PARIS, France — Organizers for the 2024 Paris Olympics wanted to avoid building large new stadiums, but they did construct one new permanent facility specifically for the Games.
That building is the Aquatics Centre, where athletes will compete in artistic swimming, diving and water polo. Ton Venhoeven, the principal architect, said they designed a building as novel as the Summer Olympics in Paris.
“If you look at the building, it is a unique design,” Venhoeven said.
The Aquatics Centre, worth $200 million, is the only new venue at the 2024 Olympics. It was built to be energy efficient and environmentally friendly by incorporating 81,000 cubic feet of wood instead of using more concrete and steel.
“We save a lot of CO2 emissions by using wood,” Venhoeven said. “If you compared it to steel and concrete, in the production of steel and concrete, a lot of CO2 [is] put into the air.”
The roof is one of the world’s largest concave structures, and architect Laure Mériaud says it’s been designed to follow an athlete’s form as they jump off a diving board.
“The roof is like a leaf, you know, you don’t have water, it goes gently sloping, it’s like that,” Meriaud said.
That shape also reduces the amount of energy needed to heat the facility, and the electricity that is needed to power the building comes from a solar farm on the roof.
The seats, which accommodate 5,000 people, were made from recycled plastic bottles collected by local school kids.
“They collected the bottles, it’s reused in the seats of the building,” Venhoeven said.
Outside, more than 100 trees have been planted to reduce CO2 in the area.
After the Games, the facility will be used to encourage more kids in the Saint-Denis Region of Paris to swim; currently, around half of the middle school-aged children in that area don’t know how.