Social and Collaborative Housing

Politecnico di Milano I and II level Specializing Master
V Edition
November 7, 2016

Sectors

This Specializing Master is organized by POLI.design, with the support of the Politecnico di Milano Design School and the School of Architecture, Urban Planning and Construction Engineering at the Politecnico di Milano.

Its main partners are Fondazione Housing Sociale, along with Confcooperative Federabitazione, Legacoop Abitanti and Associazione Nazionale Costruttori Edili. Support has also come from major real asset management companies, including Prelios, Investire SGR spa, and Torre SGR spa. The program has also received sponsorship from the Ordine degli Architetti, from planners, landscape artists, and conservationists at the Province of Milan, from ACRI-Associazione di Fondazioni e di Casse di Risparmio SPA and from the Istituto Nazionale di Urbanistica.

Aims

The Specializing Master in Social and Collaborative Housing. Planning, Designing, and Managing the Contemporary Habitat was launched to meet the growing need for general knowledge and professional skills in planning, designing, and managing contemporary forms of living that are based on policies and choices of social integration and collaboration. Social and collaborative housing refers to construction projects that include offering living accommodations, services, initiatives, and instruments aimed at those who are unable to meet their housing needs on the market, either because of lack of adequate supply or for financial reasons.

The program achieves its aims by setting up an integrated process that includes:

a) policies and projects in which public action and actions of private parties are geared to promote and support integrated interventions for living

b) support the establishment of a community of residents, in which relationships are collaborative and oriented to shared management, and that it is founded on the principles of social integration;

c) the design and construction cost effective of energy efficient settlements for residence, community services and public spaces open to the city;

d) the financial and management planning that allows the economic sustainability of the interventions and their maintenance over time.

In a period of profound demographic changes (marked by new migrations and an aging population), of impoverishment of the middle classes and social polarization and economic restructuring of the labor market and welfare policies, as well as transformation of the building sector, social and cooperative housing is one of the main responses to the needs of contemporary living of large segments of the population and one of the most vibrant areas of experimentation in the field of architectural, financial and social planning in Europe.

Interest in social housing is constantly on the rise in Italy. After an initial pioneering phase, now the need for a new multidisciplinary professionalism is emerging.

Job Description
The Specializing Master is set up to provide skills shared by several disciplinary fields called into play by such projects (architecture and design, the social sciences, and management and finance) so as to create a convergence of methods and tools. Its aim is to train professionals who, in addition to their own fields, can understand and handle the complexity and the issues of other disciplines that come together in creating collaborative housing. It thus strives to train a specialist who can work in planning, designing, and managing modern forms of living based on policies of integration and collaboration. This new job description can find a match in disciplinary skills that have been rounded out through the Specializing Master, as students acquire the essential notions of the other specializations involved in the process of establishing social and collaborative housing: architecture, service design, social science, management, and finance. As a result, they achieve the capacity to play a systemic role in the planning process.

Degree Awarded
This program awards a I or II level Specializing Master Diploma in "Social and Collaborative Housing. Planning, Designing, and Managing the Contemporary Habitat" .
The first level Specializing Master grants 60 CFU, equivalent to 60 ECTS. The second level Specializing Master grants 61 CFU, equivalent to 61 ECTS

Attendance is mandatory for a total of not less than 75% of scheduled activities.