The most generous was the provincial secretary and League board member Samuele Piscina who gave seven and a half benefactors, the most serious were the Greens Francesca Cucchiara and Tommaso Cucchiara who “to be kind” gave “only” 2 and a half. City councilors carried out an inspection yesterday morning at the Olympic Village at Scalo Romana which will host 1,700 athletes during the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics and will be transformed at the speed of light – four months – into student housing. And they provided a report card for the project created by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (Som) and Coima Sgr within thirty months and submitted to the 2026 Foundation in mid-October for final arrangements. The style of the six buildings is unanimously defined as “Soviet” and has stirred controversy in recent months. «Not heartwarming, the impact is the pouring of concrete – League leader Alessandro Verri admits -, but it is an important project and legacy for the city. Could it have been done better? Maybe yes. For us, it is important to monitor future accommodation costs, meanwhile we reassure the athletes: unlike the villages created by their French cousins, they will not sleep on paper mattresses but Italian mattresses”. Rating: 6.5. Northern League member Piscina added one point and reminded that «due to the time span that individuals have to realize and with the additional costs» that exploded after the conflict in Ukraine «they did a very good job. If we then compare it with the village disaster in Paris, the quality is clearly better.” He spoke out against the City “making serious mistakes in closing student housing agreements at inflated fees.” FdI board member Enrico Marcora gave «5 to 6»: «The architectural impact is reminiscent of Stalingrad in Milan and room prices for students will be limited but only thanks to the Pnrr which has provided the resources. Open balconies like the Spadolini Bocconi campus need to be created.”
Tranchant, as we said, is the opinion of Cucchiara and Gorini who also described the rooms on social media «as niche, small and to be rented at an incredible discount, 450 euros for a double room. We are resolving the price we disputed on the private market.” This is a “pre-agreement” and therefore excludes the possibility that the Municipality can still obtain more comfortable conditions, “we have also drawn up a document on other student dormitories, we ask that the agreement pass through the Council, with clear parameters and effective price controls”. For them too this is “Soviet aesthetics” and assurances about the upcoming greening are not reassuring. The Coima manager who accompanied the councilors explained that currently the flowerbeds are vacated at the request of the Olympic installation Foundation but Democrat Michele Albiani predicted «another heat island With regret, I am very disappointed: do we want to force students to live in cramped rooms by paying market prices?”. Rating: 4. For fellow PD Alessandro Giungi, president of the Olympic Commission, the project instead “deserves a 6, in the end we are talking about hundreds of trees in all. And it is good news that the place is fence-free and completely open to the city. The affiliated rooms have increased to 450, with funding from the Ministry of Education for 12 years that will allow further reductions in fees for students with disabilities and lower ISEEs”. Municipalities 4 and 5 “have requested to open community houses on the ground floor”. Alessandro De Chirico (Forza Italia) also gave it a 6 «even if the building is reminiscent of Soviet style», here it is again, «and the rooms are small but dignified, with some designer furniture. The social space created in each of the floor rooms is great.”
Full passes (6) also for Francesco Rocca (FdI), «external impacts give penalties but the rooms are good, the bathrooms are well appointed, the athletes will sleep on Venetian mattresses. Of course, in the future the City Government must pay more attention to this agreement.”
