Next in our Olympic Impact series, we speak to French architect Dominique Perrault about his ambitions for the Olympic Village in Paris beyond the games this summer.
"We don't want to build a village, we want to build a district, a new district," Perrault told Dezeen over video call from his office in Paris.
"I am not an architect in this process, I am an urban designer," he said.
Hosting more than 22,000 athletes, the Olympic Village at the 2024 Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games straddles industrial brownfield sites in the northern Parisian suburbs of Saint-Denis, Saint-Ouen-sur-Seine and ÃŽle Saint-Denis.
Masterplan is "very simple and very efficient"
The village is summarised by Perrault, who led the masterplan with his eponymous studio Dominique Perrault Architecture, simply as "two streets" anchored to the Seine river. "The idea is very simple and very efficient," he explained. "One street is more urban, with some buildings and some courtyards, going to the Seine river and connecting with a new bridge," he continued.
"The other one is more like a garden ? it's a street from the public transport station to the Seine river with more presence about landscape," added Perrault. "That's it."
Lining these "streets" is a cluster of colourful apartment and office blocks, developed by 40 different architecture studios including Dream and Brenac & Gonzalez & Associe?s, which designe...