Setting the stage for the upcoming Paris Olympics 2024, the French capital is gearing up for their next Olympics games, 100 years since they last did so. Paris 2024 Olympic Village is a vision brought up by 25 architectural, urban, and landscape design firms who worked on developing 2400 accommodations for athletes and staff, 119000 square meters of activity spaces, offices, and facilities.
The official site is a 40-hectare industrial wasteland that has been transformed into a river-side city garden that reflects Paris’s past industrial heritage and is sustainable for generations to come.
Located in Saint-Denis, Saint-Ouen, and L’Île-Saint-Denis along the Seine River, the landmark Olympic and Paralympic Village, with sustainability at its core, is changing how facilities are built for such international multi-sport competitions. Initial games had purpose-built structures during the events but for the Paris Olympics, the facilities will be repurposed into office and residential spaces in the future.
The organizers have pledged that the village will run on renewable energy, minimizing new construction with temporary or retrofitted structures aligning with the Paris Agreement 2016 on Climate change goals. “This village was thought up as a neighborhood, a neighborhood that is going to have a life afterward,” Georgina Grenon, the Paris 2024 director of sustainability, told CNN. “Paris 2024 is renting it for a few months,” he said.
After the Olympics, the construction will contribute to public housing, with 32% of the new homes in Saint-Denis and Saint-Ouen and 48% of those in L’Île-Saint-Denis, providing long-term benefits to the local communities in France. Rooftop gardens with solar panels and converting an old electric factory into a resident center reduce the carbon footprint by 30% per square meter.
Furthermore, the use of low-carbon concrete for buildings less than 28 meters in height and 75% of construction materials being recycled emphasizes environmental responsibility and adapting to the climate of 2050.
Read more about this year’s sports venues for the Paris Olympics 2024.
Our goal was to use what already existed and add all the equipment and services we needed in order to control and reduce our carbon footprint as much as possible. This is why the majority of the services here will be available in buildings that already exist. In total, 3,200 seats will be available in the restaurant lobby, I think it will be the largest restaurant in the world. If you know of a bigger one, I’d love the know!
Laurent Michaud, Director of the Paris 2024 Athletes’ Village
In addition to being a major athletic event, the 2024 Paris Olympic Games will also serve as a catalyst for social cohesiveness, the advancement of public policy, and sustainable urban development, setting a stage for the future of historical veneration and forward-thinking design.
