Biography
Loana Gatti is an assistant researcher, designer and PhD candidate whose work lies at the intersection of design education, ecological thinking, and regenerative pedagogies. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Graphic Design from ECAL (École cantonale d’art de Lausanne) and a Master of Fine Arts in Curatorial and Research Practices from HEAD (Geneva).
Her research focuses on embodied and material-based learning practices that foster ecological awareness and cultural sustainability within art and design education. Her interests include participatory design methods, situated learning, and care practices that emerge through direct sensory engagement with natural materials such as soil, wood, fiber, and pigment. Drawing from critical theory, eco-pedagogy, and feminist ethics of care, she explores how learning spaces like school gardens can function as transformative environments for students, educators and their local community.
She joined the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts (HSLU) in April 2025 as part of the four-year SNF project “Accelerating the Pursuit of the Sustainable Development Goals in Swiss Design Education: Design Action Labs.” with Prof. Dr. Guillermina Noël, within the Transformation Design research lab. Her doctoral project contributes to this initiative through practice-based research that investigates material engagement as a regenerative strategy for sustainability education in art and design schools.
Loana has also conducted fieldwork on agroecology teachings (natural farming, shizen noho) through community gardens in Japan, where she lived and pursued independent research in Kyoto, in collaboration with the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) and the Kyoto University of the Arts (KUA).
