CityLife and Artline Park, Three Towers stop. In one of Milan‘s most futuristic neighborhoods, on par perhaps with the Porta Nuova area alone, a surprising journey awaits us, where present and past, architecture and nature, history and myth intertwine in a sometimes fairy-tale dimension: a place of inspiration for contemporary creativity, an essential destination for discovering another face of the city of Milan. In the urban transformation area called CityLife, where the buildings of the city’s Fiera Campionaria once stretched, the most impressive protagonists are the three skyscrapers that give their name to the Three Towers stop of the lilac subway and to the square of the same name, the real centerpiece of a redevelopment project that also combines the CityLife Business and Shopping District complex with innovative public services, green areas with an identity that is anything but anonymous, and avant-garde residential buildings: the Hadid and Libeskind residences, resembling splendid cruise ships and housing among the most fashionable in Milan.
The Straight, the Curved and the Crooked., these are the extravagant nicknames that identify the three icons of the CityLife skyline in Milan, masterpieces of three internationally known archistars: they are the tower by the Japanese Arata Isozaki, the sinuous skyscraper signed by the Iraqi Zaha Hadid, and the building with the striking curved surface conceived by the Polish-born architect Daniel Libeskind. At the foot of the three glass and steel giants, green is the dominant color of the neighborhood, strikingly reflected by the reflective surfaces of the three skyscrapers.
And right in CityLife Park – a good 170,000 square meters of public green space! – is home to the visionary ArtLine Milano project, conceived by the City of Milan with the aim of spreadingcontemporary art in the city: a veritable collection of open-air artworks, inserted in the public space and in dialogue with the buildings, history and identity of the neighborhood. The project, born in 2014, is constantly evolving, like the city with which, tirelessly, it interacts, proposing a dense schedule of events and cultural activities capable of involving a rich parterre of Italian and international artists, especially emerging ones.
An embrace between past and present: the sculpture of Philemon and Baucis
Passionate about history and art in Milan? A walk in the ArtLine Milano park, in the shadow of the city’s most modern skyscrapers in the Citylife district, is an opportunity to discover new ones, observing works of art capable of harmonizing contemporary language and traditions of the past, Milanese and otherwise, with each other. This is the case, for example, with the aluminum sculpture entitled. Philemon and Bauci, the work of Milanese artists Valentina Ornaghi and Claudio Prestinari. An installation composed of two metal columns, humanized, joined in an embrace to contemplate the skyscrapers of CityLife. A reminder in an industrial key of the two characters from the Greek myth told by Ovid, the hospitable Philemon and Bauci, the elderly couple rewarded by the god Zeus with the gift of being able to grow old – and die – together.
A theme, that of love, also echoes in another romantic work in ArtLine’s collection: the Beso by the Cuban Wilfredo Prieto, the kiss between two tonalite rocks, exchanged against the backdrop of the Three Towers… a synthetic declination of one of the most famous subjects in the history of art, which here in Milan, with Hayez’sKiss, already found iconic representation at the Pinacoteca di Brera.
Widows and Green Dragons at Citylife, Milan’s fountains in Artline Park
Speaking of Milan and public art, among the most interesting installations in the CityLife park are then the vedovelle designed by artist Serena Vestrucci. Distributed almost everywhere in the neighborhood, the traditional Milanese small fountains, made of green cast iron and called vedovelle for the roar of the water that reminds one of a woman’s cry, have been playfully revisited by replacing the classic dragon-head nozzle with ten sculptures that take the form of other animals: a variegated bestiary, made by bronze casting on a wax model, a repertoire of imaginative shapes.
To be discovered with children-and not only-the installation is a subtle game, capable of greening up one of the city’s symbols by creating a fruitful dialogue between the contemporary and the past through one of the objects that has furnished the entire city since the late 19th century, from the center to the suburbs.
Homage to Milan, from Belloveso to today
Finally, in the selection of works that are part of the ArtLine Milano project, it is impossible not to stop and observe the two installations that most pay homage, right from their titles, to the city of Milan, evoking its legends, history and traditions in a unique way. Thus, the handcrafted silhouettes of Hand and Foot for Milan, created by Berlin-based artist Judith Hopf, stand in oversized proportions in the greenery of CityLife, bringing attention to the princely material of Lombard and Milanese architecture: red brick terracotta, a reminder of the Basilica of Sant’Ambrogio and many other buildings of the city’s past, whose warm materiality contrasts with the surfaces of the surrounding skyscrapers.
And so, even more so, in the Cielo di Belloveso designed by Matteo Rubbi: the granite pavement of Piazza Burri that, in the heart of CityLife, draws the stars that dotted the sky of Milan in the spring of 600 B.C., the year of the legendary founding of Mediolanum by Prince Belloveso, recounted by the Latin author Titus Livius.
Curious to discover new neighborhoods and contemporary art in Milan beyond Citylife and Artline Park? Don’t miss all the initiatives of Neiade Tour & Events
The gallery districts in Milan, between history and contemporary art
