From Saint-Denis to Rio, discover the mark left by the Olympic Games in 7 cities

Never again “white elephants”, like at the Athens Games in 2004 where disproportionate sports or urban facilities proved impossible to maintain or finance. Since the London Games, ecological imperatives have begun to impose themselves to take into account as soon as possible the future of the infrastructures created for the occasion. Paris 2024 is supposed to illustrate the progression of this reasoning by adopting “legacy mode”. Quite logically, the objective is now to create above all a sustainable district which must briefly adapt to its Olympic mission. And this necessary reversibility of uses, perfectly in tune with the times, has led to urban planning and regulatory innovations.

Because if we know how to build scalable or reversible buildings, they must meet different standards. This is why the Olympic village of Saint-Denis made it possible to test a “dual state permit” with one assignment for the Olympics and another afterwards. And this experimental device from 2018 has already been extended. Thanks to him, a building project in Bordeaux obtained the first “useless” building permit last year, opening the way to truly multi-use buildings.

6000 inhabitants

After only 5 years of work, the village was delivered on time and is ready to accommodate 14,500 athletes on 52 hectares. The whole is divided into four sectors managed by different professionals: Universeine, in Saint-Denis, a pre-existing operation developed by Vinci Immobilier; Les Quinconces, in Saint-Ouen, entrusted to a Caisse des Dépôts pool with Icade, CDC and CDC Habitat; Les Belvédères, in Saint-Ouen, granted to the Nexity-Eiffage Immobilier-CDC Habitat group and finally the L’Île-Saint-Denis eco-district of the Pichet-Legendre duo. At the end of the Games, after a few months of adaptation, there will be 3,500 housing units on site welcoming 6,000 residents and 6,000 employees.

A district in its own right with a park, a school, a hotel, shops, social housing, cultural facilities and a student residence. Without forgetting the footbridge connecting L’Île-Saint-Denis to the rest of the Olympic village or the rebirth of the Pleyel Tower as a 4-star hotel with its conference center. The years will tell how well the graft has taken. In the meantime, it is perhaps the moment to ask ourselves which buildings have left a more or less lasting mark in the host cities of the Olympic Games. The opportunity for a progressive journey back in time, perfectly subjective, in six stages.

Wooden stadium

First stop in Tokyo, which hosted the Games scheduled for 2020 in 2021. The flagship site of the event remains the Olympic stadium, now the national stadium, designed by Japanese architect Kengo Kuma. He succeeded in building this immense structure with 68,000 seats by largely integrating his favorite material: wood, local as much as possible. A choice which brings an unusual warm atmosphere in this type of arena. Please note: the architect is a fan of the splits because alongside monumental projects, he sometimes signs very small creations. This is how we owe him a small building from 19^e district of Paris, with only 11 housing units with its astonishing undulating chestnut wood facade.

For the edition preceding Tokyo, namely Rio 2016, we are heading to Porto Maravilha. If the city did not remain in the annals for the financial and urban management of the event, the Games made it possible to launch and carry out the urban renovation program for Porto Maravilha. Inspired in particular by the success of the Olympic port of Barcelona, ​​the Brazilian city has restructured its historic and port center over an area of ​​5 million square meters. Based on a public-private partnership and an initial budget of 2.4 billion euros, the project has some great achievements, including the Museum of Tomorrow (Museu do Amanhã), designed by the Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, to which we owe the City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia or the Oculus, the New York station of the World Trade Center. The operation, however, remains marred by cases of corruption and by the criticism that the housing which was created for the occasion did not benefit the population who needed it most.

Gentrification

This recurring criticism of gentrification linked to these urban operations, London 2012 was also entitled to it. It is true that the Games made it possible to develop the infrastructure of the popular district of Stratford, in the London borough of Newham. The opportunity to improve transport, provide the sector with sports equipment still in use or install the Orbit tower, emblem of these Games. But it is true that this once deprived place has quickly become gentrified. And the new housing, inaccessible to the local population, for purchase or rental, has pushed the latter to settle further away. The fact remains that London’s largest industrial wasteland has become a district in its own right spreading around its Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.

Barcelona 1992 is one of the editions fairly unanimously recognized for the tremendous impact it had on the city’s urban planning. It must be said that its organization was part of an ambition to modernize and transform the city from the outset. Facilities were distributed rather than concentrated based on studies by architects and planners of the city’s current and future needs. Particularly emblematic, the “Olympic Port» was a former industrial area where sailing competitions were held. The opportunity to decontaminate the area, create beaches and leisure areas for the population. These facilities have truly helped turn the city towards the sea, creating a lively residential area and making the Olympic Port a major tourist attraction. The marina built for the Games is still in use and a local sailing school is set up on site. Visually, two skyscrapers mark the place, the Mapfre tower and the Arts hotel accompanied by the Fish, monumental sculpture by architect Frank Gehry.

Ghost village

As for Montreal 1976, it is a vintage which gave a strong image to the city while leaving bitter memories. The immense Olympic stadium designed by the Frenchman Roger Taillibert, author of the Parc des Princes in Paris, has long been the emblem of oversized Olympic installations. It was not until 2006 that the debt from the Olympic Games, $1.5 billion, could be repaid. And the authorities had to reconvert a barely usable velodrome into a Biodôme, a “living” museum reproducing four of the ecosystems of the Americas in the same place. The Olympic village with its two large pyramids (or rather four half-pyramids) has found its place in the city. After housing the athletes, it was transformed into a rather high-end residential complex with 980 apartments and often housing fans of this architecture typical of the triumphant concrete period.

The Olympic legacy of Berlin 1936 is among the most complicated to manage. Not surprisingly, the site located west of the capital was quickly used by the German army as a training center then as a field hospital before welcoming German refugees after the conflict and the Soviet army until 1991. The place remains largely abandoned and partially accessible to the public. Witness to these hesitations, the municipality of Wustermark, where the village is located, announced in 2016 its conversion into hundreds of apartments. But the project has not come to fruition for the moment.