DreamLife: CityLife between architecture and urban life quality
I've never lived in Milan. Sadly enough. I don't exactly know if I can put into words the reasons why that city attracts me so much, but I'll try.
Well, I root for Inter FC, so there's that. Then there absolutely is the fact that the public transportation is so well organized that I could move through the entire city even not having my own car. And in the last decades the city of Milan has been able to separate itself from the rest of Italy with its multiculturality, becoming the place to be for everything regarding innovation, culture and design - the proof of that being the gigantic number of international events that take place there, from Fashion Week to the Salone Internazionale del Mobile (I've been a part of Salone del mobile 2017 with Septum).
But of course one of the main reasons would be architecture. There are so many beautiful structures and scenarios that have been built during the centuries, but the things that blow me away are more thant everything else, places like CityLife.
But, to quote Raymond Carver, what are we talking about when we talk about Citylife?
Citylife now is an area that all Milanese people know as one of the most glamorous in the whole city. Ten years ago Citylife was known only to the people working on the urban plan of Milan, basically.
It consists of a 168.000 m² park (the third biggest park in Milan, just behind Parco Sempione and Parco Indro Montanelli in Porta Venezia), some residential complexes, three towers (skyscrapers) for offices, roughly 20.000 m² dedicated to shops and services, around 7.000 parking slots for residents, workers and visitors of the area, with a state of the art bike lane that connects Citylife with Parco Sempione and the Portello area. In addition, there's the Tre Torri metro stop at the very center of the shopping district.
But let's go a little deeper in understanding what's so good about this place.
First of all, the only place that has been restructured and not built by scratch is the place formerly known as Palazzo dello Sport, which is now been baptized Palazzo delle Scintille (Sparks Palace). The original project aims to mantain its structural carachteristic elements such as the facade and the dome, but assimilate them and make them coherent with the rest of the complex that was going to be built next to it.
Then there's the park. With its astounding 170.000 m², it melts extremely well with the other elements that compose the Citylife complex and becomes an important part of the "green lung", so to speak, built in the north-west area of the city. The international contest was announced in 2010 and was won by Gustafson Porter Studio (GB), which teamed up with Melk, One Works and Ove Arup for the project named "Un parco fra le montagne e la pianura" (A park between mountains and plain).
The heart of the complex is of course the shopping district. It is built on three leves, on which there can be found traditional bottegas in which to eat typical Milanese and italian food, but also more famous brands, a movie theater and a lot of other services to welcome families and young people alike. Not to betray the green spirit of the whole place, the area is completely closed to traffic, thanks to the aforementioned underground parking lot. The entire shopping center is designed by architect Zaha Hadid, who seems to be the star of the whole area.
She's the designer of part of the residential complex, too. The CityLife Milano Residential Complex, the part of the whole residential project that she designed, is placed in the south-east side of CityLife, facing the park and via Senofonte-Piazza Giulio Cesare. It is a polifunctional residential complex composed of seven buildings, the heights of which can vary from five to thirteen stories, disposed in two different areas crossed by a garden, covering a surface of 38.000 m². The most The most recognizable features, aestethically and architecturally, are without a doubt the soft shape of the roof and the balconies design, which is round and unusual.
There is also the CityLife Residences, also called Libeskind Residences, a set of eight polifunctional residential buildings occupying an area of 150.000 m² that were designed by the Libeskind Studio. This complex faces the park on one side and via Spinola-Piazza Giulio Cesare on the other, too. These too can be five to thirteen stories buildings, the eight of which can get up until 59 meters.
But the most characteristic element of the whole CityLife area are of course the three huge towers that litteraly watch down on everything else.
The Isozaki Tower - also known as Allianz Tower or "Il dritto" (The Straight One) - was inauguratetd on 14th November 2015 and has been bought by the german assurance company Allianz. This is a skyscraper designed by the japanese architect Arata Isozaki and the italian architect Andrea Maffei; with his 209.2 meters from the ground to the roof and his 249 meters from the ground to the top of the antenna, is the second-highest building in Italy and the sixt-highest in the whole European Union. It is the highest roof in Milan and so, after only eight days from its inauguration, an accurate copy of the Madonnina (a little golden statue of Virgin Mary, originally placed only on the top of the Duomo) has been placed on the top of the roof, being that the highest place in the city. Able to contain up until 3.800 people, its main characteristic is having entire stories illuminated by natural light and, obviously, a panoramic view of the city.
The second tower at the moment present in the district is the Hadid Tower, which is usually called Torre Generali or "Lo storto" (The Twisted One). This building is 44 stories, 177 meters high and is capable of hosting around 3.200 people and a few hundred cars in its reserved underground parking lot. As the names suggests, the tower is owned by Gruppo Generali and was designed by Iraqi architect and designer Zaha Hadid. Its most distinctive feature is the torsion of the building that constantly dimineshes until reaching full verticality. Other noteworthy characteristics of the tower are its high cost-effectiveness and the attention to containing energetic costs. The structural project is also grounbreaking because it is one of the first project that deals with a twisting tower entirely built only using concrete.
The final tower is the Libeskind Tower, called "Il curvo" (The Curved One), which is still to be completed. Clearly designed by the american architect Daniel Libeskind, whose studio designed also part of the residential complex, will be 175 meters high and will host the Milan offices of PricewaterhouseCoopers. The building is conceived as a part of the ideal sphere that wraps up the whole Piazza Tre Torri, and this is emphasized by its iconic curved shape: its vertical prismatic core, as a matter of fact, will partially be out of the contour.
As a result of everything listed above, CityLife has become one of the poshiest areas in Milan even though it surely is not placed near other iconic places of the town or to the center of it. It also a case study on how to requalify a neglected area, fully exploiting its potential in a smart and eco-friendly way, central to shape a new image of an important city like Milan. I love the fact that this is a real alternative to the urban speculation that oftentimes destroys entire suburbs - it has relived the place and built new iconic skyscrapers that dominate the city but organically, not resulting as out of place but enriching the whole skyline. And not only that, but by doing so CityLife has been able to build another green lung in the city. Obviously, this has also contributed to the gentrification of the area, making it a place to look up to, and a number of celebrities have decided to live there.
Look through the lens of my camera
