Porte des Alpes
I led the Grande Porte des Alpes study, a long-term territorial project east of the Lyon metropolitan area, addressing the climatic, functional, and programmatic obsolescence of a 2,500-hectare landscape shaped by major infrastructures, productive activities, and dispersed urban fabrics. My role combined strategic vision, spatial narratives, and graphic direction, from large-scale territorial diagnosis to the design of key transformation sites. The project articulates climate regulation, adaptive reuse, and land-use optimization through clear planning frameworks, visual strategies, and compelling presentations. By translating complex environmental and urban challenges into coherent spatial scenarios, the work proposes a transition from monofunctional, resource-intensive environments toward resilient, mixed, and shared metropolitan landscapes.
2021-2025
Team : 51N4E, 2001, LOLA, Ville Ouverte
In collaboration with : Arya Arabshahi, Eva De Bruyn, Cindy Duan, Matija Kraljic, Chloé Nachtergael
Client : Métropole de Lyon
Credits : Heat map by 2001Maps produced in. collaborations of many : Chloé, Cindy, Félix...Grande Porte des Alpes is a vast metropolitan territory at a strategic crossroads between Lyon, Saint-Priest and the eastern suburbs, shaped by the coexistence of major infrastructures, economic hubs, productive activities, and open landscapes. Long structured around monofunctional zones and large-scale logistics, the area today faces major challenges: high tertiary vacancy, climate vulnerability, fragmented governance, and limited urban intensity.
Our work addresses these issues by exploring how Grande Porte des Alpes can evolve toward a more mixed, resilient, and inhabited model. The approach seeks to reconcile economic attractiveness with quality of life, climate adaptation with redevelopment of existing assets, and metropolitan ambitions with local dynamics. By identifying key transformation levers and testing new spatial and programmatic balances, the project sets the framework for a progressive reinvention of the territory, laying the ground for more detailed strategies developed for the Parc Technologique and the Golf.
Parc Technologique
Parc Technologique is currently facing several structural challenges. First, a challenge of attractiveness, marked by a vacancy rate of around 35% in office space and parking facilities, highlighting the need to reactivate and diversify the program in order to restore meaning and vitality to office uses. Second, a challenge of climate adaptation: transforming a site perceived as a heat island into a cool island, by enhancing and connecting existing pockets of cool air. Added to this is a real estate renewal challenge, which involves assessing the transformation potential of existing buildings to better meet contemporary requirements.
Finally, there is a challenge of partnership-based governance, aimed at bringing together all landowners and mobilizing new tools to ensure a coherent and collectively shared evolution of the site.
Parc Mail
Parc Mail is a strategic block within the Technology Park, with strong potential for transformation. It is characterized by a single private landowner (BNP Paribas REIM via Lyon Business Park), significant vacancy rates, and low built density (FAR of 0.36 over a 6-hectare site). The area is composed of 2–3 storey office slabs, 17 m deep, with floor plates ranging from 680 to 1,020 m² and relatively modest ceiling heights (3.1 m on the ground floor and 2.8 m on upper floors).
Located in the immediate vicinity of the tram line and the central promenade, the site benefits from a favorable urban context, offering opportunities to open up and diversify uses. The needs identified by the Metropolitan Authority particularly concern small-scale productive spaces (90–100 m², with 4 m clear height and the possibility of mezzanines), offered at competitive rents (≈ €110/m²/year), alongside office space (≈ €150/m²/year).
Frange de Feuilly
Located between the Feuilly forest and the center of Saint-Priest, the Frange de Feuilly benefits from a high-quality landscape setting and a strategic position between city and nature. The project explores the transformation of this fragmented, partly vacant area into an attractive residential neighborhood, in continuity with the surrounding urban dynamics.
The approach focuses on converting well-oriented office buildings into housing, improving climate comfort through natural ventilation, and strengthening connections to public transport and soft mobility. The wooded fringe and proximity to the forest are leveraged as key assets, forming the basis of an ecological corridor and a frugal landscape strategy that enhances living quality while reducing environmental impact.
The golf course occupies a metropolitan site that is officially open to the public but largely dedicated to golfing activities, attracting an almost exclusive audience of golfers, with the exception of a few walkers,runners, and the restaurant’s clientele.
UTCI simulations realised by LOLA - On the left : Current situation, On the right : Projected situation if the proposed actions are implemented In collaboration with LOLA In collaboration with LOLA The transformation of the Golf is envisioned as a phased process, gradually opening the site to the public while maintaining its economic viability.
Initial steps focus on renaturation and improved pedestrian and cycling access, followed by a progressive diversification of uses through shared facilities, new parks...
In the long term, the site could evolve into a multifunctional metropolitan park, combining a reduced golf program with leisure, biodiversity, and cooling landscapes.