CityLife Park
Milan, Italy | 2009-2011 | Concept and detailed design of Phase 1
‘A Park between the Mountains and the Plain’, CityLife Milan is a new eco-sustainable, twenty-first century park. With a total surface area of 16.8ha, it is one of the largest regeneration schemes in Milan’s recent history. Gustafson Porter + Bowman’s green masterplan for the park references and incorporates major characteristics of the city and its surroundings, connecting it to its wider urban context and making it accessible to all.
The use of considered plant choices (Lombardy flora) and new woodland areas have been carefully curated to encourage biodiversity and enrich Milan’s ecological corridor. While the ground plane has been moulded into attractive sculptural ‘pleats’ that shape, connect and define the development, intensifying towards its high-rise centre.
To the North, the Giardino delle Prealpi, the Anfiteatro, the Area per gli Eventi and an area of pines and oaks, create a large woodland zone, offering a space for events, festivals, concerts, temporary gardens, exhibitions, and artistic installations. To the South, the Bosco di Faggi, Piazza dei Fontanili, Giardino di Pianura, the maple plantation, and Piazza del Mercato, are spaces for social interaction, walks and contemplation. The historic fountain at the Piazzale Giulio Cesare has also been restored and reframed in the contemporary landscape of Citylife.
“Our aim was that the park must provide its own calm integrity, with simple, bold landscaped spaces that create their own contexts within the three dimensional urban environment that surrounds them.
The metaphor of “pleating” to create sculptural form is the operative element used to shape, connect, and define the CityLife site on the former Fiera grounds.”
