Dominique Perrault is the architect and urbanist who conceived of the Paris 2024 Olympic Village. On December 12 he gave the AAPA a fascinating presentation on the thinking behind the village, which is meant to become a new, durable neighbourhood of the city following the Games, part of a great number of building works now underway in Seine-St-Denis, the poorest department in mainland France.
This former brownfield site of factories in the north of Paris is being turned into residences (including 30% social housing) and offices. The new neighbourhood will sit beside the Seine, within a short walk of what is going to become the joint largest metro hub in the Paris region, the Saint Denis-Pleyel station. Perrault helped coordinate the work of the various architects working on the site, endeavoring to ensure that the individual buildings added up to a coherent neighbourhood. The Village project is part of the remaking of the Paris region in the coming years, an “accompaniment” (Perrault said modestly) to the Grand Paris Express transport project.