As part of their effort to make Paris 2024 the “most responsible and sustainable games in history,” organizers are building something that’s meant to last.

Instead of rooming in apartments tailor-made for them, athletes in the Olympic Village this summer will be living in what will become someone else’s home or workplace. The hope is that the project will provide a model to alleviate a housing crisis in the French capital, where rising interest rates, surging prices and a supply crunch have made it harder than ever to buy or rent a home.

Organizers are also running a handful of experiments to see if new green technologies and construction methods are viable in the real world. The human-caused climate crisis has made heat waves more frequent and intense, and they are starting earlier in the year in many parts of the world.

The most scrutinized innovation will likely be the geothermal cooling system, as athletes in Paris could face the same level of sweltering heat and humidity that broiled Tokyo during the Summer Olympics there three years ago.

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📸: Nathan Laine/Bloomberg/Getty Images; Joshua Berlinger/CNN