What makes Paris Olympic village eco-friendly? Other interesting facts

The Olympic village for Paris Summer Games 2024 is ready and will be inaugurated by French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday. The facility has been built in a village in the suburb of Saint-Denis, in a run-down area that has been transformed into a 40 low-rise tower blocks.

But apart from being grand and sprawling over five residential areas, each named after a well-known area of Paris: Abbesses, Bastille, Dauphine, Etoile, Fetes, the Paris Olympics athletes’ village will be eco-friendly which promises to emit 50% less carbon than an equivalent residential setup built by traditional methods.

How?

We take a look at how the athletes’ village in Paris has made itself eco-friendly and everything else interesting about it.

Pro environment village

One of the major methods through which the village has tried to cut down emissions is to use natural materials and eco-friendly resources – like low-carbon concrete, wood structures and renewable geothermal heating.

“We had the intuition – and we think we’ve proved it – that we could provide a sort of template, a demonstration, that dense urban spaces have a future in the 21st century,” Nicolas Ferrand, head of the Paris infrastructure group Solideo, told reporters recently.

The village was a “coherent model of the best things we can do at the start of the 21st century, even a bit ahead of time,” he added.