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Generali Tower, Milan honoured by the Emporis Skyscraper Awards

Considered the world's most renowned prize for high-rise architecture, the Emporis Skyscraper Awards select the winners from buildings with a minimum height of 100 meters that were completed the previous calendar year; the primary criteria being excellence in aesthetic and functional design.

Placing second, Generali Tower was praised by the jury for the highest standards of energy efficiency having already received LEED Platinum certification from the US Green Building Council. The tower has a façade with a double wall system, as well as a sophisticated sunshade that protects the building from direct sunlight on hot days and provides excellent energy output on each floor.

Generali Tower is within CityLife Milan, the largest new civic space and public park in the city since Parco Sempione opened 130 years ago. With 1,000 new homes, offices for more than 11,000 staff, the new 42-acre public park, piazzas and kindergarten, CityLife will welcome more than seven million visitors, workers and residents each year when fully completed in 2020.

Aligned at ground level with three of the city’s primary axes that converge within CityLife, the 170m Generali Tower connects with its surrounding public piazzas and park; the curvilinear geometries of its podium defined by the perceived centripetal forces generated from the staggered intersection of these three city axes.

This vortex of centripetal forces at ground level is transferred vertically through the tower by realigning successive rhomboid-shaped floor plates to twist the tower about its vertical axis. This helical twist reduces incrementally with the height of each floor above street level, giving all floors a fractionally different relationship to the floors above and below.

As the tower rises offering broader views across Milan, the twist orientates the tower's higher floors to the primary southeast axis leading to Bramante’s 15th Century tribune of Santa Maria della Grazie.

The tower will house up to 3,900 employees to meet Generali’s continued growth as one of the world’s largest financial institutions.

Photo by Hufton+Crow

Emporis Website