The Orange Cube is a design showroom and office building in the La Confluence quarter of the

2nd arrondissement of Lyon The 2nd arrondissement of Lyon is one of the nine arrondissements of Lyon, arrondissements of the City of Lyon. History The first five Arrondissements of Lyon, arrondissements of Lyon were created by the Decree of March 24, 1852, which included th ...

, France. Designed by the Paris-based architectural firm

Jakob + MacFarlane Jakob + MacFarlane is a French architecture firm founded in 1998 by Dominique Jakob and Brendan MacFarlane. It is headquartered in Paris.Daniel Pavlovits and Joe Boschetti, ''Interiors Now'' (Images Publishing Group, 2004), p. 292. History Domin ...

, the building is best known for its orange color and hole-riddled cube shape, lending it the nickname "La

Mimolette Mimolette is a cheese traditionally produced around the city of Lille, France. In France it is also known as ''Boule de Lille'' after its city of origin, or ''vieux Hollande'' because it was originally inspired by the Dutch Edam cheese. Descrip ...

" after the similarly-colored cheese. The Orange Cube was completed in 2011 at a cost of approximately €12 million, with a 6,284 meter interior. It occupies a 29x33

meter The metre (British spelling) or meter (American spelling; see spelling differences) (from the French unit , from the Greek noun , "measure"), symbol m, is the primary unit of length in the International System of Units (SI), though its prefi ...

area on the ground. The building is the realization of Jakob + Macfarlane's winning design in a 2005 competition intended to create interest in the industrial Confluence area, one requirement of which was the inclusion of negative space; the building's two conical voids, as well as drawing in cool air, create, according to ''

Architectural Record ''Architectural Record'' is a US-based monthly magazine dedicated to architecture and interior design. "The Record," as it is sometimes colloquially referred to, is widely-recognized as an important historical record of the unfolding debates in a ...

'' Jenna M. McKnight, "an extraordinary dialogue with the river, almost bringing it inside." Others, including ''

Telerama Telerama was an Internet service provider and technology company based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was founded in 1991 and promoted itself as the third ISP in world history. Telerama launched its Wi-Fi network in Pittsburgh in 2001, compri ...

'' Luc Le Chatelier and Valérie Disdier of the "Maison de l'architecture Rhône-Alpes" were more critical of the design. The Orange Cube's two facades are covered by twenty-five perforated, thermo-lacquered aluminum screens, all made locally.Orange Cube
by Mark Lamster, in ''Architect Magazine''; published May 2, 2011; retrieved December 26, 2019

References

Buildings and structures in Lyon Office buildings in France Commercial buildings completed in 2011 {{France-struct-stub