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The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History has in its collection an object that provides entry into the very first Olympic Village: 1924 U.S. boxing team assistant manager Ben Levine’s official Olympic ID. The simple paper badge would have gotten Levine into his Olympic accommodations, a complex organized and specially constructed by the host city “complete with running water, a post office and hairdresser,” according to the museum’s description.
Prior to the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris, where a participant slept, what they ate and how they got to the site fell either on their team’s shoulders or their own. As such, players were scattered about the city with no central gathering place outside of competition. They stayed in hotels, rooming houses or with host families, and ate, trained and hung out on their own, making transportation a logistical nightmare. For an event designed to bring the entire world together for a few weeks in the name of international sportsmanship, the disparate nature of the typical athlete’s experience was antithetical to the spirit of the Games.
At least, that’s what Pierre de Coubertin thought. A co-founder of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Coubertin is widely considered the father of the modern Games thanks to his role in bringing to life the 1896 Summer Olympics in Athens and, in doing so, creating the blueprint for all future Olympics as multinational, multi-sport exhibitions. The French aristocrat was bullish about exercise, believing it was integral to any good education and that playing organized sports imbued participants with moral fortitude. He also believed that sports had the power to promote peace across borders, seeing friendly competition as a means for important cultural exchange and understanding.
The 1924 Paris Olympics were Coubertin’s final Games before retirement, his last shot at putting his international philosophy into action via thousands of athletes. That year, Coubertin’s IOC decreed via the General Technical Rules (now known as the Olympic Charter) that the Olympic organizing committee would be “required to provide the athletes with accommodation, bedding and food, at a fixed rate which shall be set beforehand per person and per day.”
In response, Olympic organizers in Paris erected a series of makeshift wooden cabins with everything from sleeping quarters and mess halls to a currency exchange and dry-cleaner. It wasn’t much to look at, but with three beds to a room and shared dining areas offering three meals each day, it certainly brought the athletes closer together. Coubertin’s vision had come to fruition.
Now, 100 years later, the village comes full circle with the 2024 Olympics, once again in Paris. The concept of the village has grown to meet current ideals.
“An Olympic Village needs to provide the necessary accommodation for athletes and support teams during the games, needs to be flexible to anticipate the various cultural and religious needs and customs of the Olympic guests, and support all the needs of accommodating so many people,” says Steve Wallis, associate director of dRMM Architects, one of the London firms behind the Olympic Village for the 2012 Summer Games. “Individually, the buildings or plots should have their own identities.”
Setting the standard
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As the Olympics evolved, so did the Olympic Village. The 1932 Los Angeles Games upped the ante, featuring modular bungalows for up to 2,000 athletes along with upgraded amenities like medical services, an open-air amphitheater and an array of flags at the entrance setting the tone for the global mini-city.
“Here athletes from the four quarters of the globe, with foreign customs, strange languages and different ideas, lived, associated and fraternized for the period of the Games,” wrote then-American Olympic Association president Avery Brundage in 1932’s American Olympic Committee report. “A large share of the credit for broken records can be ascribed to the superior arrangements for the comfort of the athletes.”
Every Summer Olympics from that year forward—with the exception of the 1948 London Games due to war-related budget constraints—featured a bigger and more diverse Olympic Village, each continuing to encourage cross-cultural mingling among participants.
While the original villages were limited to male Olympians, women joined the fold in 1956—though they’d been competing since 1900—when Melbourne organizers incorporated a separate women’s quarters into their village design. Men weren’t allowed inside this designated area, but dining halls and other shared spaces became co-ed. By the 1984 Los Angeles Games, built-in gender divides had dissolved, and athletes were instead housed by team.
Eventually, the Olympics burst onto the television screens that began proliferating in American living rooms, and the villages also leaned into technology. The 1960 Rome Olympics saw a sprawling complex with restaurants, shops and a movie theater. The 1964 Tokyo Games further embraced innovation, incorporating more efficiently constructed prefabricated housing units in addition to Rome’s bells and whistles.
“The Olympic Village afforded the athletes fine accommodations. The village itself was complete in every detail with a bank, post office, stores, entertainment facilities and fine dining halls,” wrote Kenneth L. Wilson, president of the United States Olympic Committee from 1953 to 1965, in the U.S. Olympic Committee’s 1960 report. “If there was any criticism to be given, it was that the meals were too good and too tempting for athletes who were on a training diet.”
