Partnership Les Ateliers du Chêne X École spéciale d’architecture de Paris – Archi-Folies

Master’s students at École spéciale d’architecture (ESA) de Paris are currently working on the Badminton Pavilion in Parc de la Villette for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. It was in this context that ESA Paris approached Les Ateliers du Chêne to supply the lumber needed to build the pavilion’s framework.

During the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games, the Parc de la Villette will be a place to celebrate medal-winning athletes and offer a program for all audiences, at the crossroads of sport and culture, and showcasing young French creation.

The Parc de la Villette has included Archi-Folies, a meeting between sport and architecture, in this Cultural Olympiad. What is Archi-Folies? The creation, from design to construction, of 20 pavilions dedicated to 20 sports by 20 French schools of architecture. These pavilions, or follies, are intended to host sports demonstrations during the Olympic Games, and their architecture must reflect the values of this sport.

The Ecole Spéciale d’Architecture (ESA) in Paris was commissioned to design the Badminton Pavilion. 40 Master’s students, supervised by 4 experienced Design-Build* lecturers, took up the challenge of this Olympic workshop to produce an architectural project called “L’Envol”.

L’Envol” pavilion features a canopy, a light structure made of wooden lattice girders, as well as an enclosure and furniture made from recycled materials. The ESA de Paris approached Charlois, through its sawmill Les Ateliers du Chêne, to supply the lumber needed to build the pavilion’s framework.

After several months of design and prefabrication, the project is now entering its home stretch with the assembly of the pavilion on the Parc de la Villette site.

It’s an ambitious project that we’ve had the pleasure of following throughout its design phase, and which we invite you to discover in Paris from June 14, 2024, and throughout the Olympic summer!

Photographs © D.R.

*Design-build is a project management method in which a project initiator signs a single contract with a single entity, which will provide both design (conception and architecture) and construction (project management and execution of work) services. This method creates a single workflow, from project start to finish, to simplify procedures, reduce risks (delays, misunderstanding of the project, etc.) and avoid conflicts of responsibility.