A project combining architecture and urbanism, the Cité Internationale covers an area of 15 hectares located between the Parc de la Tête d’Or and the Rhone river.

The programme comprises offices and residential buildings, a congress centre, a hotel, a casino, a multiscreen-cinema complex and a museum of contemporary art. The scheme is composed of pairs of buildings, built in phases, on either side of a central pedestrian street, and creates new visual and physical links between the park and the river.

Clad in terracotta, this was the first RPBW's project to introduce an extra outer layer of glass facade, enclosing an air gap that acts as a heat exchanger.