Meet Lyon's newest neighbourhood: the Confluence, where the Rhône and the Saône meet at Presqu'île’s southern tip. This former industrial wasteland has recently been brought back to life by a multimillion-euro urban renewal project, recognized for its cutting-edge, environmentally sustainable design by the French government, the European Commission and the WWF.
In Phase One of the project, focused on the Saône riverbanks, dozens of architecturally audacious, energy-efficient buildings have sprung up, including the bizarre orange, Swiss-cheese-like office building Le Cube Orange , its sister Le Cube Vert and the Pôle de Commerces et de Loisirs Confluence , an enormous shopping complex with an innovative, two-hectare, transparent air-cushion roof. Phase One has also seen the whimsical remodelling of existing buildings, including the Pavillon des Douanes (customs house), whose balconies are now surmounted by pairs of giant orange frogs, and La Sucrerie , a converted 1930s sugar warehouse that houses a nightclub on its top floor and hosts art exhibits during Lyon's Biennale d'Art Contemporain. Phase One's crowning attraction is the ambitious science-and-humanities museum, Musée des Confluences , housed in a futuristic steel-and-glass crystal at the meeting of the two rivers.
Phase Two of the Confluence project, to be initiated in 2015 by Swiss architects Herzog and de Meuron (of Tate Modern and Beijing Olympic Stadium fame), will make the new neighbourhood more liveable, adding a substantial residential and market district and linking the Confluence to the rest of Lyon with three new bridges, including the pedestrian-bike corridor La Transversale , which will span both the Rhône and the Saône.
