Chaired by Anne Hidalgo, the Olympic Works Delivery Company (Solideo) “Builds everything that will remain after the Games”, summarizes Nicolas Ferrand, its managing director. This 49-year-old urban engineer, a graduate of Ecole Polytechnique and MIT, has notably worked in the new town of Marne-la-Vallée. With a budget of 3.6 billion euros, the Olympic Works Delivery Company coordinates 29 different contracting authorities and all the big names in French construction with a view to delivering, by December 31, 2023. , 62 different works. The two main ones are the Olympic village, straddling the municipalities of Saint-Denis, Saint-Ouen and Ile-Saint-Denis, which is to accommodate 15,000 athletes, and will be transformed after the Games into a residential and offices designed to accommodate 6,000 residents and as many employees. And media village, on the edge of the departmental park of La Courneuve, in the town of Bourget.
The other equipment is carried out by the local authorities under the supervision of the Solideo, which ensures that the sites do not fall behind in a very tight schedule: the Marina for sailing by the city of Marseille, the Olympic Aquatic Center by the Greater Paris Metropolis near the Stade de France, the Aubervilliers swimming pool by the town and the Arena II Porte de La Chapelle by the Paris town hall. Interview.
You have just returned from Tokyo: what are your impressions of the Olympic books and the lessons you have drawn from them for the French Games?
A reporter spoke of “Melancholy games”, the expression is very correct: everything was ready, the Japanese were all at their posts with this thoughtfulness, this attention that characterizes them and it was empty. It was strange, like we were waiting for something to happen. It was extremely well organized and I was impressed by the quality of finish of the works: absolutely smooth concrete, the frame of the Olympic stadium was perfect, the Ariaké gymnasium, this assembly of wooden joists that makes it look like a Kapla , is a small masterpiece which can be dismantled. Getting such a perfect finish will be a real challenge for us. In addition, while they built a lot more than us, the Japanese were perfectly on time: they had finished six months before the Olympics. We who have world leaders in construction must do at least as well.
The second lesson is that around the equipment we need a lot of space. The logistical complexity is such that it is necessary to double the surface of the competition site. However, as much the Tokyo Games were built in the periphery, as the French Games are urban. How to set up all this provisional – the tents, the Algecos, the kilometers of cable, etc. – in such a dense area? Finally, the third challenge is the quality of the reception. In Tokyo, once we were checked at the entrance, we were absolutely free to move around the sites. In the Olympic Village, they have done very well with the restaurant, managing to make this huge machine, which serves 2,800 place settings, 24 hours a day, a friendly place, very bright, and fairly quiet. We will have to do just as well dining hall within the Cité du Cinéma in Saint-Denis.
How will the French Games be different from previous editions in terms of construction and town planning?
Our singularity is that we do less new equipment and more renovations. In terms of volume, we build half as much as in London in 2012. In terms of cost, the French Games should cost 2.5 times less than the Japanese: 7.4 billion euros for Paris, 15 billion euros. euros for Tokyo according to the official budget, the real budget being much larger. The Japanese built a lot in concrete due to seismic and climatic constraints, where we favored wood. This is also explained by the fact that their project was developed in 2010, and ours from 2017: it therefore displays a very strong environmental ambition. These will be the first Games aligned with the Paris Agreements.
Our approach has been to favor sobriety, reuse and quality of life for the inhabitants. For example, the work on the Olympic Village, which will occupy an area of 330,000 m², will emit 47% less carbon than what is done today for the same volume. France aims to reduce its CO2 emissions by 50% by 2030, but we can already achieve this objective today. In this regard, the Games will make it possible to show the world what our construction industry is capable of, it will be a showcase of French know-how. In the Tokyo Olympic Village, which was built entirely of concrete, there is individual air conditioning in all rooms. We looked at Météo France and anticipated that from 2050, it will be as hot every summer as during the 2003 heatwave. The buildings have been designed so that the temperature never exceeds 26 degrees, except for 150. hours per year. This shows that we are able to build a building without air conditioning.
The other dimension is reversibility. The buildings that will house the athletes, in what will be student rooms, will become family apartments and offices. They are flexible, and our successors can very easily recompartmentalize them to give them a third life. We don’t just build for ourselves, but for future generations.
