Marianna Marchesi
@cardiff.ac.uk
Lecturer in Architectural Design, Welsh School of Architecture
Cardiff University
I am a Lecturer in Architectural Design at the Welsh School of Architecture at Cardiff University (UK). I joined the school in 2018 as a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow for implementing the research project called CircuBED. The project focused on exploring how urban communities like social housing can contribute to sustainable development through the transition to a circular economy and how they can be engaged.
In research and teaching, I am particularly interested in supporting changes towards sustainable cities through design by developing social, organisational and technological innovations. My research and teaching are supported by a holistic background acquired through education by a Master of Architecture, Master of Science in Sustainable Design and PhD in Sustainable Energy and Technologies. I have consolidated interdisciplinary expertise through long-term practice experience as a registered architect and by research and teaching experience in sustainable architecture and urban de
EDUCATION
PhD IN SUSTAINABLE ENERGY & TECHNOLOGIES (focus on Design Research) - 20/04/2016
Faculty of Science and Technology, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano (Bolzano, Italy) with MIT (Cambridge, USA)
VISITING FELLOWSHIP – from January to December 2013
Departments of Engineering and Architecture, Massachusetts Institute of Technology – MIT (USA)
MASTER OF SCIENCE CASACLIMA-KLIMAHAUS – mark: 110/110 – 26/10/2010
Degree in Sustainable Design of the Built Environment
Faculty of Science and Technology, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano (Italy)
FIVE-YEAR SINGLE-CYCLE MASTER OF ARCHITECTURE – mark: 110/110 cum laude – 15/02/2001
Department of Architecture, University of Ferrara (Italy)
RESEARCH INTERESTS
I am particularly interested in supporting systemic changes for the transition to sustainable cities through the development of socio-technical innovations into and across urban systems and the alignment of changes among scales.
Scopus Publications
Scholar Citations
Scholar h-index
Scholar i10-index
Scopus Publications
Clarice Bleil de Souza, Camilla Pezzica, Marianna Marchesi, and Christopher A. Brown
Springer Nature Switzerland
Marianna Marchesi and Chris Tweed
Elsevier BV
M Marchesi, C Tweed, and D Gerber
IOP Publishing
Abstract This research seeks to develop a step change to the way housing is designed for cities in the UK. Housing demand in cities is predicted to increase. Urban centres are struggling to provide affordable housing. Moreover, cities are wasteful in terms of resource consumption, and waste generation heavily affecting the environment. The circular economy offers new ways to design, make and use houses to address these issues systemically as long as technical innovation is combined with social innovation. To date, the circular economy has mainly focused on technical innovation with limited emphasis on user social practices and behaviours. The combination of technological and social innovations through design has just appeared in emerging research and practice areas of design for sustainability. So, approaches that support the design of integrated solutions for transforming large socio-technical systems like cities are not yet well-established. To contribute to the development of integrated approaches for implementing a circular economy in urban housing, this study reviews a set of existing cases of social innovation for regenerative and restorative urban systems. Through empirical observation, we seek to integrate existing theories and concepts on circular economy and formulate theoretical insights for promoting the development of social-technical innovations.
Marianna Marchesi and Dominik T. Matt
American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE)
The housing market is urgently demanding customized quality buildings at affordable costs. Housing prefabrication represents a suitable strategy as long as it is combined with cost-effective personalization through mass customization. Designs need to be easily customizable to foster the mass customization of prefabricated housing. Decisive requirements are design robustness and flexibility. Crucial decisions for the achievement of these requirements are made in the conceptual design phase, but this stage is not adequately supported, and tools for addressing decisions during this phase are not provided. In engineering design, axiomatic design (AD) has been shown to be able to support the analysis of existing ideas in terms of aptitude for customization and the generation of robust and flexible solutions that are easier to customize. Thus, the current study applied AD to the analysis of well-known prefabricated houses and the design development of a new prefabricated housing system to show the potential benefits of this approach for the building industry. Results show that AD has the ability to support the analysis of ideas for identifying problems linked with customization and the ability to address the conceptual development of robust and flexible designs for providing easily customizable solutions.
