The upcoming Paris Olympics are expected to impress and dazzle. They might innovate our way of living, too.
“I'm proud of these innovations, and hopefully some of them will be reused in other parts of France and other parts of the world,” said Yann Krysinski, senior vice president of project management at SOLIDEO, the Paris-based company tasked with financing, supervising and delivering the Olympic facilities.
In the buildup to the Paris Games, Krysinski and his team have set out to squash the Olympics’ carbon footprint and provide a sustainable living model that supersedes sports.
“It's not just about delivering a project,” Krysinski told NBC Olympics from SOLIDEO’s Paris headquarters. “It's about delivering a project that will make future projects more efficient and more innovative.
“We hope that our legacy will survive after us, and that other people will reuse some of our ideas.”
Crushing carbon
Before each Olympics, cities build stadiums, arenas, pools, beaches and fields. They need to construct an Athletes’ Village capable of housing thousands of athletes. They need to pave new roads and transport millions of fans, athletes, volunteers and media.
“Our greatest Olympic legacy will be in terms of reduction of our carbon footprint,” said Nicolas Ferrand, SOLIDEO’s CEO.
And the Paris 2024 organizers have followed suit, setting a goal to slash the carbon footprint of the Games in half.
SOLIDEO hatched a plan to reuse and repurpose previously existing infrastructure to build this year’s Olympics. In fact, the company says that 94% of construction material is reused.
“We decided to refurbish and renovate rather than construct something new,” Krysinski said. “We had to take down a lot of existing buildings. We then smashed the concrete of those buildings and mixed it with other things to make the roads, the soil and all the things we need to build public spaces.”
This environmentally friendly process will give the Paris Games a unique look.
“You will see maybe some of the infrastructures in Paris will look brand new,” Krysinski added. They will not be as as as shiny as if we had built it from scratch, but we take responsibility for that and want to use this to tell people, ‘Well, it's not as shiny, but it's much more carbon-efficient than building something from scratch.’”
Further limiting emissions, SOLIDEO committed to using wood, a carbon-friendly material, for all buildings under 28 meters in the Olympic Village.
If we build every single new city or building using 50% less carbon than the code, then that will be great for the world to combat climate change.
Cooling down
The average July high temperature in Paris hovers around 80 degrees Fahrenheit, causing visitors to crave the ice-cold, relieving blasts of air conditioning.
This comes at a cost: Air conditioning releases 1.95 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year, according to a study by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
As a result, the Olympic Village in Paris is free of AC. But that doesn’t mean it’s going to be hot.
Instead of air conditioning, the Village features an environmentally-friendly cooling system that cools from under residents’ feet. In the system, cold, underground water — dug from 70 meters deep — circulates through pipes in building floors. This naturally brings down the temperature of each room.
“It's not air conditioning,” Krysinski noted. “But it’s an almost carbon-free way to bring down temperatures inside the apartments.”
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) mandated to Paris 2024 that the temperature in each room is no less than 11 degrees Fahrenheit colder than the outside temperature. SOLIDEO ran tests a few weeks ago on a hot day in Paris, which indicated that the temperature inside reached this goal, and then some.
“Our goal is to show that without air conditioning, it's still a very comfortable place to live in,” Krysinski said.
But with many visiting nations — like the United States — accustomed to robust air conditioning systems in their homes, organizers did add portable air-conditioning units to the Village rate card, a list of add-ons that visiting nations can purchase.
Nearly a third of the total 10,500 athletes competing in Paris, including the U.S., British, and Canadian delegations, plan to use the portable AC.
“Culturally, some countries are used to living in a space that’s around 20 degrees Celsius (68 degrees Fahrenheit) when it’s super hot outside. And so I understand them.”
Serving as a backdrop is the fact that, in France and most other parts of Europe, air conditioning isn't as integral to life as in America. A combination of strict European Union energy regulations and a general willingness to embrace the heat of the summer means that many apartments, offices and hotel rooms throughout Europe lack air conditioners.
