A Virtuous Timber Crossing for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games

As part of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, the development of a new neighbourhood (called ‘Cluster des medias’) required the creation of a pedestrian and cyclist link across the A1 freeway, between cities of Le Bourget and Dugny. The project, intended as a legacy for a rather impoverished area of Northern Paris, was completed through a designbuild contract with a minimal carbon footprint. The design included a 100m long glued laminated timber deck, locally sourced, reinforced earth embankments, low carbon concrete piers and dense plantings in order to be lower than the target footprint (2087 TC02eq) set by the client: Solideo. The project emissions eventually achieved 1166 TCO2eq, so half less as required and demonstrating several design strategies to make future crossings more sustainable with less maintenance. The aim of this article is to present the detailed design and construction stages of the project, with a focus on the timber deck - a three-span strut frame fabricated from stepped planks – and the design philosophy used to reduce as much as possible the its whole carbon footprint