But later, dark moments would cloud the village and Games. During the 1972 Munich Olympics, eight members of the Palestinian militant organization Black September breached the Olympic village five years after the Six-Day War. The group captured and killed two members of the Israeli Olympic team and took nine others hostage, eventually killing them too. Many blamed the Olympic Village’s lax security for the massacre, and subsequent host cities tightened up their athlete access and internal security force, forever altering the spirit of the villages.
“Yugoslav soldiers, many armed with Kalashnikov sub-machine guns and some flanked by guard dogs, patrolled the perimeter of Mojmilo, the main Olympic Village, the temporary home for most of the 1,591 athletes representing 49 nations in the 1984 Winter Games,” reads the introduction of the U.S. Olympic Committee’s report from that year. “Memories of 1972, when Palestinian terrorists infiltrated the athletes’ quarters in Munich and murdered 11 Israelis, made security a major Olympic concern in Sarajevo. Electronic detectors monitored every item brought into the village, and electrified fences, seven feet high, discouraged intruders.”
Life beyond the torch
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While the early constructions were purposefully disposable, later host countries began building their villages with an eye toward use well after the closing ceremony.
Modern Olympic Villages “function for the duration of the games, but also have a life beyond this,” Wallis says.
The post-Cold War era saw a renewed focus on environmental responsibility. In 1992, the Barcelona Olympics utilized pre-existing structures and emphasized public transportation access, converting its seafront Olympic Village’s dining hall into a shopping mall, while the training center became a multi-use arena. Subsequent Games followed suit, with a focus on making use of the infrastructure beyond the events, as in Sydney in 2000, where its Olympic Village was turned into housing complete with schools and child care facilities for more than 5,000 residents, and Beijing in 2008, where much of the village became public parkland and memorial spaces.
“The lessons learned from the London Olympics show that consideration of the legacy of the village is essential,” says Wallis.
According to Wallis, 16 different architectural practices came together to create that year’s Olympic Village, which spanned 11 plots of land and 67 different buildings. A master-plan design code ensured that each plot’s firm stayed within the aesthetic bounds of the project while also leaving its own mark. From the start, the architects behind the London Village knew they wanted to create something that not only met the needs of the Olympics but also could later seamlessly integrate itself into London’s greater urban fabric. After the athletes packed up and went home, what remained was a brand-new district—one that even got its own name.
“East Village, as the London Olympic Village is now known, has been very successfully transformed into a high-quality neighborhood,” Wallis says. “The high-density housing blocks are well balanced with landscaped public realm and active pedestrianized boulevards that buzz with commercial uses—it’s a wonderful representation of an English mews street writ large for the 21st century.”
Building goodwill from the inside out
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While the villages’ original function was to house athletes and create a self-sustaining hub where residents can access everything they need without ever leaving the complex, today’s Olympic Villages strike more of a balance between keeping competitors there and showing them everything the host city has to offer.
As in London, the 2024 Paris Olympic Village is also redefining its city’s layout. Stashed right on the Seine River, the village was designed to blend into the surrounding area, creating a new public space for residents and visitors alike. The emphasis on green spaces, pedestrian-friendly pathways and waterfront access aims to enhance the quality of life not just for the Olympians, but also for the local community.
Of course, this same ethos didn’t exactly ring true in Tokyo, where the 2020 Games were delayed to 2021 because of the Covid-19 pandemic, and Olympic Village harmony took a back seat to limiting the spread of the virus. Coming and going in tightly orchestrated shifts, Tokyo athletes had to adhere to a strict schedule, and socializing with other teams—both inside and outside the village—was kept to a minimum.
“The Paris Village feels more energetic and packed than Tokyo. In Tokyo, because of Covid, we had a pretty limited window of time before and after our event where we were allowed to be out there, so it was never at capacity,” says current USA Skateboarding women’s team head coach Alexis Sablone, who also competed at the Tokyo Games as a member of Team USA. “Here in Paris, we can also actually leave, so every night the bars and restaurants surrounding the village feel full—it’s definitely nice to see how that energy spills out.”
The state of the modern-day Olympic Village, it seems, is mutable. It’s designed with the efficiency and security needed to keep athletes happy and healthy inside, while simultaneously porous enough to soak up the host country’s essence.
“It’s so nice to get to spend time outside and experience the city,” adds Sablone. “I wish we had been able to do that in Tokyo, but obviously, it was a very different time, and I’m just glad we got to go to Tokyo at all.”