Photograph by Hufton + Crow
Generali Tower - Shopping Centre (Podium Interior - lower ground floor)
Milan, Italy
2004 - 2017
City Life Consortium
CityLife Shopping District
Photograph by Hufton + Crow
Generali Tower - Shopping Centre (Podium Interior - lower ground floor)
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.
The 32,000m2 shopping district will welcome seven million visitors each year when the CityLife redevelopment fully completes in 2020. 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.
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 that will be occupied in 2018 by the insurer’s 3,000 staff based in Milan.
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.
Photograph by Hufton + Crow
Generali Tower - Shopping Centre (Podium Interior - lower ground floor)
Bamboo flooring, ceiling and columns welcome visitors to the shopping district’s interior. Selected for its warmth and tactility, engineered bamboo is extremely durable and can be procured in a large quantity from sustainable sources.
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.
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.
Photograph by Hufton + Crow
City Life Milano Residential Complex
CityLife masterplan
CityLife Shopping District is within the CityLife masterplan that has redeveloped Milan’s abandoned trade fair grounds following the fair’s relocation to Rho Pero in 2005. Explore our other projects within the CityLife Materplan
The 90-acre CityLife redevelopment opens Milan’s old trade fair grounds to year-round civic use and integrates the new public park with Milan’s most extensive pedestrian zone, creating the largest new public space in the city in more than 120 years.
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).
Retail
From flagship stores in New York and Tokyo to the heart of a major fashion brand’s corporate headquarters in China, discover our latest retail showrooms.
Located in Kodra e Diellit, the fastest-growing district of Tirana, the Nest and Cascades are new additions to the community. Renowned for its colourful post-communist architecture and vibrant café culture, Tirana is the capital of Albania with almost one million residents living within its greater metropolitan region. Progressing rapidly towards European Union membership, the Albanian economy is predicted to grow significantly in the coming years—with Tirana as the centre of its growth.
Courtesy of Marisfrolg
Located at the heart of Marisfrolg Fashion Group’s Shenzhen campus, the 2,900m² Marisfrolg Showroom interiors by ZHA are informed by the rich textiles, timeless design and precision tailoring embodied within the group’s nine unique labels.
Photograph by Virgile Simon Bertrand
Our concept echoes the brand’s minimalism and use of fixed points, folds, pleats and cut outs. Space in the store is defined not in terms of rooms but as a passage through which customers circulate. Furniture, sculpture, textures and colours on both store floors explore the interplay between male and female.
Photograph by Jacopo Spilimbergo
Milan Store, September 2013
The 3,000-square-foot Milan flagship store is a playful dialogue of geometries; creating a rhythm of folds and recesses that have been shaped further by functional and ergonomic considerations. The store’s central display units have been designed to showcase the Stuart Weitman collection and also provide seating.
Photograph by Paul Warchol
Il Makiage has launched a collection with a pavilion at 490 Broadway by ZHA that is informed by the label’s characteristically bold graphic identity.
Photograph by Hufton + Crow
Four continuous, flowing volumes coalesce to create an internal world of continuous open spaces within Galaxy Soho – a new office, retail entertainment complex devoid of corners or abrupt transitions – a re-inventing of the classical Chinese courtyard which generates an immersive, enveloping experience at the heart of Beijing.
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