Covering an area of about 150 hectares, Confluence is comparable to such sensational projects as Rive Gauche in Paris (130 hectares) and Hafen-City in Hamburg (157 hectares), although it is inferior to Euromediterrannée in Marseille (480 hectares).
The Confluence area is the southern part of the Lyon peninsula, formed by the beds of the Saone and Rhone rivers. From the north, the territory is limited by the railway tracks of the Perrache station, and from the other sides by the riverbeds that merge to the south. The merger (in French Confluence) gave the name to the project.
By the standards of the two thousand year history of Lyon, the area is quite young: it is a little more than two centuries old. As early as the 18th century, the territory stretching south of the subsequently built Perrache station did not exist as such: it was an archipelago of swampy islands. With the growth of the city, there was a need for its drainage and reclamation. The initiator was the local engineer and sculptor Antoine Eugène Perrache, who presented his design project back in 1766. However, his idea was destined to be realized much later, after the Napoleonic wars, when the city began to experience a shortage of territories to locate new industries.
Further development of the area was quite typical: first, the port's docks were equipped, then a railway was built (one of the first in France), factories, slaughterhouses, warehouses, housing for workers, a prison were built … The laying of another railway line across the peninsula and the construction of the Perrache station formed the natural border of the district, isolating it from the rest of the city for a long time. Over the years, the functional composition of the territory has changed, but its industrial-marginal and, as a consequence, unsuccessful character remained until recently.
In the 1960s, the then Mayor of Lyon, Louis Pradel, expressed his intention to create a new business center here in the image of La Défense. However, another place was found for him: behind the Rhone, in the Part-Dieu area, which corresponded to the then plans for the development of the agglomeration and its center in an eastern direction. In Confluence, they built a large wholesale food base (a smaller version of the market in the Paris suburb of Rangis), and a broadband motorway, which is a segment of the Paris-Marseille national highway, was launched along the access roads of the Perrache station and the Rhone embankment.
Only in the mid-1990s, when Lyon entered another cycle of construction activity, the area again found itself in the center of attention of the authorities, who launched a project for its radical transformation. Lyon Mayor Raymond Barre outlined a goal: to double the area of the city-wide center at the expense of Confluence. In 1997, an international competition was held for the planning idea; the victory was won by Oriol Boigas (chief architect of Barcelona in 1980–84), Thierry Melo and Catherine Mosbach. Two years later, the team presented a master plan for the reconstruction of the area, designed for 30 years and assuming a step-by-step implementation.
One of the main goals of the Boigas group's plan was to bring the area out of isolation, for which they proposed a whole range of measures. The motorway along the Rhone was transformed into a boulevard with a much more gentle traffic, while the transit started to bypass Lyon. The Perrache station would undergo reconstruction, with the accompanying liquidation of the adjacent brutal interchange complex (TPU) of the 1970s and the restoration of the Cours Verdun boulevard destroyed during its construction. The railway line departing from the station in the southern direction was planned to run along the viaduct to ensure the connectivity of the western and eastern quarters of the district.
In 2001, the city's administration changed, and the newly elected mayor, Gerard Colombes, scrapped his predecessor's project, inviting planner François Grether and landscape architect Michel Devigne to draft a new one. Grether has worked for the Paris planning office APUR for over twenty years, becoming one of its leading experts. In this capacity, he took an active part in the reconstruction of the eastern districts of Paris, in particular, the preparation of such large and famous projects as the Parc de la Villette and the Paris Rive Gauche.
The plan of Grether and Devin turned out to be more pragmatic: from the most difficult projects in implementation, namely the reconstruction of the Rhone embankment and the transport hub of the Perrache station with the adjacent area, had to be, if not completely abandoned, then postponed until better times. However, in general, the ideology of the transformations remained the same: the deanclavization of the area through the construction of four bridges (one across the Sona and three across the Rhone) to ensure communication with the rest of the city, the fragmentation of the territory into relatively small quarters, multifunctionality, mid-rise development and active … dispersed gardening. In addition, Grether and Devin had to take into account the decision made shortly before this to build a peninsula on the arrow.
Confluence Museum by Coop Himmelb (l) au.
The territory of the district was divided into four sectors. The two northern ones (the Perrache station and the neighborhoods around the Church of St. Blandin) assumed limited reconstruction, with the preservation of most of the predominantly residential development. As for the two southern ones, occupied exclusively by industrial, communal storage facilities and the railway, they had to be almost completely transformed. Both of the latter received the status of ZAC ("zones of coordinated planning"), and their reconstruction was supposed to be carried out in turn.