Marianna Marchesi and Ian Alessandro Ferrarato
Elsevier BV
RECENT SCHOLAR PUBLICATIONS
MOST CITED SCHOLAR PUBLICATIONS
Publications
Marchesi, M. & Tweed, C. (2021). Social innovation for a circular economy in social housing. Sustainable Cities and Society, 71, article number: 102925. (10.1016/j.
Marchesi, M. & Matt, D. (2017). Design for Mass Customization – Rethinking Prefabricated Housing using Axiomatic Design. Journal of Architectural Engineering, 23(3): 05017004. DOI:10.1061/(ASCE)
Marchesi, M. & Ferrarato, I. A. (2015). Addressing the adaptive customization of timber prefabricated housing through Axiomatic Design. Procedia CIRP 34. p. 199–205. DOI: 10.1016/j.
Marchesi, M., Fernandez, J. & Matt, D. (2016). Applying Axiomatic Design to Building Design in the Housing Industry: Case Study Analysis. In: Farid, A. M., Suh, N. P. (Eds.) Axiomatic Design in Large Systems: Complex Products, Buildings & Manufacturing Systems. Springer International Publishing. DOI:10.1007/978-3-319-32388-6
Marchesi, M. & Matt, D. (2016). Application of Axiomatic Design to the Design of the Built Environment: A Literature Review. In Farid, A. M., Suh, N. P. (Eds.) Axiomatic Design in Large Systems: Complex Products, Buildings & Manufacturing Systems. Springer International Publishing. DOI:10.1007/978-3-319-32388-6
Marchesi, M., Kim, S-G. & Matt, D. (2015). Assessing the Design Innovation Potential of Timber Prefabricated Housing through Axiomatic Design. In: S. Jahanmir et al. (Eds.), Advances in Multidisciplinary Engineering. ASME Press. DOI: 10.1115/1.861080
GRANT DETAILS
09/2021: Research, Innovation & Engagement Projects - CircuPLAY; awarded by Research Wales Innovation Fund; Award value: £ 8,500; duration: 9 months; % Ownership: 100%
03/2020: Global Challenges Research Fund, Facilitator Grant - Synergetic Settlements; awarded by Research Wales Innovation Fund; Award value: £ 6,940; duration: 6 months; % Ownership: 33,3%
01/06/2018: H2020-MSCA-Individual Fellowship-2017 - CircuBED; EU’s H2020 Research and Innovation Programme - Grant Agreement n. 793021 - Award value: € 195,454.80 - duration: 2 years; % Ownership: 100%
15/05/2017: SCoRE Cymru Grant from the Welsh European Funding Office (UK) to support the participation of Wales-based organisations in the European Union’s H2020 programme - Award value: £ 1000; % Ownership: 100%
01/12/2011: PhD Fellowship from MIUR (Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research) - Award value: € 51,000; duration: 3 years
RESEARCH OUTPUTS (PATENTS, SOFTWARE, PUBLICATIONS, PRODUCTS)
Marchesi, M. (2021). Circular Families Game. Available on the webpage:
CONSULTANCY
30/06/2021 - current: Design Consultant for the refurbishment and reuse of the Gardener House and the related town walls infrastructure in Castelfranco V. (Italy) - referent: I. A. Ferrarato (project leader) for Castelfranco City Council (Treviso, Italy)
Industry, Institute, or Organisation Collaboration
Arup Foresight, London
Clarion Housing Group, London
Community Gateway, Cardiff
YLab, Cardiff
INDUSTRY EXPERIENCE
01/07/2019 - 31/10/2019: MSCA IF Intersectoral Secondment at ARUP Foresight, London (UK)
09/01/2015 - 31/05/2018: Self-Employed Architect, Italy
01/11/2006 - 08/01/2012: Self-Employed Architect, Italy
01/04/2002 - 30/10/2006: Project Architect, Italy