Olympic builds: 11 venues fitted for winners

With the eyes of the world on Paris for the 33rd Summer Olympic and Paralympic games, Construction News takes a look at some of the venues and stadiums hosting the elite athletes and their spectators. Additional research: Matt Ross

The original builders of Paris’s Grand Palais could not have foreseen it being used to house a taekwondo showdown. The Beaux Art behemoth was built to showcase the glory of French art at the Paris World’s Fair in 1900 – a full 55 years before the Korean martial art was invented.

But with its patriotic origins, grand ornamental style and prime location along the Champs-Elysees, French officials saw the building’s potential as a 2024 Paris Olympic Games venue.

This month, thousands will gather under the Grand Palais’ spectacular glass roof – the largest in Europe – to watch the world’s best fencing and taekwondo athletes battle for glory.

Naturally, the century-old structure needed a bit of spring cleaning before it could welcome up to 9,000 spectators. Grand Palais project director Antonin Gilles of Chatillon Architectes has been responsible for managing hundreds of workers from 55 companies on a site spanning 77,000 square metres. At the peak of activity in January, there were 1,100 people on site.

Did he feel any pressure managing such a complex project? “Of course there was pressure,” Gilles tells Construction News. “There was pressure at every level.”

The stakes are indeed high: the deadline for opening is immovable, with any building defects potentially broadcast to millions of viewers around the globe.

Like the Grand Palais’ original builders, Chatillon Architectes had only three years to create a building to show off France’s prowess to the world.

Recapturing the building’s early 20th century grandeur was top of the agenda. “There was this fluidity between spaces when the building was built for the World’s Fair, but it disappeared very quickly. When we arrived, everything was very divided up because the Grand Palais has had a multitude of functions in its lifetime,” says Gilles.

Mezzanines and dividing walls had been added to section off the complex for different uses, which include a major science museum housed in its west annex. These created visual barriers that dampened the impact of the glass roof, with its staggering volume encompassing a space of 460,000 metres cubed.

“The first thing we did when we arrived was to clean out everything to restore the original volume of 1900,” says Gilles.

The building was brought up to modern fire standards. The nave was set on fire by bullets during the liberation of Paris in the Second World War. No one was injured but some iron pillars were warped and a few trapped circus animals were startled.

To guard the building against a worse fate, Chatillon Architectes added doors and skylights that open in the event of a fire to let smoke out. They also created openings within some of the walls to create new emergency exit routes from the nave into the garden. Steel girders and other structural elements were coated in intumescent paint, which inflates to form a char layer when hot.

“The biggest challenge was integrating technology into a building from 1900,” says Gilles. “That means hiding interventions to the greatest possible extent, making mitigations where we couldn’t hide them and using higher-quality materials.”

One such challenge was temperature control. The heating and cooling mechanisms were due an upgrade to keep sports fans comfortable. The hulking glass roof, though awe-inspiring, effectively turned the space into a giant greenhouse. The roof had already been reglazed in 2005, so Chatillon opted for an underfloor temperature control system that Gilles calls “active paving”.

After demolishing 13,000 square metres of the existing concrete floor, which had been installed over bare earth in the 1970s, the team laid a network of pipes connected to the city’s urban heating and cooling networks provided by Compagnie Parisienne de Chauffage Urbain and Fraicheur de Paris. They then surrounded the pipework with 800 tonnes of iron rebar and poured 350 drums-worth of concrete to create a new floor slab.

As CN talks to Gilles in June 2024, the work is winding down in preparation for the big event. Gilles reflects on the job as the concrete hardens to its final strength and the number of workers dwindles. “Putting a crazy amount of pressure on more than 1,000 people would have accomplished nothing ,” he says.

10 more projects

Project: Stade de France
Location: Saint-Denis, Paris
Client: The French state
Contractor: Ewitt and Mondo
Cost: €4.2m

Credit: Xu Zijian/Xinhua/Alamy Live News

The Stade de France is the Olympics’ main venue, hosting the athletics events, rugby and Paralympics. Built for the 1998 football World Cup, the old red athletics track was cleaned, removed and replaced with a 14,000 square metre nine-lane purple track. The stadium covers 17 hectares, is 320 metres long and 35 metres high, and can accommodate 77,000 spectators. There is also an annex stadium on the northern side for warm-ups and practice sessions.

Project: Adidas Arena
Location: Porte de la Chapelle
Project: owner City of Paris
Contractor: Bouygues Bâtiment Ile de France
Cost: €125m

Credit: Solideo

This multipurpose venue with a capacity of 8,000 has 6,300 square metres of green roof and 80 per cent of the buildings are covered in greenery. It was constructed using wood, recycled materials and low-carbon concrete. The project included the construction of a geothermal plant to meet both its own energy needs and those of homes that will be built in the surrounding area. During construction, 944 tonnes of waste was produced, of which 900 tonnes was recycled. There was also an onsite concrete mixing plant and 30 per cent of concrete used was low carbon.

