CAO

To surpass
yourself.
Reflexive verb.

To perform better than you have ever done before; to outdo yourself. To exceed. To go beyond.

GO BEYOND

▶ THE KEY WORDS

Work.
Professional and personal investment essential for carrying out a project.

Sharing.
Honesty and humility in sharing approaches, ideas and pencil strokes. Key to success for smooth work and the final victory.

Respect.
We don't win without each other. Showcasing the qualities of each team member and their decisive contribution to this collective project.

Pride.
A feeling born out of participation in a large- scale project, considered above all in terms of heritage, for the common good.◀

02/23

a human adventure

▶

Ateliers 2/3/4/:
Laure Mériaud
Yves de Pommereau
Arnaud Tallon
Clément Arnaud
Xavier Constant
Anne-Laure Grandsir
Marion Thibault
Margot Lamazou
Jean-Jacques
Vanassche
Victor Toulemonde
Malo Mahuzier
Grégoire Worms
Frédéric El Bekkay
Charlotte Gambotti

VenhoevenCS:
Cécilia Gross
Ton Venhoeven
Julie Fuchs
Arjen Zaal
Tjeerd Hellinga
Eraldo Brandimarte
Jérémy Cassin
Yann Trégoat
Nicolas
Handtschoewercker
Rubing Xu
Wai Ming Lam
Ivo Brandes
Timothée Pignoux
Maria Boletou
Arjan Pot
Louis van Wamel
Grzegorz Balinski ◀

If the life of top athletes and teams is punctuated by international competitions, the Olympic and Paralympic Games occupy a special place. They are a dream, a path and an accomplishment at the same time, the result of teamwork, perseverance and humility. The journey of athletes is similar to that of architects. It takes seven years on average for a project to see the light of day, from tender applications to the delivery of the building or equipment... In other words, this achievement is a human adventure. In this regard, the collaboration between VenhoevenCS and Ateliers 2/3/4/ serves as an example. From the start, this was obvious. Firstly, due to the complementarity of the two agencies and two cultures, identified, in particular, by Anne-Laure Grandsir and Cécilia Gross.

On one hand, Ateliers 2/3/4/, a French architecture, urban development, landscaping, infrastructure and interior architecture and design agency, performs collaborative work around contemporary cities. Its analysis and research on social, urban, functional and cultural issues generate bespoke projects, where the architecture mission consists of providing that 'something extra': emotion, space, aesthetics and usage

On the other hand, VenhoevenCS, a Dutch architecture, infrastructure and urban development agency, designs and creates the cities and urban areas of tomorrow. Environmentally responsible, it applies its research and innovation to the project in order to create attractive, lively spaces in harmony with their ecosystem.

Secondly, due to the meeting of the two architects, Cécilia Gross and Laure Mériaud, partners in their respective agencies. At the basis of their arrangement and collaboration was the same approach to the architect profession, marked by humility and ambition, with the desire to work at all project levels in order to conceive architecture for the common good and offer the same spatial qualities to all audiences. And, in particular, the same attention to urgent issues of sustainable architecture.

Their first challenge was to build a team in their image, with complementary skills and sensibilities that was coherent and solid, where each person would be able to come out of their comfort zone, exchange, dare, renew their motivation and retain their ambitions and enthusiasm for the project.

This culture of collaboration and optimism displayed by the team of architects also found its echo with all stakeholders in the project, including Bouygues Bâtiment Ile-de-France and Recréa, united around a strong vision that is capable of gaining support and leading a team to victory, whatever the challenges. A winning setup that calls for another relationship to architecture and the city.

PARIS → AMSTERDAM

a common vision and common concerns

▶ AND A FEW KEY FIGURES

2 agencies, 31 people, 6 nationalties, 1 cloud with 1 Revit municipality model and very short timeframes for each stage of the project,

5 months of lockdown in France and The Netherlands, the impossibility of crossing borders for 1 year, few breaks in 3 years. ◀

To become a reality, the dream must be adorned with determination and audacity. Whether athletes or architects, only those who set the most ambitious and sometimes the most ludicrous targets, in terms of results and impact, manage to overcome difficulties and offer fair and innovative solutions with renewed optimism. Thus, from Paris to Amsterdam, a commitment and vision shared by VenhoevenCS and Ateliers 2/3/4/ on the issues inherent to sustainable development, inclusiveness and density emerge and contribute to establishing the foundations of a new architecture. Where constraint becomes value- creating, both in its spatial qualities and in its usages. Where simplicity is no longer an obstacle but a catalyst of innovation and the basis of a philosophy consisting of doing better with less.

