With its 60,000 square meters surface area and 300 retail outlets, Scalo Milano is Italy’s first luxury retail village. It is part of a new urban cluster, City Hub, which extends training, research and innovation into the largely agricultural area in the southern reaches of the city known as the Parco Agricolo Sud. The retail center is the result of a long and complex procedure that saw investors, architects and well-known brands join forces to make the development happen. Initially designed in the style of numerous European outlets, Scalo Milano was conceived to host the most prestigious design and furniture brands. To ensure the facility reflected the sleek modern lines of the high-end brands destined to occupy the new village, the investors opted for an equally contemporary style for the district itself. Architecture firm Metrogramma proposed a “sartorial” project to “dress” the building skeleton, previously designed by Cotefa.ingegneri&architetti, starting from the approved project and giving it a completely new, contemporary look. The project leaves unchanged both the plan and the skyline of the volumes but provides a flexible modular curtain wall to suit the various retailer requirements. The internal distribution routes are also clothed in colored paving throughout, creating a unified whole. On passing through the outsize entrances and leaving behind the surrounding countryside, the impression is of entering a cave. The factory, icon of Milan’s entrepreneurial flair, is the key architectural reference. The jutting industrial-shed shapes are like the tassels of a tape or ribbon unfurling across the inward-facing façades, each shop front adopting the “sartorial” style best suited to the occupant. The façades are characterized by the regular alternation of opaque, transparent and reflective materials in a series of warm and cold shades. Transparent glazing sits alongside mirror-finish aluminum...
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Toti Semerano
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