BIG has unveiled visuals of The Portico that will mark the entrance to CityLife, a district in Milan that has buildings designed by Zaha Hadid, Daniel Libeskind and Arata Isozaki.
Distinguished by its giant sweeping rooftop, The Portico will fill the final two plots of the residential and commercial development that is located on the site of the Italian city's former trade fair grounds.

BIG was commissioned to design a fourth tower for CityLife, but instead proposed two small buildings joined by a giant, curved canopy that is designed to act as an "urban-scale portico".
The architecture studio designed the building to provide the district with public space that will "complete" the development.

"The site forms a missing link between the three iconic towers in the City Life masterplan and the surrounding city," explained Andreas Klok Pedersen, partner at BIG. "Instead of creating a fourth tower on the site, we started quite early in the process to look into lower perimeter blocks that could become a more human-scale entrance into the area," he told Dezeen.
"The resulting buildings are neither high rise or low rise, but a hybrid between the two. The canopy frames and completes the existing skyline rather than competing with it."

The site of The Portico is currently divided into two distinct plots by a large driveway and taxi rank that extends between them.
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