The shopping center is located at the foot of the Generali tower, also by Zaha Hadid Architects: this skyscraper, like the neighboring ones - designed by Arata Isozaki and Daniel Libeskind - overlooks Tre Torri Square - the "three towers". Under it, more precisely, directly under the shopping center, is the station of the same name on the new metro line.
The CityLife quarter on the former site of the Milan exhibition center is one of the largest construction projects in Europe (366 thousand m2); In addition to the aforementioned office skyscrapers (so far only the Isozaki building has been commissioned) and the shopping center, there are two residential complexes - Libeskinda and ZHA, as well as a park with an area of about 17 hectares, on which Katherine Gustafson and other prominent landscape architects worked. Upon completion of construction, a thousand people will live in the quarter, and 10,000 people will work.
The shopping center with a total area of 32 thousand m2 is designed for 7 million visitors a year after 2020, when CityLife will be fully operational. It is expected to cover an area with 700,000 people living and working there.
Composite materials based on bamboo are widely used in the interior: floor and ceiling coverings, supports, cafe counters are made of them. If solid panels were selected for the floor and columns, then the ceilings are covered with slots. All of these interior components are manufactured using computer controlled machines. Nice to the touch, bamboo is very resistant to wear and tear, and also reproduces quickly, and therefore even its active felling does not harm the environment.
