Less than two months from the Paris games, French architecture studio Dream has revealed its latest creation: a new mass timber high-rise that will anchor the 19 buildings that form the €2B Athletes Village.
The new tower, set to be used as office and media space during the Games, is clad with terracotta tiles “to evoke the history of the industrial site” and uses a spruce glulam timber frame coupled with prefabricated concrete floors and a Douglas fir exterior.
In March, Wood Central revealed that 45% of the Village was constructed from timber, with a large portion prefabricated and installed on-site, “choosing the best construction methods to achieve practical completion in record time.”
Billed as the most eco-friendly Village ever constructed, it includes 14,250 beds, 8,200 fans, and 5,535 sofas. Two athletes share 1,300 12-square-metre rooms, many sandwiched by laminated veneer lumber floors and ceiling panels.
According to Dimitri Roussel, Dream’s founder, the new building is about imagining the future of office buildings, “with a particular focus on mixed-use programming and, in this case, the integration of a sports area of over 1,200 metres square on the roof.”
Adding that “[The office] will occupy a central position within the Olympic village and then, during the ‘legacy phase’, it will house companies.”
The building’s structure is organised into three interconnected blocks of different heights. In addition, rhythmic glazing lines the facade, interrupted by double-height openings punctured into the building to form sheltered terraces.
Inside, the ground floor will host a food court for the Games, connecting to an outdoor public space, while the upper floors provide bright workspaces divided by timber columns. The building’s top floor has an eight-metre-tall sports hall adorned by an exposed timber framework, with scaling views to the Paris skyline.
“The design creates opportunities for people to meet because that’s what it’s all about,” Mr Roussel said. “This building is a great living machine that offers multiple possibilities for users in their workplace to meet, exchange and create this challenge of living together.”
Will Paris be remembered as the Timber Games?
In March, Wood Central reported that the Paris Games, the first to commit to carbon neutrality, is dedicated to becoming the first wooden games – using the showpiece to double the number of timber buildings under construction from 16.8% in 2020 to more than 30% in 2030.
However, while much of the attention has centred on the new Aquatics Centre, considered the main architectural icon for the games, the Village could leave an even greater legacy post-games – with the model already embraced as an option by organisers ahead of the Milan 2026 Winter Games and the 2032 Brisbane Summer Games.
That’s because the Village, located on a 52-hectare site straddling the towns of Saint-Ouen, Saint-Denis, and L’Ile-Saint-Denis, will be repurposed from the Empreinte phase into residential and commercial Heritage phase accommodation after 2024.
“These kinds of wooden structures have many technical and regulatory challenges, and they need to be carefully integrated,” according to Luc Boyer, a partner at Gustave responsible for designing some of the mass timber buildings that now stand at the Village.
“We had to manage several aspects, including building tall structures from wood, using prefabricated elements, creating flexible apartment layouts, and ensuring fire safety…we also had to consider sound insulation and to maintain the thermal performance,” he said, adding that “this had to meet France’s intricate set of rules and regulations.”
- For more information about the Paris Olympics and its legacy, visit Wood Central’s special feature.