Student Project | Lyon-topia

Winner of the Merit Award in the 2021 WLA Awards – Student – Concept – Analysis & Planning category

Lyon-topia, a project for the resilience of Lyon’s territory

A physical manifestation of hydromorphological balance is the prerequisite for the existence of a landscape and all life form. To bring a territory towards its resilience, it is above all necessary to redefine its morphological foundations in order to re-establish a healthy base, and this is achieved by focusing on the essential structures.

Essential structures are thus the natural and anthropic hydraulic systems of a territory which is a structural invariant constituting the primary geographical environment of equilibrium. However, these structures are highly impacted by climate change associated with floods, high water, rising water tables and severe droughts.

Instead of a ready-to-use project, I propose here an « approach », a planning process for the territory of Lyon (France) aimed at facing climate change and the environmental and social crisis that Lyon, but more globally France and the world, are undergoing.

Interventions are proposed here that focus on these hydraulic systems, putting them at the center of the territory’s renewal. It is a question of conceiving and living with water.

The first step of the project is to examine the existing watercourses that have formed the territory, focusing on the watercourse space delimited by the historical and projected floods. It is a question of working and revitalizing the watercourses and managing spaces that allow increase the formation of microclimates, ecologically rich environments and environments that can be easily appropriated by the inhabitants. Three space-typologies will be adapted to the morphological context and to the practice of the places: quays, parks and floodscapes.

The second step deals with the management of weather driven water on the whole territory by carrying out detailed assessments of the topography and the morphology of the territory. I propose to create a network associating open channels and vegetal structures inspired by the bocage landscape. This network that links the territory will form a system of public space and will accompany the mobility of the 21st century.

The third step consists in working on the watersheds of the previous hydraulic systems in order to improve soil permeability and limit water runoff. Firstly the urbanized soils will be-de-permeabilized through acupuncture work and co-construction along with the inhabitants. A second step is to work on the agricultural park through collaboration with the farmers so that the agricultural space becomes the wetland of the territory and that it can infiltrate water without polluting the rivers and water tables. For this, it is necessary to change agricultural practices, for example by introducing permaculture.

The last step deals with the line, the contact fringe between urbanity and “natural” space. It is through this fringe that a symbiosis between these two large territorial structures can be established. The surplus of meteoric water of urban areas is poured into the fringe and allows the natural space to benefit from this water which is essential for its future development. This fringe becomes a buffer basin and forms a micro climate for the metropolis.