In the very center of Lyon, in the south of the peninsula formed by the confluence of two rivers - the Rhone and the Saone, the construction of the first part of the huge new Confluence area is coming to an end. The idea of creating this area, strategic and political, came from the current mayor of Lyon, Gerard Colombes, 12 years ago. An advertising campaign was carried out on a grand scale, then - competitions among architects and developers, and finally, 41 hectares of the future district was "seeded" with dozens of cranes. The noisy and dusty cloud of construction projects lasted for many months, and finally, almost all the cranes left, leaving behind new, still half-empty buildings from the stars of architecture and just respectable architects and a strange silence. The project is truly gigantic. There is also the Palace of Regional Meetings from Portzampark, and a huge Entertainment Center with cinema halls and a supermarket from Jean-Paul Viguier, as well as exhibition galleries, restaurants, a hotel, office premises signed by such names as Jakob + MacFarlane, Wilmott, Odile Dec, Rudy Richotti … New housing (about 130,000 sq. M.) Is only one third of the total area built in the first part of the project. In total, the city authorities counted on 400,000 square meters, as well as 3,000 new residents and 12,000 new jobs.
Construction of the new natural science museum from COOP HIMMELB (L) AU is not yet completed, but is progressing very quickly, making up for months of crisis downtime. Every time I drive past it on the author, I peer into the massive, cast-in-place concrete pillars above the railing, while unsuccessfully trying to find similarities with the light, almost ephemeral glittering building from the winning perspective …
The urban planning project of the Confluence district is innovative, since it is as environmentally friendly as possible: pedestrian zones for walking and moving are privileged, a tram line has been built, and 60 percent of the total area of the project is occupied by green spaces. In some places, the topsoil has been cleaned up as it has been contaminated with heavy metals and toxins from the industrial past of this area of the city of Lyon. 80 percent of the energy needs of new buildings are covered by passive energy. The Sona embankment has been cleaned up and re-equipped beyond recognition, an artificial arm - "Water Square" has been dug up to the river for boat trips. The railway that connects the center of Lyon with the southern suburbs, which for centuries passes through the middle of the Confluence area, has been converted into a "tram-train" - a tram-train that runs quietly and almost does not pollute the environment.
Another interesting aspect: the projects were created in close discussion with the residents of the future area and neighbors. (Between us, this is a real horror for an architect - after all, the "wishes" of people can be very intense and concern both, say, an additional bridge across the river, and the colors of future wallpaper, besides, residents often disagree with each other - go try to sort it all out!).
… “Everything is new, everything is beautiful!”, As the French say. But so far this splendor is empty - there are not enough people on the new streets, liquid shadows from new small trees do not protect from the 35-degree heat of this summer, several expensive restaurants that hastened to "score" profitable places languish in anticipation of the opening of the shopping center and the Palace of Regions, and new settlers, slowly settling in new quarters because of the huge prices for Lyon (about 6 thousand euros per 1 square meter), run to buy bread in the neighboring, modest working-class district of Saint Blandina. An architect I know told me that a neighborhood needs 10 years to start living. Time has gone!
In the meantime, pieces of abandoned concrete ruins and weedy wastelands still peep here and there because of the catchy architecture, like real life from behind the stage curtains, and remind us that even wastelands have a history.
What happened here before?
At the very beginning of its formation by the Romans, in ancient times, Lyon occupied only the hills on the western bank of the Saone, but from the 11th century the city began to move to the peninsula between two rivers, and then moved further - to the marshy plains to the East of the Rhone. The southernmost point of the peninsula is called Confluence (Confluence), and if you stand at the very tip of the Peninsula's land, you can see the color border of the waters of the two rivers - long after the confluence, the water remains yellow on the right - this is the water of the Sona, and on the left - the blue water of the Rhone. This place is the emblem of Lyon.
At the same time, the development of this patch of land lasted longer than the conquest of America.
Each district of Lyon characterizes the historical period in which it was built. Didier Rippeland, Chief Architect of the Historic Monuments of Lyon, described it this way: “In other European cities, the city center was often destroyed and rebuilt, always in about the same place. Lyon, on the contrary, harmoniously moved apart from the hills to the rivers and further to the East. In this city epochs do not overlap one another - they coexist."
The peninsula is characterized mainly by the flourishing of the bourgeoisie of the 18th-19th centuries. This area remains today one of the most expensive and prestigious. But its southern part, until recently, was, as it were, cut off - there was a clear border between the stable wealth of the bourgeois region and the abandoned Confluence area. The confluence of rivers for many centuries remained a group of swampy islets, and projects related to the gradual movement to the south and drainage of swamps were each time accepted with skepticism, were given with difficulty or were not implemented at all.
In the 18th century, Antoine-Michel Perrache proposed a project for the creation of residential areas in the southern swampy zone of Confluence. They laughed at him, saying: "It's like a bricklayer's apprentice decided to drain the Mediterranean!" Today, in the cadastre of the area bearing the name of Perrash and located a kilometer north of the present Confluence, one can almost completely recognize the author's drawing.
In the nineteenth century, a competition was announced for the best urban design for Confluence. Hearing about him, one Swiss, the owner of a button factory in his country, decided to invest in real estate. He built two tenement houses at the very tip of Confluence, when there was nothing there at all. He told himself that when the new district grew to his homes, this place on the Rhone embankment, with a beautiful view of the confluence of rivers, would become the most prestigious. But the new district did not reach him - the Swiss went bankrupt, and his houses stood for a hundred years in the vicinity of slaughterhouses, a vegetable base, warehouses, a cargo port, chemical and gas factories … It must be admitted that the Swiss turned out to be not enough, but too much far-sighted - at the beginning of the 21st century, a prestigious district finally emerged here, during the construction of which the houses of the button-house were demolished …
Gerard Colombes can congratulate himself on the completion of the conquest of Confluence, begun several hundred years before him. The city has grown long ago and surrounded this point, which has become a central, strategic one. And the newly built area fits into the policy of returning to Lyon the dynamic image that it had at the time when it was called Lugdunum and was the capital of Roman Gaul and the crossroads of Europe.
But the inhabitants of Lyons are inclined to attribute completely different, less spectacular urban planning transformations to the mayor's successes. For the time being, the Lyon residents are wary of this project, it seems too political and exemplary. But it is worth remembering that the French are picky people, always scolding politicians, and it is quite possible that the new area will quickly fit into the Lyon landscape. In the meantime, preparations begin for the construction of the second stage of Confluence according to the urban planning project from Herzog and De Meuron …
