This is a step that brings the Paris Olympic Games a little closer.
Thursday February 29, French President Emmanuel Macron is due to inaugurate the Olympic village where the athletes who will compete in the Games will be housed.
Two athletes per room
Built in seven years, the village brings together some 82 buildings, 3,000 apartments and 7,200 rooms on a site which extends over 52 hectares in Seine-Saint-Denis, between Saint-Denis, the island of Saint-Denis and Saint-Denis. Ouen, north of Paris.
It will be able to accommodate nearly 14,500 athletes and their staff.
Also read “Paris is a big obstacle course”: for the 2024 Olympics, the challenge of accessible transport
The Olympic and Paralympic Village 🥇
82 buildings, 3,000 apartments and 7,200 rooms: the Village will offer ideal living conditions to athletes, to support their performances and magnify the spectacle during competitions.
Congratulations to @SOLIDEO_JOP for this… pic.twitter.com/hX6nVPFEus
— Paris 2024 (@Paris2024) February 29, 2024
“There will be two athletes per 12 m2 room, and a bathroom for four people. Everyone will be accommodated in the same boat,” explains Laurent Michaud, director of the Olympic and Paralympic villages at the Paris 2024 organizing committee. .
The Olympic Village apartments
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During the Olympics, the village will function as a classic but ephemeral city.
For example, athletes will be able to have their laundry washed in temporary laundromats with nearly 600 washing machines and dryers.
Maintenance of apartments in more than 70 residences will be ensured by twelve concierge services scattered throughout the village.
A geothermal power plant, inaugurated in December in the Pleyel district, will provide heat and cold to the surrounding districts, including the Olympic village.
Interest: the apartments did not have to be equipped with traditional air conditioning or heating systems, air conditioning having been banned from the specifications.
But national delegations will still be able to rent a “cooling unit” from the Organizing Committee.
Powered by this hot and cold network, a system of so-called “reversible” floors, heated in winter and cooled in summer, was installed in the residential buildings.
The Cité du Cinéma becomes a restaurant
Only the kitchens will be absent from the apartments.
Athletes will have 24-hour access to the imposing nave of the Cité du cinéma transformed into a giant restaurant with a range of six culinary themes (Italy, Asia, France, etc.) for nearly 3,200 seats and 40 000 meals served per day.
A second restaurant will be installed on Saint-Denis Island, and food trucks will be located throughout the village.
The Cité du cinéma becomes the “largest restaurant in the world”
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A grocery store, a police station, a hairdressing salon, a bar (without alcohol) and a multi-faith center... Athletes should not want for anything.
Even a post office will be installed temporarily in this city which will not have a mayor.
A 3,000 m2 polyclinic, in place of the Dahnier osteopathy school, will also be available to athletes 24 hours a day for care, a scanner or an MRI.
Also available to athletes is a huge fitness room in a Maxwell hall converted for this purpose.
In this former coal-fired power station, built in 1907 to power the Paris metro, more than 300 fitness machines will be installed for the village's athletes.
In total, nearly 3,000 m2 will be available for them to warm up and train.
The fitness room dedicated to athletes
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Filtered air
To clean the outside air in this district close to the capital, in addition to seven hectares of green spaces, a sort of large raised white saucer, four meters in diameter, was installed to capture fine particles, thanks to "two plates conductive (...) making it possible to achieve a reduction rate of 95% in air pollution in the area concerned", according to Solideo.
Anti-pollution filters to improve air quality at the foot of the residential buildings in the Olympic village where the athletes will be housed in Saint-Denis, a close suburb of Paris.
© Ian Langsdon, AFP
Another system, "Combin'Air", can also purify the outside air using an activated carbon and algae filter.
Once the Paralympic Games (August 28-September 8) are over, the apartments will be reconfigured to accommodate residents and businesses in this new district to the north of Paris.
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