Lyon's Musée des Confluences

2008 will see the completion of a science museum in the French city of Lyon, built according to a design by Austrian architecture firm Coop Himmelb(l)au. Conceived of as a "Crystal Cloud of Knowledge", the building looks more like a drawing of a spaceship by a twisted 13 year-old. And the emphasis here is on 'twisted'.

A building such as this might be unusual and eye-catching, but is as far from organic as can be; it's simply Euclidian geometry crushed and, yes, twisted by CAD. Does science really have to be housed in a structure which is so inhuman?

The curves and fluid lines of Gehry's Museo Guggenheim Bilbao were also aided by software, but began with his freehand sketches, resulting in a kind of impressionistic shoal of silver fish. It's a fine line, but an obvious one when you use your brain and your emotions to look at these ultra-modern buildings: one is mechanistic, one is organic.

Link to the museum's website (scroll down for maquette pictures)

Compare with Gehry's museum... Link