Milan’s newest attraction

Compiled by Team IAnD

Photography: Hufton & Crow; courtesy Zaha Hadid Architects

Read Time: 2 mins

©Hufton & Crow

Opened to public a fortnight ago, Milan’s newest attraction, the CityLife Shopping District boasts of the ZHA signature among its other highlights…

Located above Tre Torri station on the M5 line of Milan’s Metro network, CityLife Shopping District integrates a new public park with indoor and outdoor piazzas, food hall, restaurants, cafes, shops and cinema as well as facilities for health and wellbeing.

Spread across 32,000 sq. m., CityLife is one of Europe’s largest redevelopment projects and will include 1,000 new homes, offices for almost 10,000 staff, the new 42-acre park, piazzas and kindergarten. 

©Hufton & Crow

©Hufton & Crow

Defined by the three axes of the city that converge within CityLife, the shopping district’s composition continues the geometries of the connecting 44-storey Generali Tower. These formal geometries are aligned with the city’s axes at street level, but twist incrementally as the tower rises, orientating its higher floors to face the Duomo, Milan’s renowned cathedral at the centre of the city.

©Hufton & Crow

©Hufton & Crow

Selected for its warmth and tactility, engineered bamboo, which is extremely durable anoints the flooring, ceiling and columns, making for warm and welcoming interiors. Assembled with resins under high pressure, engineered bamboo blocks were carved by 5-axis CNC milling and hand-finished to create the shopping district’s interior columns, capitals and counters. The solidity of the bamboo floor and columns meets the louvered bamboo ceiling at the capitals of each column, expressing a unity between the solid and porous surfaces. Two sculptural bamboo café counters follow this fluid design language.

©Hufton & Crow

A unique project, its layout is based on three distinct architectural components: the shopping gallery over three storeys designed by Zaha Hadid Architects; the Tre Torri Piazza designed by One Works; and lastly an open-air pedestrian shopping street designed by the architect Mauro Galantino, a natural and symbolic entranceway to the Shopping District from the residential area and from the rest of the city. 

  

Designed and constructed to reduce energy consumption and emissions, the projects within CityLife have received LEED Gold certification from the US Green Building Council (USGBC).