Wood, the “gold medal” of materials for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games

The planetary event embodied by the Olympic Games has regularly been associated with soaring budgets and the setting aside of sites, once the medals have been distributed... This time, France intends to mark a socio-ecological pivot at the occasion of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. Its standard bearer: wood, a material used both for sports equipment and for the athletes' village (which will then be transformed into a sustainable district with mixed uses). The beginning of a virtuous circle?

The 2024 Olympic Games promise to be a turning point that embodies more than the spirit of the times: the time of a new era, necessary for the good continuity of human activities. To put an end to “disposable” and polluting events, the 2024 Olympic Games are counting on a material associated with construction for millennia: wood.

Brand new buildings made of wood (pine, spruce) will thus be made available to spectators and athletes, and meet the requirements of durability and aesthetics, and also sovereignty and reindustrialization of France.

A sign of this recognition: during his trip to Alsace in April 2023, Emmanuel Macron visited the premises of the Mathis company, one of the major players in wood construction.

Wood from sustainably managed forests

Set up in the immediate vicinity of Paris, the Olympic and Paralympic village of Pleyel – Bords de Seine will extend over a total area of 50 hectares.

« This village will have an accommodation capacity of 14.000 people and will represent 330.000 square meters of surface area, then transformed into mixed districts of housing, public facilities and offices. » explains Henri Spech, project director at the Olympic Structures Delivery Company (Solido).

« The construction of the village housing will be entirely made of wood. [This material will also be used] for facades of buildings over 28 meters high. All with wood half from French forests and all from sustainably managed forests » insists Georges-Henri Florentin, president of the France Bois 2024 committee.

According to the Paris Olympics organizing committee, once the sporting events are over, " the first legacy left to local populations and communities will be the creation of a new 'eco-city' of 3.500 housing units, [In] a pleasant and multifunctional urban ensemble ».

An emblematic sports site

From a sporting point of view, the Saint-Denis Olympic Aquatic Center will have the largest concave framework of wooden catenas in the world, with a surface area of 2.300 m², and an atypical structure, like “folded” downwards.

« Lowering the ceiling as much as possible reduces the volume of the building, and therefore its heating consumption », explained Philippe Rozier, deputy general manager of Solideo to the newspaper Les Échos, in November 2022.

It is a more flexible and dynamic material than concrete, so it was necessary to have several tie rods to prevent the structure from collapsing, and to increase the number of catenians. [...] which, depending on humidity and temperature, can expand by 10 centimeters! ».

The Paris Olympics will thus constitute a "life-size" demonstration of the quality of wood as a material: light, resistant and insulating, easy to work with, versatile.

The construction sites in the Ile-de-France region will also have demonstrated the ability to coordinate the various trades (architects, engineers, building contractors, carpenters, loggers), in order to optimize wood manufacturing techniques and processes.

Virtuous in essence

Wood is a material aligned with the low carbon objectives of the 2024 Olympics and those of the paris agreement adopted at the end of 2015.

Whether in terms of traceability, management of harvesting areas, low carbon impact, insulating qualities (thermal and acoustic) or even forest regeneration, wood systematically rises to the podium of sustainable development criteria.

In addition, it promotes the speed of execution during construction sites. And our country has a formidable reserve, with 17 million hectares of forests, that is to say one third of the surface of the metropolitan territory.

All this explains the choice of this renewable product, which stores carbon in the forest as well as in buildings, and which already represents 8% of construction in France, and 20% in Scandinavian countries.

¹ Source: France Bois 2024