An architecture situated, that is to say conceived, based on its relationship to its environment and the city, which places the user at the heart of the teams’ considerations. They build for the region, to achieve integration into an urban, social and cultural fabric and, in this manner, to generate links and spaces for meeting and interacting.
The whole challenge consists of creating possibilities at all project levels: usage scenarios conceived for today's needs, rooted in history and a specific environment, which will be able to adapt to future developments. Individually and collectively, it is about surpassing oneself and going beyond the very framework of their discipline to design for future generations.

↘00

co-design: an iterative process

Victory in an Olympic event, just like the success of an architectural, urban and landscaping programme, is a collective work, based on a fair assessment of the issues, resources and efforts required to achieve it.

The first thing to do is build a common framework based on collective ambitions, then identify and analyse each component of the project, whether programmatic, technical, social or environmental, and measure their impact and interaction. Through intense dialogue and exchanges with all project stakeholders, these components transform into a concept and then into a space to create a unique and innovative architecture. Each stage of doubt or questioning is shared with the same motivation to go beyond the ambitions for the project. Architectural innovation is a result of these considerations.
It was from the need to optimise energy spending by reducing the volume to be heated that the idea of a wooden structure with a curved roof was born. It was from the desire to consider the programme in its environment that it was conceived as a whole, with its scenic park and its crossing to the Stade de France, and not as a single object.
It was from the ambition to make it a comprehensible and sensitive achievement that its lines were imagined and that the lines were conceived from the plaza towards the cathedral or towards the Stade de France from the diving perspective. To surpass themselves and release themselves from the strangleholds and show things differently. To design architecture based on strong biases with enthusiasm and simplicity.

FOCUS

ARCHITECTURE IS AN ENDURANCE SPORT
When faced with challenges, the architect and the athlete have no option but to surpass themselves. They must constantly draw on their resources. It’s a marathon in which each milestone reached is a victory. You have to believe.
The competition lasts for a year and a half and the team has three months to familiarise itself with all of the documents and the programme. It deploys all its energy, creativity and ambition in each challenge, one after the other, without ever presuming its success, while anticipating the next round. The project began with a field survey on the needs of the users and residents of Saint-Denis. The first round is over. It was an architectural victory. Following the second round, in October 2019, the panel's decision was final: it was essential to save money and rethink the project. So as to not give way under the pressure of the challenge, the team had to take a time-out and a sideways step.

It gained maturity and learned from the doubt and the challenges. It only had two weeks to remobilise and surpass itself. It was a matter of not letting anything go from the initial concept and not giving up on the great ambitions for the project. The third round had to be a winning one. It started on 13 November 2019. For two months, until 12 February 202, the team had to “destabilise” a “stable” structure to make the most savings at all levels without impacting the coherence and strength of the project. It reduced volumes in order to make them more compact and economical. It was from this constraint that the pool modularity idea was born. Its audacity, nurtured by a mixture of ambition and a dash of recklessness proved to be a winner.

In the spring of 2020, while a large part of Europe and the world entered lockdown, the VenhoevenCS and Ateliers 2/3/4/ project was declared a success. If the lockdowns resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic created a form of isolation between the teams, they also facilitated the inception of horizontal collaboration between all stakeholders in the team. Every morning, they met on Teams and distributed the work, thus developing unprecedented work methods: surpassing themselves each day towards the first finish line, in March 2024.

The race is on, and we’re off!

The Aquatics
Centre
and its
pedestrian
crossing
in Saint-Denis

On 13 September 2017 in Lima, the International Olympic Committee officially selected Paris to be the host city of the Olympic and Paralympic Games for 2024. Greater Paris, the project manager of the aquatic centre and its crossing to Saint- Denis, entrusted the design and creation of the project to the group bringing together Bouygues and the agencies VenhoevenCS (Amsterdam) and Ateliers 2/3/4/ (Paris).

This series of fanzines invites you to dive, over the course of 8 issues, behind the scenes of this unique adventure in order to discover, through specific themes, the analyses and research at the origin of what will be the only large-scale facilities to be built for this Olympiad. Its ambition is to represent the values in it in order to contribute to making the Games the most sustainable in history, to be part of a changing historical landscape and to create a healthy, desirable city around nature and sporting activity. To be continued in the next edition...