mathieu lehanneur unveils paris 2024 torch as bat-like steel that mimics ripples of seine river

Paris 2024 torch is made of steel

Mathieu Lehanneur is the designer of the torch for the Paris 2024 Olympics and Paralympics. For him, designing the Paris 2024 Olympic torch is a dream that only comes true once in a lifetime. In his words, it is like a miraculous encounter with history, a mythical object that can be as ritualistic as it is magical. ‘As a symbol of cohesion and sharing, it is the veritable key to opening the Games. It will cross thousands of kilometers, passed from hand to hand, over land and sea,’ the French designer says. ‘For Paris 2024, and for the first time in its history, it will play with perfect symmetry to better express a message of equality. I wanted it to be extremely pure, iconic, and almost essential. Simple like a hyphen and fluid like a flame.’

Made of steel, the Paris 2024 torch is split into two parts. Lehanneur polishes the upper part until it uncovers a smooth surface, enough to reflect the light of the surroundings. He sculpts and dents the bottom part to reflect the imagery of waves, an homage to and depiction of the rippling water in the River Seine. Moving back up, he cuts a slit on the side of the steel torch to let the flames seep through the side before they funnel upwards. In this way, whatever the weather condition will be, the flames will only sway and not die down.

The designer is collaborating with one of the Games’ official partners, ArcelorMittal, in manufacturing the steel torches. The organization plans to only produce 2,000 operational torches in hopes of reducing the carbon footprint in manufacturing, and the expected resulting weight of the torch is around 1.5 kilos. Before working on the design, Mathieu Lehanneur says he looked back at the previous torch designs of the Games to see what has been done and could be done. He attempted not to introduce elaborate design elements and let a modest design speak for itself. For the designer, the question of balance and essence came to play during the process of designing the torch.

images courtesy of Paris 2024 and Mathieu Lehanneur

Mathieu Lehanneur depicts the idea of symmetry

Mathieu Lehanneur quotes Victor Hugo, a passage that left an indelible impression on him and propelled his design engine. The words informed him well enough that he knew how to approach the visuals of the Paris 2024 torch. ‘Form is the substance which rises to the surface,’ the quote goes. From here, the French designer worked around turning the values that underline the Paris 2024 Olympics and Paralympics games into a tangible shape, into the form of an all-weather torch.

His foundational thought process was the question of equality and parity as he notes that the 2024 games in Paris will be the first time that the number of male and female athletes in both the Olympics and Paralympics participating is equal. Here, the idea of symmetry came to his mind, thus the visual element of uniform slopes and shapes as if the top is mirroring the bottom. From afar, the Paris 2024 torch resembles two bottles of champagne whose ends are connected, their corks popped to let the fire out.

Mathieu Lehanneur unveils the Paris 2024 torch as bat-like steel that mimics ripples of seine river

Paris 2024 torch resembles ripples of river seine

Mathieu Lehanneur says that the second visual aspect he and the design team looked into for the Paris 2024 torch glimpsed at the context of Paris, the home of the 2024 games, and what, other than the Eiffel Tower, may encompass its iconography. Since the opening ceremony will bring participants and attendees into the heart of the city on the Seine River, Mathieu Lehanneur snapped the lightbulb moment and incorporated the elements of water into the design. The lower part of the torch ripples like the movement of water when a stone is thrown at the River Seine.

He says the curves and the waves express peacefulness, an ideology that ties in with the symbol of the torch in the Olympics and Paralympics games which draws upon generosity and fraternity. His Paris 2024 torch then brings up the idea of gathering all people in a single space, marking the torch as an object that resolves any differences and impurities that may be living in people’s mindsets. To even highlight the two parts of the torch, Mathieu Lehanneur makes the upper part polished and refined, so smooth that light bounces back, and the lower part, doubling as the handle the participants will hold on to, glistening in refracted rays of light.

the slit on the side lets the flames out sideways too for an all-weather-condition torch