Confluence: The New City on the Water

Orange and Green Cubes

Two bold office blocks on quai Rambaud: Jakob + MacFarlane's Orange Cube and the green Euronews headquarters, punched through with two eye-shaped openings.

You're looking at two of the boldest office blocks on quai Rambaud. The orange one, the Cube Orange, came first: Jakob + MacFarlane finished it in 2011, and its perforated tangerine skin makes the whole corner glow. The green block just behind it is the world headquarters of the news channel Euronews. It was designed at the same time, for the same 2005 competition, but the firm only handed it over in 2015.

The artist Fabrice Hyber worked on the facade with them. Its acid green colour nods to the Saône flowing right beside you, and the surface is patterned like a wave, the kind of wave that carries a TV signal. Look for the two big conical holes punched through the building. The architects call them eyes, and they bring air and daylight deep into the newsroom floors.

About 800 people work here.

Pôle de commerces et de loisirs Confluence

The district's low, long shopping and leisure centre on rue Paul Montrochet, the everyday commercial heart of the new neighborhood.

This is the commercial heart of the Confluence district. The building is low and long, and it holds most of the neighbourhood's everyday shopping under one roof. It sits beside the darse, so the same promenade that runs past shops also opens onto water. What matters here is what the building replaced.

Until the 1990s, this whole strip was a working port and industrial land, with warehouses and rail sidings running down to the Saône. Lyon cleared it and rebuilt the area as a mixed neighbourhood of homes, offices and shops. Step out toward the water and you'll see the basin that used to be part of that port.