Description

In Lyon, on a central peninsula between the Rhône and Saône rivers, construction of the new urban district “La Confluence” began in 2003, rehabilitating a former port and industrial area. The residential tower Ycone was completed there in 2019 to mark the end of the first development zone.

The “Y” of Ycone fits the silhouette of the fourteen-storey building, whose double façade fans out towards the sky. Only the Perrache railway station separates the 150-hectare site from the old city centre with the Place Bellecour. Launched by the Grand Lyon metropolitan region, Confluence has been developed on the basis of a master plan by Herzog & de Meuron and Michel Desvigne. Where once warehouses dominated the site, a new urban district with attractive public spaces is unfolding.

A shopping mall, office and residential buildings, and the administrative headquarters of the Rhône-Alpes region enliven the neighbourhood. The quarter is divided into two new development zones, Zones d’aménagement concerté (ZAC): ZAC 1 along the Saône and ZAC 2 on the bank of the Rhône. The actual merging of the two rivers at the southern tip of the peninsula is marked by the museum „Confluence“, completed in 2014 to a design of Coop HImmelb(l)au.

The residential tower Ycone forms the southern end of ZAC 1. It is located next to two, somewhat lower office buildings, on a plinth adjacent to a large shopping centre designed by Jean-Paul Viguier. The completion of ZAC 1 was followed by the beginning of work in ZAC 2 in 2015, comprising projects by Herzog & de Meuron, Tatiana Bilbao from Mexico, AFAA and Didier Dalmas Architectes from Lyon, Christian Kerez and Manuel Herz from Switzerland.

There, on the other side of the Rhône, right next to the main station, a new high-rise silhouette will be built over the next few years. For a long time, the Tour Part-Dieu, an office tower from the 1970s, also called “le crayon“ – the pencil -, held the urban height record at 165 metres. In 2015, the glass Tour Intercity by Valode & Pistres overtook this tower.

Ycone is an expressive residential tower with retail space on the ground floor. Its façade consists of very narrow white hollow steel sections, which form a kind of continuous parapet in front of the actual envelope of the building. The struts frame the views from the flats, and vice versa they flicker in delicate fields of colour, as if they were trying to emulate a Mondrian painting.

The lattices unfold playfully to the sides from the tenth floor onwards. Two frames extend beyond the roof and function as sun sails. At the very top, a penthouse with its own lift access and roof terrace offers a panoramic view over the rivers and the city.

On each floor, a total of four lifts – for the two halves of the house – provide access to three to four flats. The design of the corridors picks up on the design of the walkway in front of  the façade. Narrow white strips divide a transparent ceiling. Each storey is assigned its own light colour. The colours for the façade were carefully selected. Inside, however, the lighting and colour design – with green letterboxes, for example – are in part not convincing.

Each of the 92 flats has a main space, to which the adjoining rooms can be added via floor-to-ceiling sliding doors. Towards the north and the east, there are 27 social housing units, promoting social mix for the neighbourhood. The purchase price for the flats in Ycone was – depending on the location in the building – between 4,700 and 10,000 euros per square metre.

Originally published in Bauwelt 22.2019, pp. 22-25, abridged and edited for Building Types online, translated by Julian Reisenberger

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