On Tuesday, 21 April, starting at 11.00 a.m., the doctoral thesis defense of the PhD candidate Saskia Rebecca Furman will take place in the Sala de Graus of La Salle Campus Barcelona. The thesis, entitled 'Upgrading social housing to meet the socio-economic needs of today’s dwellers: a framework for sustainable retrofit', has been carried out under the direction of Dr Anna Martínez Duran, Dr Xavier Martín Tost and Dr Karim Hadjri. The doctoral student is part of the HER research group.
Housing retrofit has emerged as a critical component of global climate action, requiring urgent intervention to achieve net-zero targets. Social housing retrofit represents an important sector for decarbonisation, housing marginalised populations in often deteriorating stock, offering comprehensive improvements to energy performance while addressing complex socio-material housing needs. Recent policy guidance demonstrates commitment to retrofit but focuses primarily on energy performance and building infrastructure metrics. This approach faces challenges in balancing environmental performance targets with the lived experiences and social concerns of residents. Residents possess unique and essential knowledge about building performance, daily usage patterns, and the complex interplay between technical systems and social needs. By engaging residents in social housing retrofit as expert stakeholders rather than passive beneficiaries, it is possible to develop processes that identify and address these multi-faceted requirements.
This research investigates how resident engagement can enhance sustainable retrofit outcomes in social housing, addressing tensions between technical performance targets and resident needs. The study develops an evidence-based approach for integrating resident expertise into retrofit decision-making processes, achieving holistically sustainable interventions that reconcile technical targets with resident knowledge and values. Through rigorous mixed-methods investigation, the research incrementally combines historical analysis, literature synthesis, professional stakeholder insights, empirical case study evidence of four European projects, and direct resident validation. Four published outputs emerge from this study, in addition to a comprehensive case study analysis, contributing significant new knowledge to social housing retrofit with resident engagement. The investigation demonstrates that hybrid decision-making between all stakeholders —including residents, technical professionals, and housing providers— represents the most effective approach for balancing building, resident, and environmental needs. The central contribution of the study is the Hybrid Retrofit Framework, which reframes social housing retrofit from technical optimisation towards collaborative knowledge creation, challenging the dominant techno-optimist paradigm that excludes resident expertise.
The court is made up of the president, Dr Ignacio Enrique Guillén Guillamón; the secretary, Dr Núria Martí Audi; and the member, el Dr William Swan.