Olympic Aquatics Stadium
Located around 30 km from Paris, the "Stade nautique Olympique d'Île-de-France" is the first completed sports venue for the 2024 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games in France. It houses the largest whitewater centre in Europe and will be the venue for rowing, kayak as well as canoe racing and the slalom.
Since its completion and official opening in summer 2019, it has been available to international competitive athletes as well as to amateurs and the general public.
In 2012, the Île-de-France region decided to redesign, replan and add to the existing green and water spaces. This was to create a sports centre that would meet the requirements for a rowing and kayaking facility for the 2024 Olympic Games competitions. The planning team led by Auer Weber won the international design competition for the facility. The concept convinced the jury because the new infrastructures fitted perfectly into the existing terrain.
Set in a historic landscape, the 200-hectare Vaires-Torcy water sports park is located on the banks of the Marne River, east of Paris in the Île-de-France region. The large lake, which is its main component, closes it to the west, and to the east there is a recreation area with a bathing lake and a golf course. To the south, the park is bordered by the Marne River, and to the north by a shipping canal that bypasses the weirs and the mill of the historic Meunier chocolate factory. Like an island, the "Île de Vaires" recreation area is located between these two bodies of water.
In 2012, the Île-de-France Region decided to transform and supplement the existing green spaces and water areas – including the regatta course used for competitive and amateur sports, which also provided ideal conditions for other water sports such as sailing and windsurfing. The new water sports centre was to promote professional and amateur sports, and equally favour recreation and leisure activities. At the same time, the goal was to create a sports centre that would meet the requirements for a rowing and kayaking facility for the 2024 Olympic Games. The existing tennis hall on the north side of the shore was also to be renovated and supplemented with additional sports facilities in order to offer visitors an attractive leisure offer all year round.
The answer to this task is a landscape architecture project that fits into the existing green space, reinterprets it and perpetuates it. The resulting sports facilities are distributed over the entire area but nevertheless combined as a unit, not least due to the route concept and the arrangement of the building sections.
Water is omnipresent and creates fluid transitions between the individual installations. It structures the overall site and transforms the space into a mosaic of small islands – a "sports archipelago" composed of four different sports centres. These include a training and recreational sports centre (rowing and kayaking), athletes' housing and training facility, public water sports facilities, and public indoor sports facilities.
Architectural and landscape elements equally determine the appearance of the complex: A vibrant plateau spans from north to south, emerging from the flat area on the eastern edge of the lake. As a large, summarising gesture, it integrates all the main functions in one overall shape: competitive sports, accommodation facilities and public water sports faci- lities. This overarching horizontal band provides a connection for amateur athletes from the main entrance and parking area to the north to the public water sports facilities in the south. At the same time it separates the public from the sports facilities: The professional and amateur sports buildings are located beneath the wide, landscaped and partly balcony-like route, so that athletes can train undisturbed by visitors but at the same time remain visible and tangible to them.
Directly adjacent to the training centre, an axis runs across the landscape plateau. It connects the two judges' buildings with the central competition and media centre, which is surmounted on the platform by a panorama hall. The various facilities appear very homogeneous due to the reduced choice of materials – exposed concrete and wood. The facades of the buildings arranged beneath the plateau use polycarbonate panels, a material used in boat building.
The whitewater facility east of the plateau is designed as a canyon-like amphitheatre. Visitors thus have the best possible view of the competitions and can follow the action close up.
The layout and facilities take the biodiversity of the Vaires-Torcy recreational area into account, which is reflected in numbers:
Only 25% of the area of Vaires was affected by the works; 9.5 ha of new plantings compensate for the 6 ha of plants affected by the construction site; 800 m2 of new ponds have been created near the old ones; 2.5 ha of newly-planted hedges and groves replace the 1.2 ha-area affected by the project.
The water sports stadium of the Île-de-France region combines in a single location a landscaped and didactic river, a whitewater course for competitions and training, a 2-km long water surface, sports halls, accommodations and a dining establishment. The facilities meet Olympic standards.
In order to be able to host international competitions, the stadium is equipped with a pumping system that guarantees a flow of up to 14 m3/s in the competition channel and up to 10 m3/s in the training channel. The obstacles mounted on rails can be moved to allow different water movements depending on the requirements.
