Milan’s mass timber Olympic Village is converting from athletes’ accommodation into Italy’s largest publicly supported student housing complex as part of a four-month works programme, with the Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM) design now offering future Olympic hosts a working template for purpose-built post-Games renewal. That is according to Marco Scalvini, director of fund and asset management at Italian real estate developer COIMA, who confirmed at a 7 April Community Value Urban Regeneration roundtable hosted by The European House of Ambrosetti (TEHA Group) that 65 per cent of the 1,700 beds across the six new mass timber residential blocks have been assigned through university agreements and direct web bookings.
Wood Central understands the Porta Romana scheme is the only one of the six athlete villages used during the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Games designed from the outset as a permanent urban neighbourhood, with the same buildings that hosted more than 1,000 athletes from over 40 delegations during the February event now converting under a brief that Italian trade press cites as significantly faster than the multi-year conversion timelines that have characterised most past Olympic athlete villages. “We expect it to open in August 2026 with a total of 1,700 beds,” Scalvini said.
The renewal follows Wood Central’s reporting that the village was delivered 30 days ahead of schedule using factory-made modular units built around mass timber elements, with Bocconi University now signing a three-year renewable agreement for 730 of the 1,700 beds and COIMA setting the cheapest of three tiered rents at €250 per month for 135 of the 450 subsidised beds under MUR Ministerial Decree 481/2024 PNRR funding.
The complex achieved Nearly Zero Energy Building (NZEB) standards and holds both Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold and WiredScore Platinum certifications, with heat pumps, a one megawatt photovoltaic system, stormwater reuse and electric vehicle charging built in across the six new mass timber blocks and the restored Squadra Rialzo locomotive workshop and Basilico warehouse. Mass timber construction and prefabricated facade panels cut embodied carbon during the €140 million build, with COIMA pre-installing final student-configuration furniture during the Games under a July 2025 agreement with Fondazione Milano Cortina 2026 — a design-for-conversion brief that skips the gut-and-rebuild cycle stretching most past Olympic conversions into multi-year timelines.
It comes as Wood Central reported on the broader mass timber programme across the Milano Cortina 2026 venue network, with Italian fabricator Rubner Holzbau supplying engineered timber across vertical extensions in Milan and PEFC-certified timber retrofits at the Fabio Canal Cross-Country Ski Stadium. “Purpose-built for one usage, and that then will transform for another permanent purpose,” SOM partner Colin Koop said.
The Scalo Romana masterplan will eventually add 320 affordable housing units across the wider 19-hectare former rail yard, with COIMA pricing the student rents to deliver long-term investors a five per cent return only marginally above the ten-year BTP yield. Olympic host cities have a long history of venues sitting idle after the Games close — with Milan’s mass timber renewal answering 6 per cent of the city’s 30,000-bed student housing gap on a four-month works programme, against an Italian national shortage of 500,000 beds and a purpose-built student accommodation market that has grown 186 per cent in five years.
