The luxurious Excelsior Milano shopping center is housed in a former cinema building adjacent to the Galleria del Corso shopping arcade. The client of the project, Gruppo Coin, initially asked Nouvel to make only a new facade, but the architect considered it impossible to design the exterior without touching the interior, and completely reconstructed the building. As a result, in the historic center, not far from the Duomo, a state-of-the-art 4,000 m2 7-storey department store has emerged.
The relationship between the old neoclassical structure of the building and the new design content Jean Nouvel built on the play of reflections. The gigantic arch of the lobby and three tiers of shop windows are closed with horizontal blinds that hide the media screens behind them. Sharp aluminum strips are set at a slight angle to blur the footage, creating the feeling of images sliding outside the car window. Visitors moving along the escalators become part of this optical illusion together with advertising posters outside.
Inside, the architect covered the walls with reflective paints, which "come to life" with multi-colored reflections from media screens. Seven floors seem to be separated from the perimeter of the walls and freely "float" in space in a shell of media images
and the many balconies evoke the image of an old cinema with boxes and tiers of balconies.
The stream of video images following the escalators takes visitors to the first 2 floors of groceries, restaurants and bistros, carries them through several storeys of boutiques and lifts them to the culmination of the consumer process - luxury accessories stores.
N. K.
