In the heart of Milan
It is tall, attractive, swarming with events. It has a knack for business and communication.
It loves sports and nature, art and culture.
It is very busy, not only at work, but also as a champion of sustainability and respect for nature. Its green heart is so big that they call it Milan’s third lung.
It loves to have fun, hang out at clubs, cafés, and restaurants. It is a shopping addict. It loves to inquire and learn. It believes in new media as amplifiers and aggregators of ideas and creativity.
It is fascinated by the technology pervading it with its dizzying heights and bold shapes, but when its magnolias blossom in springtime, it stops its watch, closes its eyes, and lets itself go to the magic of ancient scents.
It is a hive of talent, which its creative nature magnetizes and attracts from all over the world even before it was born, when the buzz was already about it and its majestic open-air rebirth.
It is strong, industrious, tireless, and Milanese. Its flexibility is limitless, because its boundaries are redrawn by its guests and visitors every day, as they give new forms to the urban fabric, adapting it to the demands of individuals as members of a high-impact community.
Everybody wants it, even because of its curves, often bold, brave, and original.
Forms to admire, to photograph with your smiling eyes. Shapes to learn by heart and make your own, to improve your life and work.
Those who come across it, experience it, or see it from far away crave to belong to it. Forever, or once in a while, before an ethnic dish or a good cocktail.
They would like to run with it in the Library of Trees, or down the longest pedestrian path in Milan. They would like to admire its architectures pointing towards the sky. Lose themselves among the most colourful flowers in town. Even just to say “I met her. I love her!”.
Her, Portanuova. She is tall, but never stops growing. She has an immense green heart that beats to rhythm of Milan.
Portanuova and the magic of the unbuilt
The innovative nature of Portanuova does not only lie in those shapes drawn in the air by a few visionary architects who came back from the future.
It lies, instead, in the people-oriented hospitality that those forms conceal. Think about the prettiest and most innovative skyscraper in the world, Bosco Verticale. An architectural expression of cutting-edge construction solutions, but even sustainability, design, and harmonic integration with the urban fabric. Plus, the home of thousands of butterflies and little birds who find a shelter in its forest of 15,000 trees.
The innovation of Portanuova is a new Humanism, that brings humans and their real demands at the centre of the domus by requalifying a space where they may live, work, and entertain themselves in accordance with quality standards of a height only comparable to that of its dizzying constructions. In order to do this, Portanuova seeks not only record-breaking numbers and big names, but “donates itself” as a place of sharing where the culture of discussion and exchange feeds everyday relationships, whether they occur in the conference room of a tower or on the flowery lawn of BAM park.
Its revolution lies, indeed, in reversing the trend of an architecture focused on buildings, to the detriment of tangible human needs. The promotion of free and unbuilt areas makes them, ironically, spaces of life. Because the beauty of a city also materializes through the unison of aesthetics and “usefulness” of squares, streets, public spaces, and parks.
Portanuova’s lenses thus point towards the need to bring people back to experiencing outdoor settings. A change in perspective that translates to a true cultural transformation: Portanuova is also designed to be crossed and walked in thanks to a continuous pedestrian network, green areas, piazzas, and boardwalks, as the cars “fade away”. Through the use of natural wood and sky-reflecting glass, the outdoor spaces seem to expand and give us a feeling of lightness and freedom. One of the emblems of this new people-oriented architectural vision is Piazza Gae Aulenti: a square you may not only admire, but even listen to, as you hear the gentle sound of its fountain and the voices of the neighbourhood amplified by Egg, the permanent sculpture by Alberto Garutti. This is one more reason why Portanuova is a humane neighbourhood: it is a place for those who have open ears.