In their time, first the metro, then the RER transformed Paris and the Parisian region. Today, the Grand Paris Express is very likely going to reshape the Parisian metropolis, Grand Paris.
The Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games represent the first key step in this process, making 2024 a defining moment for the convergence and co-ordination of large projects: Olympic sites re-shaping a whole section of north Paris, the first Grand Paris Express lines, calls for innovative urban projects for Paris and the Metropolis… The Olympic and Paralympic Games turned Barcelona into a European destination and radically transformed London’s East End, so could the Paris 2024 Games mark the birth of Grand Paris?
In order to bring these long-term projects to term and be ready to welcome the whole world to Paris for the duration of an Olympic summer, the building programme is being re-thought in response to the impermanent nature of much of what is being demanded. In consequence, customised, temporary and flexible hosting and accommodation programmes have emerged. In a sort of Grand Paris Olympics laboratory, innovative funding arrangements, building methods, legal structures and business models are being tried out, which, in a way, match basic evolution-led usages tending towards greater diversity, reversibility, ability to evolve and temporary purpose. And what if tomorrow’s building programmes were in the throes of being re-invented under our very eyes in response to the atmosphere of urgency and the unusual challenges of the Olympic and Paralympic Games? Would we collectively know how to make the Olympic and Paralympic Games a showcase for the French capacity for innovation in this field?
The Conference, organised by the Groupe X-Ponts Pierre, will take place on November 5th and will bring together the key players in the Olympic and Paralympic Games and the property sector. They will discuss the hosting of the event, the many knock-on effects it will have on Grand Paris and the way the property sector will be profoundly transformed.
Dominique Alba, architect and Director of Apur, will speak at this Conference which is open to the public.
