When Paris last hosted the Summer Olympics 100 years ago, organizers were so keen to bring athletes under the same roof that they built the first-ever Olympic Village.
It was spartan, made up of furnished wood huts, and it was razed shortly after.
The competition is back in the City of Lights a century later, but French officials are doing something completely different this time around. As part of their effort to make Paris 2024 the “most responsible and sustainable games in history,” they’re building something that’s meant to last.
“This village was thought up as a neighborhood, a neighborhood that is going to have a life afterwards,” said Georgina Grenon, the Paris 2024 director of sustainability. “Paris 2024 is renting it for a few months.”
Instead of rooming in apartments tailor-made for them, athletes in the Olympic Village this summer will be living in what will become someone else’s home or workplace.
Once the Paralympics have finished on September 8, the village — which contains 82 buildings — will be converted into office space for 6,000 workers and apartments to house another 6,000 people.
Like the Olympics themselves — which organizers say will run 100% on renewable energy — everything built for the village was done with sustainability in mind. To minimize the amount of construction, organizers temporarily or permanently retrofitted several existing structures on the site, including an old electric factory that’s been turned into a “resident center.”／Wikimedia Commons
‘It’s a huge test lab’
Like the Olympics themselves — which organizers say will run 100% on renewable energy — everything built for the village was done with sustainability in mind. To minimize the amount of construction, organizers temporarily or permanently retrofitted several existing structures on the site, including an old electric factory that’s been turned into a “resident center.” They also rented existing movie studios in the area to be used as training facilities for athletes instead of building new training facilities which has been done at some other Games.
The buildings that were erected were built with wood and recycled materials, employing processes that, according to Grenon, reduced the project’s carbon footprint by 30% per square meter — more than French ecological regulations require.
Keeping cool
The most scrutinized innovation will likely be the geothermal cooling system, as athletes in Paris could face the same level of sweltering heat and humidity that broiled Tokyo during the Summer Olympics there three years ago.
“Climate change should increasingly be viewed as an existential threat to sport,” Sebastian Coe, the president of World Athletics, said in a report published last week (June 18) examining the heat risks associated with this summer’s games.
The most scrutinized innovation will likely be the geothermal cooling system, as athletes in Paris could face the same level of sweltering heat and humidity that broiled Tokyo during the Summer Olympics there three years ago.／Flickr
For delegations concerned about the system’s efficacy during a heat wave, the village will offer them the option to rent individual air conditioning units.
Asked about the lack of air conditioning in the Village by news agency Reuters in March, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo said the village was “designed to avoid the need for air conditioning, even in very, very high temperatures.”
“We are on the brink of a precipice. Everyone, including the athletes, must be aware of this,” Hidalgo said. “We have to trust the scientists when they help us to construct buildings in a sober way that allows us to make do without air conditioning.”
