italian contexts – Bari, Milan, and Trieste –, methodically carried out as “research by design.” The projects, research, and research questions are critically discussed in six ASSEMBLIES.
www.uah.polimi.it

Constanze Wolfgring is a research fellow in the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies at Politecnico di Milano, where she earned her PhD in urban planning, design, and policies. Her research focuses on housing policies, urban regeneration, ecological transition policies, social inequalities, and innovative housing solutions, with a focus on Italy and Austria.

Francesca Serrazanetti, PhD in architecture, is an adjunct professor and research fellow in the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies at Politecnico di Milano. Her research interests focus on the relation between architecture and people, permanence, reuse, unconventionality, and the performativity of space. She is an editor of the architecture magazine Casabella and a co-founder of the multidisciplinary magazine Stratagemmi.

Gennaro Postiglione is a full professor of interior architecture and Vice Director of the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies at Politecnico di Milano. His research focuses on domestic interiors – and the relationships between dwelling culture, domestic architecture, and modernity –, on transformative reuse through research-by-design, and on unconventional housing models. He is the Principal Investigator of the project UAH! Unconventional Affordable Housing.

Angela Barbanente is a full professor of urban and regional planning at Politecnico di Bari. Her research focuses on the analysis of processes and practices of territorial transformation – investigated through the lenses of theories of social learning and social mobilization – and on the role of institutions and regulatory systems in these processes. From 2005 to 2015, she served as the Regional Councilor for Territorial Quality in Apulia.

Massimo Bricocoli is a full professor of urban planning and policy design and Head of the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies at Politecnico di Milano. His work focuses on the interface between welfare and urban policies, housing policies and projects, urban ethnography, and urban regeneration in both academic and applied research. He is the Scientific Coordinator of OCA, Observatory on Housing Affordability, in Milan.

Elena Marchigiani is an architect and an associate professor in urban planning at the Department of Engineering and Architecture at Università degli Studi di Trieste. Her research focuses on planning tools, urban projects, and policy design in the fields of social housing and neighborhood regeneration, welfare and inclusive mobility, the building of collaborative processes, town planning and city management, and territorial and landscape planning and design.

Daniele Petrosino is an associate professor of sociology in the Department of Political Sciences at Università degli Studi di Bari Aldo Moro. He holds a PhD in sociology and was a postdoctoral fellow and visiting scholar at McGill University and the University of Barcelona. His research focuses on ethnonationalism, ethnic relations, migration, identity, and social inequalities.