The first, south-western sector, with a total area of 41 hectares, encompassed the areas of the Rambeau cargo port on the Sona River and the railway freight station. Its transformation was marked by the participation of many famous or simply outstanding architects (for more details, see
material by Elena Tesson on Archi.ru), which ensured environmental diversity and attracted everyone's attention to the project. The work, which began in 2003, is scheduled to be completed in 2018. In the course of the project, the planning team that coordinated it changed: the authority of Greter was transferred to Gerard Penot and his colleagues from the Atelier Ruelle bureau.
To implement the project, the authorities of Greater Lyon created a management company in the form of a state joint stock company SPLA (Société publique locale d'aménagement) Lyon Confluence, which is headed by the mayor of the city.
In 2009, Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron were invited to develop the concept for the southeast sector (second phase of Confluence). It was they, in collaboration with Michel Devin, who were empowered to coordinate the spatial reorganization of the territory with the right to implement projects (unlike the Rive Gauche project, where planners did not build anything).
The main area of the sector (with a total area of 35 hectares) is occupied by a wholesale food base, part of which it was decided to keep and integrate into new buildings. For example, one of the reconstructed buildings housed
Confluence School of Architecture, founded and led by Odile Deck.
Unlike the first phase, which did not involve multi-storey buildings, the plan of the Swiss architects provides for the construction of not only low- (3 floors) and mid-rise (6-8 floors) buildings, but also high-rise buildings (10-18 floors). Low-rise buildings correspond to the height of the preserved structures of the wholesale market, medium-sized ones - to the historical buildings of the city, and multi-storey ones - reduce the building spot, freeing up space for landscaping and providing panoramic views.
The northern and southern parts of the sector should differ in the nature of the layout. The northern one, adjacent to the residential development around the Church of St. Blandin, is planned in the form of compact perimeter blocks, separated by a frequent street network.
The southern one, triangular in shape, will look completely different. Several large warehouse buildings have survived here, which are supposed to be redesigned for functions related to creative and innovative activities, and the space between them and new objects will be landscaped. The result should be something like a business park (in the original sense of this phrase) or a campus.
At the moment, the fate of the section of the railway between Boulevard Charlemagne and the development of the Sona pedestrian embankment, in the past the territory of the port of Rambeau, remains unclear. According to the initial plans, a park should be set up at this site, but it is possible that the program will change and the site will be built up.
Even less certain are the prospects for the two towers proposed for construction at the intersection of Boulevard Charlemagne, the main meridional artery of the region, with the as yet non-existing transverse route. The construction of skyscrapers in Lyon (at least in this part of the city) is dictated not so much by the demands of the market as by image considerations, and it may happen that common sense will force us to reconsider these ambitious plans.
Despite the fact that by now the project has not been fully implemented, it can be assessed as successful. Firstly, the middle of the road has been passed, and this is a good indicator, given that the reconstruction of a huge territory does not take place simultaneously, but step by step, and the first phase is completely completed. Secondly, the project has caused significant international resonance, it is strongly associated with Lyon and to a large extent shapes its image. Thirdly, the dysfunctional suburban area has turned into a new urban center with a high-quality and varied environment, complementing the existing ones. Over the past few years, Confluence has attracted new residents, not to mention many visitors.
At the same time, problems remain that have not yet been resolved and will remain on the agenda in the coming years. Confluence today is an area with a fairly clear social segregation. The southern, new, part is a rather expensive area where wealthy people can afford to live. This is understandable, given the proximity to the historic center and green embankments. At the same time, the old, northern part (quarters near the Perrache station and around the Church of Saint-Blandin) is an area of old social housing. Blurring this border of inequality, along with the reconstruction of large transport facilities ("unleashing" the station TPU, the transformation of the highway along the Rhone) is one of the main tasks of the coming years.
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Information about the project:
Total area of Confluence district: 150 hectares
Total area of the reconstructed territory: 70 hectares
Total area of the real estate being created: 1,000,000 sq. m.
– Phase 1
Total area of the territory: 41 hectares, including open public spaces: 22.5 ha
Total useful area of the new property: 400,000 sq. m.
Phase 2
Total area of the territory: 35 hectares
Total useful area of the new property: 420,000 sq. m.
Area adjacent to Perrache train station (including prisons)
Total area of the territory: 5 hectares
Total useful area of the new property: 126,000 sq. m.
Number of residents
Currently: 7000
At the end of Phase 1: 10500
Upon completion of the entire project: 16,000
Number of places of employment:
Currently: 7000
At the end of Phase 1: 14000
Upon completion of the entire project: 25,000
