The Legacy of the Paris 2024 Games: From the Athletes’ Village to a New Living District
The Legacy of the Paris 2024 Games: From the Athletes’ Village to a New Living District
The Legacy of the Paris 2024 Games: From the Athletes’ Village to a New Living District
The Legacy of the Paris 2024 Games: From the Athletes’ Village to a New Living District
The Legacy of the Paris 2024 Games: From the Athletes’ Village to a New Living District
The Legacy of the Paris 2024 Games: From the Athletes’ Village to a New Living District
The Legacy of the Paris 2024 Games: From the Athletes’ Village to a New Living District
The Legacy of the Paris 2024 Games: From the Athletes’ Village to a New Living District
The Legacy of the Paris 2024 Games: From the Athletes’ Village to a New Living District
The Legacy of the Paris 2024 Games: From the Athletes’ Village to a New Living District
The Legacy of the Paris 2024 Games: From the Athletes’ Village to a New Living District
The Legacy of the Paris 2024 Games: From the Athletes’ Village to a New Living District
After the last fireworks fizzled out from the Paris 2024 Summer Olympic Games, work began on converting its athletes’ village into a permanent neighbourhood. Given that the intention to transform it into long-term housing was baked into the design process from the start, reversibility was a driving principle — down to a regular structural grid that allows buildings to change in use and configuration as needs evolve.
The site sits on l’Île-Saint-Denis, a long, narrow island in the Seine River, on the former footprint of a warehouse vacant since 2004. To build the temporary site while prepping for conversion, PPX Architectes acted as coordinator on design and delivery of each part of the project, setting shared rules for the organization of architectural blocks, consistency in facades, and cohesion in the landscape along the riverbanks. Future residential units were subdivided into smaller quarters to fit 770 athletes’ beds, a residents’ centre, medical facilities, laundry and offices for the Games. Those walls were reconfigured into 147 total housing units for the legacy phase.
While the architecture is built for high density, it carries an accessible feeling that echoes the community spirit of the Games, with a diversity of housing styles organized around open blocks, inner courtyards and shared outdoor spaces. Visual openings arranged alongside the large multi-unit volume and the smaller intermediate housing structures add to the open-air effect. The buildings are an exemplar of timber construction, featuring wood framing and stud walls, cross-laminated timber, hybrid timber–concrete and prefabricated elements. Coordinated across the structures is a transparent ground floor open to the public and a shared material palette of terracotta, sandblasted concrete and steel.
With its low-carbon construction, green roofs and rooftop gardens, the site acts as a gateway to the city’s “eco-district” of sustainable housing, shops and shared spaces to the south. Now fully inhabited, the Olympic Village has taken its place as a legacy piece of architecture in Paris.
Team: Cédric Petitdidier, Vincent Prioux, Thibault Cereze (PPX Architectes); NZI Architects; Gaëtan Le Penhuel Architects; Atelier Fabrice Commerçon; Ibrahima N’Doye Architects; Atelier Volga; Ecotech; Scoping; Arcadis; Gustave Wood Engineering; Pichet Immobilier and Legendre Immobilier
