2024-02-29 11:58:19
Emmanuel Macron collected the keys this Thursday, February 29, to the village, a titanic real estate project spread over three municipalities in Seine-Saint-Denis, five months before the opening of the Games. Pressing hard on the positive aspects five months before the opening ceremony.
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White or yellow metal, red bricks, wooden or pink facades, the 41 lots (for 82 buildings) of the Olympic village were designed by 41 different architects. Which is easy to remember but which to the eye gives a little side of bric and baroque to the whole. Emmanuel Macron inaugurated this Thursday, February 29, this titanic real estate project piloted for seven years by Solideo and spread over three cities – Saint-Denis, Saint-Ouen and L’Ile-Saint-Denis. This handing over of the keys is a sign that the Olympic Games are “slowly and concretely coming to life”, rejoices the Elysée at a time when popular enthusiasm remains discreet, if not non-existent. “It’s beautiful, it will make the city beautiful and life beautiful,” said the head of state, huddled under a huge umbrella with a group of Parisian and Ile-de-France elected officials. For him, this extraordinary construction operation is “the adventure of the century”. “We are mobilizing, there is only good will,” he again assured when asked about transport, strike threats or the opening ceremony. Before passing through the presidential arena, Libération took a quick tour of the owner.
An Olympic factory
According to calculations by Nicolas Ferrand, the boss of Solideo, nearly 30,000 people have worked “in one way or another since 2017” on the site, whether they have worked for a week on reinforcement plumbing or six years of structural work. For once, the Elysée is less enthusiastic, preferring to mention “nearly 4,000 workers and companions”. But we are still talking about the “largest single-site project in Europe” for which 1,749 companies from 70 French departments worked. To monitor working conditions and respect for workers’ rights, Bernard Thibault, former general secretary of the CGT, was appointed co-chair of the monitoring committee for the Paris 2024 social charter. “We have been compared to Qatar, that has was a little hurtful,” says Nicolas Ferrand for his part in reference to the 2022 World Cup sites. According to Solideo, 168 accidents were recorded on all the sites, including 26 serious and only one with irremediable after-effects, “i.e. four times less than on standard construction sites”.
The project seemed quite crazy and uncertain.
Demonstration that we are at the rendezvous of the Olympic and Paralympic games, that France is a Nation of builders, the athletes’ village is ready!
Immense heritage for Seine-Saint-Denis, the people of Ile-de-France and France. pic.twitter.com/y4aLV3mZi0
— Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) February 29, 2024
Morvan and Congo
A miracle of technocratic newspeak, we speak of “hearts of forests” between the buildings of the village, which are in reality mini-garden spaces. In total, the project includes six hectares of public green spaces on which Solideo has planted 9,000 trees. Wood is also omnipresent in construction, for structures or facades, and the rule was the same for everyone: use wood from sustainably managed forests and 30% from French forests. Which fits with the oak from the Ile-de-France nurseries which sits on the brand new “Place des Athletes”, at the entrance to the village, or the Morvan wood used for a footbridge over the A1. But it sticks much less with tali wood, originating from… Congo, used along the banks of the Seine because of its very high density: it does not soak up water.
5335 sofas
The village covers 52 hectares north of Paris and will be made up of nearly 82 buildings, 3,000 apartments and 7,200 rooms to accommodate 14,500 athletes divided into 206 Olympic delegations. If the walls are finished, we now have to furnish this Olympic village. “This represents more than 345,000 parts in total which will be transported. Duvets, bedside tables, beds, there will be 14,250, 8,200 fans and 5,535 sofas,” explains Laurent Michaud, director of the Olympic and Paralympic villages at Paris 2024. This ephemeral city, where the athletes will arrive at from July 18, will have a grocery store, a police station, a hairdressing salon, a bar (without alcohol) and a multi-faith center. Small injury or major breakdown, athletes will be able to go to a 3,000 m2 polyclinic which will be open 24 hours a day. The fitness and weight room installed in the magnificently renovated Maxwell hall in Saint-Denis will be converted into an annex to the …Ministry of the Interior after the Olympics.
A post office but no town hall
The Olympic Village will also have a temporary post office until the end of the Paralympic Games in September. But no mayor. Usually, a sports luminary from the host country plays this dedicated role in welcoming delegations and athletes, but the Paris 2024 Olympic Organizing Committee (Cojo) has announced that it will do without this function protocol. Small welcome ceremonies with fanfare have been removed as part of the “new normal proposed by the IOC”. The “town hall” had however been designed in the village and this space should become a nursery “to comfortably accommodate the young children of athletes”, according to Cojo. On the other hand, for parents who would like to experience the seventeen days of competition with their children, they will have to isolate themselves from the village. Paris 2024 announced a new solution at the start of the week: they will be entitled to accommodation at the Pleyel hotel, located a few hundred meters in Saint-Denis, to offer “the best conditions of balance” to the competitors and “take taking into account parenthood”, including fathers.
A canteen with Luc Besson sauce
Giant-sized crunchy gourmand. Athletes will take their meals in the Nave, which was originally a power station, built in 1933 to provide energy for the Paris metro. The building was rediscovered by Luc Besson who installed his Cité du cinéma there, requisitioned during the Olympics. The dimensions of this canteen are extraordinary: a brick gallery 240 meters long and 24 meters wide, all covered by a glass roof, where 3,200 people can sit at the same time. In the athletes’ apartments, there will be no kitchen: they will therefore have 24-hour access to the restaurant whose reins have been entrusted to three great French chefs, including the three-starred Marseille chef Alexandre Mazzia. The person who almost became a professional basketball player in the United States will have to invent something to serve… 40,000 balanced meals per day.
Updated at 1:25 p.m. with statements from Emmanuel Macron.
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