Francesca Cognetti
San Siro neighbourhood, Milan. Aerial view.
Meeting with local residents at the ARCI Fiocchi club, Milan.
Left: Research activities, Off Campus San Siro, Milan. Right: Legal advice activities, Off Campus San Siro, Milan.
The challenge remains: balancing institutional innovation with meaningful relationships and mutual trust with communities. Francesca Cognetti has learnt to walk along two parallel tracks. The first is San Siro, a social housing estate in Milan with a population of 12,000. The second is the Politecnico di Milano, Italy’s largest university of science and technology.
In 2011, Francesca was a researcher in urban policy and the mother of two children attending a primary school on the outskirts of San Siro. It was through her children’s classmates that she gained a first-hand understanding of a dimension that had previously been merely theoretical. Invitations to homes and lunches in humble 40-square-meter flats, where families of six lived. A generous welcome in cramped spaces despite poverty. And the school as a place of solidarity and learning together.A deep sense of injustice arose as the days went by. Francesca began to build, step by step.In 2013, she organised Mapping San Siro: around thirty students, eight local clients, three months. At the end, the students could not leave – and neither could Francesca.The following year, she approaches the head of the department with an idea. He encourages her. They find a space thanks to an agreement with Aler Milano – thirty square meters facing the street – on a free loan for use. Francesca’s department takes up the costs.It might seem like a small thing, yet from the start, Francesca formalises that presence: it is not just her as an activist researcher, but the university that is making its presence felt.This is where the two strands begin to unfold.The first strand: at least one day a week at San Siro, with the research group, students, and relationships being built with residents and associations. Relational work that measures time according to criteria other than those of immediate academic productivity. Alliances that seem fragile because they are not formalised, yet are solid because they are founded on mutual trust.The second strand: since 2016, Francesca has been the Rector’s delegate for social responsibility. However, since 2014, she has been working with Vice-Rector Balducci to jointly devise a public engagement program for Politecnico.The initial ‘Mapping San Siro’ project started in 2019 and eventually evolved into ‘Off Campus San Siro’: a university pilot scheme. No longer 30 but 130 square metres. A pilot initiative that, over three years, gave rise to three further Off Campus sites: at the market in Via Padova, at the San Vittore prison, and in a farmhouse near Corvetto. Four hubs in total, and with Rector Donatella Sciuto, from 2025, a dedicated budget and a scientific committee to define the program’s plan and prospects. In 2022, the Ambrogino d’Oro: the citizenship merit award by the City of Milan.However, this journey has been a series of incremental steps, stumbles, and procedural innovations that sometimes require great effort. Agreements are exchanged back and forth a thousand times before being formalised. And the procedures for regulating informal relationships are difficult to understand and implement for an administration accustomed to operating in other contexts.Francesca has established formal agreements with a wide range of organisations – from voluntary associations to Bocconi University, from the Lombardy Region to small neighbourhood groups. Most of these agreements are approved by the Academic Senate. This is a way of providing institutional recognition, even to the smallest organisations. She has worked extensively with technical and administrative staff – initially with Ida Castelnuovo in particular, and later with the Innovation and Social Responsibility Service, which oversees the programme – to develop new procedures, even if simply to ensure that Off Campus spaces can access the Polytechnic’s Wi-Fi or be treated as university libraries.She has worked on various types of working groups: project groups for co-design, advocacy groups where the university gives a voice to those who are not normally invited to institutional discussions, and less formalised alliances based on trust, which may seem fragile but whose strength lies in the quality and value of the relationships. In all these cases, the theme is reciprocity; the collaborative dimension enriches the university first and foremost.The challenge remains: balancing institutional innovation with meaningful relationships and mutual trust with local communities. With the budget come KPIs and formalised evaluation metrics. Universities tend to highlight only successes; however, these projects are also fraught with setbacks and failures.This path risks slowing down personal careers. One writes less when cultivating relationships and dedicating time – according to the criteria of non-immediate scientific productivity – to building with others. It was not a solitary endeavour. It was a collective one. Four people took to the stage at the Ambrogino d’Oro award ceremony: Francesca, Davide Fassi, Andrea di Franco and Ida Castelnuovo. Francesca coordinates the Curalab research workshop, based at Off Campus San Siro, alongside anthropologist Paolo Grassi. Bocconi, Bicocca, and the University of Milan also have permanent activities at Off Campus today. Not a model of the lone hero, but a configuration of meaningful relationships that opens up possibilities.Francesca has cultivated a profound sense of the university as a public institution called upon to tackle the most difficult social challenges. In her experience, injustice often has the flavour of everyday life for many, and it is at this level – at the street level – that she has chosen to position herself. A university that stands alongside the city’s most vulnerable ones, even carrying their voice into other contexts: the tables of the most powerful. Collective dimensions and self-reflection are antidotes to burnout. Students are taking a fresh look at things. Alliances offer protection without building armour. And the university does not expect to solve everything but to make a realistic and concrete contribution through its ability to generate knowledge, understanding, and the search for solutions.Francesca has balanced the roles of a mother, citizen, and researcher.
She walked along two tracks. The tracks unfold, run parallel, and head in the direction of change.
Francesca Cognetti’s key dates
2013 · Mapping San Siro workshop with architecture students. Social and urban mapping of the neighbourhood, with Beatrice De Carli, Ferdinando Fava, Liliana Padovani and Anna Delera.
2014 · Self-recovery of a 30 m² space in San Siro. Politecnico–Aler agreement: a stable university presence in the area. Work with Maranghi, Ranzini, Solazzi and Orsenigo.
2016 · Rector's delegate for Social Responsibility in the Territory. Experiments on the role of the university in urban challenges.
2018 · Opening of Off Campus San Siro, the programme's first space. Innovative teaching, responsible research and co-design for social impact.
2020 · Founding member of the APEnet Committee. Promotion of public engagement across universities and research institutions.
2022 · Off Campus Politecnico is awarded the Ambrogino d'Oro prize.
2023 · Rector’s delegate for the Off Campus Programme.
2024 · Curalab founded with Paolo Grassi. Action research on urban marginalisation at local and global scale.
2025 · Off Campus formalised as a University Programme for proximity innovation. Four territorial hubs, three-year plan.