Project: Extension of Métro Line 14
Location: Saint-Denis, Paris (terminus)
Client: RATP
Contractor: Siemens Mobility
Cost: €3bn

Credit: Siemens

The six-year metro line extension project was completed in June. The line has increased the number of stations it serves to 21 and doubled in length from 14 to 28 kilometres, making Line 14 the longest line in the Paris Metro. The line will serve one million passengers every day by 2025.

Project: Athletes Village
Location: Saint-Denis, Saint-Ouen-Sur-Seine and Île-Saint-Denis
Client: Solideo
Contractor: Eiffage Construction
Cost: €2bn

Credit: Solideo / Sennse / Cyril Badet

Set in a complex of existing buildings, the Athletes’ Village will house 15,000 competitors. A film studio was also converted into a 24-hour restaurant. All the buildings have wood in the facade, structures and floors. The buildings were designed to be energy efficient and utilise green energy, particularly through the use of geothermal energy and solar panels. Construction began in early 2021 and was completed in late 2023.

Project: Media Cluster
Location: Le Bourget, Dugny and La Courneuve
Client: Solideo
Contractor: Demathieu Bard
Cost: €60m

Credit: Solideo / Dronepress

During the Olympics, the Media Cluster, Main Media Centre and Media Village will host more than 1,500 journalists and technicians. It will also host climbing, volleyball and shooting events. The five-wall climbing centre is one of only two facilities built especially for Paris 2024, along with the Olympic Aquatic Centre. After the Games, the Media Village will become a 7-hectare ‘garden city’ offering 1,300 housing units, as well as shops, restaurants and medical facilities.

Project: Annette Kellerman Aquatic Centre
Location: Marville/Courneuve
Client: Seine-Saint-Denis
Contractor: Groupe GCC
Cost: €40m

Credit: Franck Rondot

The 4,600 square metre venue will be used for water polo and rugby sevens. It has a 33-metre eight-lane sports pool with a retractable floor, a fun pool and a play lagoon. It also has a hammam, two saunas, a weights room and a fitness terrace. Outside there is a 25-metre six-lane Nordic pool. The entire framework of the main pool (448 cubic metres) is made of wood. The centre also features a wooden post-and-beam structure.

Project: Olympic Aquatic Centre
Location: Saint-Denis
Client: Métropole du Grande Paris
Contractor: Bouygues Bâtiment Île de France
Cost: Approx €175m

Credit: Nicolas Grosmand

The centre is the other venue that has been built especially for the Paris 2024 Olympics. With a 50-metre pool, this permanent facility will host swimming, diving and water polo events. It was constructed using only bio-sourced materials and has 5,000 square metres of photovoltaic cells on the wooden concave roof, which also filters light and collects rainwater. The photovoltaic cells will supply 25 per cent of the centre’s electricity needs. More than 100,000 cubic metres of concrete was crushed during demolition, 99 per cent of which was reused on the site.

Project: Roof of Suzanne Lenglen Court at Roland Garros
Location: Boulogne-Billancourt
Client: Fédération Française de Tennis
Contractor: Renaudat Centre Constructions
Cost: €45m

Credit: Shutterstock

The Roland Garros complex hosts the French Open tennis championships and will be used as the Olympic venue for tennis, boxing, wheelchair tennis and sitting volleyball. The Suzanne Lenglen Court’s new retractable roof was inaugurated at the end of May to protect spectators and players from wind, rain and shadows. Designed to resemble pleated fabric, it is made of steel and canvas. Construction began in May 2021 and had to be paused for four months every year for the French Open to take place.

Project: Yves du Manoir Stadium
Location: Colombes
Client: Conseil Departemental des Hauts-de-Seine
Contractor: Léon Grosse
Cost: €101m

Credit: Solideo

Architect Louis Faure-Dujarric brought up to standard what was the main venue for the 1924 Olympic Games, as well as constructing two new admin buildings. The project also involved the construction of three Olympic hockey fields, an athletics track and two new grandstands, including one with capacity for 1,000 spectators. The venue will host hockey events and has capacity for 18,000 spectators. At least 50 per cent of the construction used wood and 90 per cent of the waste or construction site soil was reused or recycled. After the Games, the stadium will be the national training centre of the French Hockey Federation.

Project: Île Saint Denis Footbridge
Location: Saint-Denis
Client: Département de la Seine-Saint-Denis
Contractor: GCC
Cost: €40m

Credit: ©CD93

This bridge across the Seine connects Île-Saint-Denis and Saint-Denis, two areas of the Athletes’ Village. The 138-metre structure is reserved for pedestrians, bikes and buses. After the Games it will link homes, student residences and leisure facilities on either side of the Seine.