Lyon Confluence, an elongated peninsula bent by the Saone and Rhone rivers, is rapidly transforming from an industrial port area into a cultural, residential and business cluster that will double the area of the city center, adding 150 hectares to it. New and refurbished buildings are being erected by creators such as MVRDV, Massimiliano Fuksas and Coop Himmelb (l) au. Recently, a host of "star" buildings have been replenished with the GL Events headquarters building designed by Odile Decck.
The building consists of two rectangular volumes, rotated relative to each other by 86 °: the upper block rests on two huge intersecting beams and hangs over the lower volume, forming a 28-meter cantilever. The upper, "cantilever" four floors contain offices, the lower two - exhibition spaces facing the water.
Four black-and-white photographs by the artist Felice Varini are applied to the four sides of the glass façade; on them - that part of the landscape, which is obscured by the new building: the perspective of the river, the road stretching into the distance, bridges, facades of houses, vertical cranes. These photographs captured the current moment, and now, through the massive parallelepiped hanging over the ground, the entire landscape seems to be visible. However, the surrounding buildings are changing day by day, and the facade, having ceased to reflect reality, will become a memory of the place: transparency will be replaced by an echo. The same idea of mobility and variability is embedded in the non-orthogonal arrangement of the main volumes. “We didn’t want a completely static building,” says project manager Peter Baalman. "When you walk around the bay, the cranes are constantly moving - and the play of volumes reflects this movement."
The high glass atrium - the compositional center of the building - is supported by three massive steel pylons, in which stairs and elevators are located: from there the horizontal lines of the "air" floors-passages between the offices diverge. This vertical space culminates in a dense grid of metal structures of enormous scale: 5-meter trusses diagonally block the atrium and flank the perimeter, acting as a huge rectangular beam from which the floors below are suspended.
The implementation of the project was complicated by fire safety requirements: according to the regulations, offices should not go directly to the staircase and elevator node - to the open space of the atrium, but the architects have developed a number of measures to bring their idea to life, including glass "skirts" on each floor, preventing the spread of smoke.
Behind the external simplicity lies a sophisticated filling: for example, in the construction of facades, the air gap between the double internal glazing and the external one is used in winter to heat the incoming air, and in summer, huge black and white images applied to the outer layer help to avoid the glare effect of the glare surface. This photographic layer also plays the role of a kind of veil: from the inside, what is happening outside is clearly visible, while the gaze directed from the street is scattered.
The black carpet in the interior sets off the silvery steel structures, the light is reflected from the glass partitions and transparent balustrades, filling the space of the atrium. And, as usual in the works of Odile Decck, the black color is complemented by red furniture and red hemming of the console hanging over the passers-by.
