The colossus takes shape. For two months, the 37 cranes that cluttered the horizon have all disappeared, like the concrete plants. And it’s a whole district – or rather a mini-city – that is beginning to emerge from the ground on this former 52-hectare wasteland, located astride the municipalities of Saint-Denis, Saint-Ouen and L’Ile-Saint-Denis. In this underprivileged department, we saw things on a grand scale, mobilizing no less than 3,500 workers, 14 project managers and 41 architects, who worked day and night. “This is the first time that a development operation has been carried out on 330,000 square meters in one go. The work will have been carried out in just six years, whereas it would have taken 15 without the Olympics”, points out Isabelle Valentin, deputy director of Solideo, the company in charge of building the village. Unheard of since the construction of new towns in the 1960s!
Suffice to say that we did our best to live up to an event that had not happened in France for a century. Exit the wooden sheds of 1924; make way for a village with durable and accessible constructions aimed at initially accommodating 14,250 athletes and their companions, then 6,000 para-athletes and their assistants. Abracadabra! After the Games, it will turn into a new district. “The buildings have been designed to be converted. A second life which was thought of from the design of the project with the filing of two building permits: one for the Games, the other for the heritage”, explains Armelle Richardot, director of programs at Solideo. Project also placed under the sign of energy sobriety, deployed from the demolition of the old ZAC, where “94% of the materials were upgraded, 900 tonnes recovered and 31,600 tonnes of concrete reused for road structures and earthworks”, details Isabelle Valentin.
A model village
In this future village, no equipment for competitions, but only accommodation. And don’t imagine a vast dormitory for top athletes. In order to welcome them in the best possible conditions, after the events they will be able to meet around an Olympic square, stroll along the redeveloped banks of the Seine and eat in a super canteen at the Cité du Cinéma, where 40,000 meals will be served every day, 24 hours a day. As in a real city, they will also have a municipal branch, a clinic, a fire station and even a police headquarters – quite enough reassurance about safety.
Once the medals have been awarded and the athletes have left, Solideo will intervene again, in the fall of 2024, to transform the site into a new district which will welcome, from the start of the 2025 school year, no less than 6,000 inhabitants and 6,000 employees. “We have encouraged mixed use by offering, alongside the 2,807 housing units – 25% of which are social – an offer of offices and shops”, specifies Isabelle Valentin. On the site, the builders Cade, Vinci, Eiffage-Nexity and Pichet-Legendre will resume service from November 2024, with new missions: conversion of buildings, removal of partitions, fitting out of kitchens and bathrooms, etc.
Other facilities are planned: school groups with no less than 37 new classes; the Marcel-Cachin high school in Saint-Ouen, with a new reception campus dedicated to sports economics and two new crèches totaling 60 places. Also in Saint-Ouen, the Pablo-Neruda gymnasium will be revamped with a new sports hall. In the Universeine district, the Signal tower by architect Clément Vergély – the tallest building in the Games at 50 meters high – will mark the entrance to the village. It will have at its foot the Copernicus pavilion and the Maxwell hall, a former EDF power station with a fitness room, and buildings made entirely of wood and low-carbon concrete. “The carbon footprint of the Olympics should be reduced by 50% compared to those of London in 2012”, assures Isabelle Valentin. Erected in plots to promote air circulation, they will be supplied by a geothermal network heating or air conditioning both offices and housing. A first in France.
Green roofs and planted trees
To mitigate the effects of the heat wave, the roofs will be vegetated and no less than 9,000 trees and shrubs will be planted on the site, dotted with “ecological corridors” stretching to the Seine. As for Ampère park, in Saint-Denis, it is presented as the “green lung” of the village. “It’s exaggerated, considers Cécile Gintrac, member of the 2024 Olympics Vigilance Committee. If it will extend over 2.6 hectares, it is thanks to the mobilization of the collectives who succeeded in having the five buildings initially planned around it abandoned. But we remain below the recommendations of the WHO, which provides for 10 square meters of green space per inhabitant. ” More consensual, the burying of high voltage lines and the erection of a noise barrier along the A86 will make the neighborhood more pleasant, even if “nothing has been done on the northern part of the highway”, as Cécile Gintrac regrets. The new district should also be easily accessible thanks to the proximity of the Pleyel station, one of the main interconnection hubs of the future Grand Paris Express network, whose extension of line 14 to Orly airport will be delivered in June 2024. A crossing above the A1 is also planned to connect it to another giant: the Olympic aquatic center in Saint-Denis (see box).
The municipalities concerned obviously rely heavily on the Games to accelerate their economic development. “My fear is that the event will mainly benefit the west of Seine-Saint-Denis, where the infrastructure is concentrated, but not the rest of the department, however regrets Bruno Beschizza, the mayor (LR) of Aulnay-sous-Bois, president of the intercommunality Paris land of flight, bringing together eight municipalities in the north-east of the department. The Olympics should not be a flying saucer that the inhabitants watch from afar, without benefiting from any fallout. “
The aquatic center, the other giant of the Games
The new equipment will notably accommodate the swimming and diving events
St Denis. Olympic Aquatic Center
© / Architecture VenhoevenCS & Ateliers 234 – Image Proloog – CAD project: SILVERE KOULOURIS
It is one of the few sports facilities built from scratch for the Games. It will host competitive diving, artistic swimming and water polo events. A 174.7 million euro project also presented as an ecological model. With in particular a roof equipped with a photovoltaic farm providing 25% of its electricity needs, but also an impressive wooden frame that will move in the event of snow or wind, thus reducing the space to be heated by 30%. The work should be completed by the end of the year.
After the Games, to prevent its gigantic swimming pool from being shunned by the inhabitants, a fitness room, climbing walls and a basketball court will be set up next to the pool. “The rates have been negotiated, but it is not certain that these private infrastructures are accessible to the inhabitants of Saint-Denis or that we can have easy access to the swimming pool, which will be used in part by the French Swimming Federation”, fears Cécile Gintrac. With 36 basins for 1.6 million inhabitants, Seine-Saint-Denis is today the least well endowed territory in France.
An article from the special issue of L’Express “The new territories of the Olympic Games”