Designing towards institutional change in student housing: Service design amid competing logics in a public university ecosystem
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: As Milan’s universities compete globally for economic capital and student flows, they simultaneously face growing challenges in addressing the student housing affordability crisis. This paper presents a retrospective analysis of StudMIHome, a multi-disciplinary action-research project that investigated student housing conditions and prototyped an orientation and legal desk service at Politecnico di Milano. Drawing on institutional theory, it conceptualizes student housing as a liminal space shaped by conflicting institutional orders and examines how institutionally produced practices harming students emerge within student-market-university relations. These tensions expose the contradictions between two university models: the neoliberal, oriented towards performance and competitiveness, and the public, historically grounded in and responsible for democratic access. By examining the StudMIHome design process, the paper reflects on service design as a site of institutional reconciliation, understood as a provisional alignment within contradictory institutional orders that enables the coordination of actors and resources in the service of institutional change.
Source: The Design Journal
Authors: Nicole Sacchetti, Daniela Sangiorgi
Institution: Politecnico di Milano
Language: English
Subfield: Mechanical Engineering
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Funder: Politecnico di Milano
Award: G496530228
OpenAlex ID: W7171663111