You present the Games as an accelerator of development, and in particular of Seine-Saint-Denis, but for your detractors, they are rather an accelerator of concreteization. What do you say to them?
First of all, all we do during these Games is to implement a political project that had existed for 20 years. The Olympic village was carried by Patrick Braouezec [l’ancien maire PCF de Saint-Denis et président de l’agglomération Plaine Commune, ndlr], which wanted to transform the industrial zone located at the Plaine Saint-Denis, around the Cité du cinema and the Stade de France. Likewise, the media village makes it possible to accelerate the transformation, desired by Stéphane Troussel. [le président PS du Conseil départemental, ndlr], of the area around the T11 station between Dugny and Le Bourget.
We did not create out of nothing these projects but the Olympics are a huge accelerator: we do in 6 years what would have taken between 10 and 20 years. For example, the La Courneuve park will be extended by 13 hectares thanks to the decontamination of a former military site, the “Essences Land”, which will host the shooting events. Without the Games, we would never have found the 12 million euros needed for pollution control.
To read also, the series “JO 2024 and Environment”
–
There were three points of contestation. The media village on the Aire des vents, justice has ruled. For the Pleyel interchange, the Council of State rejected on August 5 the appeal of an association of parents of pupils who feared that the overhaul of the road network would no longer lead to road traffic. There remains the Aubervilliers training pool: the building permit [qui n’a pas encore été déposé par la mairie, ndlr] could be attacked by allotment garden users.
In reality, it is an old project, which dates back to 2005, when Paris bid for the 2012 Games. At the time, the Olympic swimming pool was to be built in Aubervilliers but ultimately the choice for 2024 fell on St Denis. The city, which lacks sports equipment, has obtained in compensation the construction of a pool which will be used for training during the Games. You should know that in Seine-Saint-Denis, there are a lot of families who do not go on vacation, so a swimming pool is more than lines of water where people swim laps, but it is a place to have a good time, with a slide, a water park, etc. This is the case with the Aulnay-sous-Bois swimming pool which was recently inaugurated by the Prime Minister.
This will also be the case for this swimming pool at Aubervilliers or the other training basins that will be built. Some say that to avoid biting the allotment gardens, all you have to do is remove the solarium. But below, there is all the machinery of the swimming pool. Giving up the solarium would mean resuming the whole project, but in this case we will not meet the deadlines.
As a town planner, and in the light of your experience, have you noticed any greater resistance to urban development projects? After the Notre-Dame-des-Landes ZAD, we had the one against the Triangle de Gonesse, which got the better of the Europacity project, and now we have the Aubervilliers JAD (“Gardens to defend”)…
You should know that the nineteen gardens that must be destroyed will be reconstituted, and that 17 owners out of the 19 members of the association of the “Garden of virtues” have given the green light. Still, the attachment to these gardens, to a land that was shaped by their hands, is quite understandable. In another position that I held, in Rennes, I moved allotment gardens; What is complicated with the Games is that we have very little time to support the project, we cannot allow ourselves an extra year to amend it in line with people’s expectations, for example. In addition there was a change of mayor in Aubervilliers [dirigée depuis 2020 par l’UDI Karine Franclet, ndlr].
Beyond that, the opposition expressed in Aubervilliers is a political subject, in the noble sense of the term: what do we do with collective goods? A question that will also arise for the more global development project of Fort d’Aubervilliers, where the future Grand Paris Express station will be built. It has been declared of public utility and there also about twenty allotment gardens should be relocated. Generally speaking, I would not say that the challenge is greater. When I started my career, some public meetings were already very heated, I remember a farmer who was ready to swing his chair at me!
Today, there is a stronger expectation to be convinced that the project is good, that all the questions people are asking have been answered. We need more time for pedagogy, conviction and listening. At the heart of these conflicts of use, we always encounter the same contradiction: we live in a planet with limited resources and at the same time we must continue to house people – and particularly in Ile-de-France. How to build them with sobriety and economy of means while responding to the housing crisis is the question we have tried to answer with these Games.
– .
