CityLife is located on the former site of Fiera Milano. The fairs primary axis, called Domodossola Axis, was the main pedestrian walkway to the pavilions dividing the site diagonally between Largo Domodossola and Piazza Amendola. This axis is maintained in the CityLife masterplan as a visual connection and further enhanced by the underground metro. BIGs site acts as an entryway to the axis, split in two parts.
During the summer, the inclined roof surface of the winter bath functions as an amphitheater facing the pools as well as the park, increasing the connection between the bath and Islands Brygge. Throughout the winter the active zone is mainly under the lifted deck, where the winter bath facilities are placed facing southwest. During the dark months, the winter bath brings life to the area and can be seen as a lantern from both Islands Brygge and Kalvebod Brygge.
The equilateral triangular footprint creates a building with no ends, only three faces perceived as free standing two-dimensional surfaces. The conference center and lobby is sunken into the landscape, leaving the hotel building in a small oasis of Swedish forest in an airport city of parking lots and infrastructure. In the center of the building a series of executive meeting rooms hang inside a hexagonal atrium, creating a kaleidoscopic view from the lobby to the sky.
Beneath the slopes, whirring furnaces, steam, and turbines convert , tons of waste annually into enough clean energy to deliver electricity and district heating for , homes. The power plants infrastructure, from ventilation shafts to air-intakes, helps create the varied topography of a mountain; a man-made landscape created in the encounter between the needs from below and the desires from above.
Like Astana, which is located in the heart of the Kazakh mainland, the library would be integrated into the heart of a recreated Kazakh landscape. The park around the library is designed like a living library of trees, plants, minerals and rocks allowing visitors to experience a cross section of Kazakhstan’s natural landscape, and personally experience the capital’s transition across the country from Almaty to Astana.