Tokyo (AFP)
The organizers of the Tokyo Olympic Games unveiled Wednesday the "Village Plaza", a vast wooden complex in traditional Japanese style at the entrance of the Olympic village, which will serve as a place of conviviality and services for the athletes.
Low-rise and on one level, the complex hardly impresses from the outside, but its extent of 5,300 m2 reveals itself as you enter its numerous rooms and semi-outdoor galleries.
The site, which costs 2.4 billion yen (nearly 20 million euros), will be reserved for athletes, their teams and journalists.
It will thus host various services for athletes (bank, medical station, hair salon, tourist office, official store of the Olympic Games, etc.), spaces for the media and for press conferences, as well as a café.
Like historic Japanese buildings, its floors, partitions and pillars are made up of wooden beams (cedar, larch, cypress), symbolically made available by around sixty municipalities across the country.
Although the site is temporary - it will be dismantled after the Games - it is one of the showcases of Tokyo 2020 "sustainability": because its wood will later be recovered by the municipalities which are supposed to reassign it to their homes, to build benches and public buildings in particular.
© 2020 AFP