An International Energy Agency study revealed that, in 2022, the penetration rate of air conditioning was 90% in the U.S., compared to just 19% in Europe.
This year's Olympic Village will reflect that culture.
Air ‘mushrooms’
As athletes pile into the Village, they’ll notice seven gigantic structures they surely have never seen before.
“They look like mushrooms,” Krysinski admits.
They’re called Aerophiltres. They do look like giant mushrooms, and they tower nearly six meters above the Village.
The Aerophiltres are essentially clean air fountains. They capture polluted air — enough to fill nine Olympic-size swimming pools per hour — and spit out clean air.
SOLIDEO partnered with French firm Aerophile to develop the structures, which they say capture 95% of all types of particulate matters, down to the microscopic. The Aerophiltres were strategically erected within earshot of Paris’ crowded A86 autoroute to provide clean air for athletes in the vicinity.
“All that dust in the air and the car fumes are really bad for your lungs,” Krysinski said. “So, we put these in the Village's main plaza where all the athletes are going to gather. You can sit and breathe air from which we removed that dust.”
Builders installed benches under each Aerophiltre, enough to seat roughly 30 athletes at a time in the plaza. And a similar experiment is underway at a nearby school in Paris.
“The athletes will sit there and hopefully will have a good experience breathing,” Krysinski said. “We believe that a city and public spaces should feel comfortable. We're very excited for the Games, because it's a good excuse for us to show this, thanks to the spotlight on us.”
A forever Village
This summer, more than 20,000 Olympic and Paralympic athletes, plus support staff, will pile into the Athletes’ Village.
Then, a year later, 6,000 new residents plan to move into the futuristic neighborhood.
“A big part of our legacy is that we're using the Games as an excuse to provide additional housing,” Krysinski said.
The Village, located in the northern part of Paris on the banks of the River Seine, will be converted into a permanent neighborhood, complete with housing, offices, restaurants and shops.
The area incorporates the towns of Saint-Denis, Saint-Ouen and l'Ile-Saint-Denis, covering almost 330,000 square meters of land. Previously, it was a run-down “industrial wasteland,” according to French newspaper Le Monde.
It shouldn’t take more than a year to convert the Olympic Village into a long-term neighborhood, and SOLIDEO plans to have residents move in by fall 2025. They’ll need to install kitchens into apartments, re-partition rooms and, of course, redecorate, but the Village was designed with the future in mind. Additionally, two schools are being constructed for the full-time residents, along with two nurseries, two gymnasiums, 15 art works, a bridge and 9,000 trees.
But first, during the Olympics and Paralympics, athletes can take advantage of the Village’s shopping mall, post office, multi-faith religious center, hairdresser and 24-hour fitness center. And for the first time, the Village will feature a mindfulness and relaxation area for athletes, called the "Athlete365 Mind Zone.”
Virtual reality headsets for meditation are available to athletes, in addition to sleep pods, art activities and an alcohol-free bar. The zone’s dimly-lit environment is designed for serenity, resembling a spa. With mental health in mind, a mental health helpline has been installed in 70 languages for all Olympic and Paralympic athletes.
It’s fitting that such innovation is taking place in Paris. This year marks the 100th anniversary of the first-ever Olympic Village, which housed athletes at the 1924 Paris Games. That original Village Olympique consisted of portable wood cabins next to the Olympic Stadium.
The 2024 version would qualify as science fiction to the Olympians of 1924.
They’d appreciate the food, too. Per day, 45,000 meals will be served in a sprawling dining hall that features six food courts, each with a theme, including French, Asian and Afro-Caribbean. Much of the cuisine will be gourmet — this is France, after all.
One grab-and-go dish on the menu is a poached-egg croissant with artichoke cream, goat cheese and truffles. Another is za’atar-spiced sweet potatoes with hummus.
In line with limiting the Games’ carbon footprint, 80% of the food will come from France, limiting transportation costs.
One notable exception: bananas, which aren’t grown in France. So, 3 million bananas have been ordered for the Olympics.
They’re certified organic, of course.