CityLife

It is the name of the project that replaced the historic Milan Fair, in operation since 1906, a pedestrianised area that is the largest in the city, five residential blocks, three office towers, a series of buildings dedicated to services, culture and entertainment, and a park. The result of a 2004 project signed by three masters of contemporary architecture: Zaha Hadid, Arata Isozaki and Daniel Libeskind. To each of these three towers that soar, gigantic, the Milanese have attached the following nicknames: \'Straight\' for the 220-metre high tower designed by Isozaki, \'Crooked\' for the 170-metre tower proposed by Hadid, and \'Curved\' for the 150-metre Libeskind tower, thought to be inspired by the drawings of Leonardo da Vinci\'s never-realised project for the Duomo and the curved lines of Michelangelo\'s Pietà Rondanini, today at the Sforzesco Castle.

But CityLife is not just these towers. Alongside a series of buildings dedicated to services, culture and entertainment, remarkable, and even photographable, are a series of large blocks of apartments (obviously class A energy certification and with home automation equipment) always designed by Hadid and Libeskind, which rise from the over-165-thousand-square-metre park, guaranteeing the liveability of the complex.

Site-specific works of art are distributed here, including a mural almost one hundred and twenty metres long next to the MiCo conference centre. From the latter, a linear series of large exhibition buildings began to be added to the previous exhibition centre by 1997 on a project by Mario Bellini: they stand where Alfa Romeo had its historic car factories in Portello, and constitute the urban centre of the Fair today, better known as the Milan City Fair.