Archinect - News

Labor and funding disputes are impelling repair work on the Eiffel Tower

2024-04-18T18:20:00-04:00

To date, only 30% of the tower has been repainted. Adding more than 100 weekly operations to monitor the lead increased annual running costs from €50m to €92m—and may reach a staggering €130m. The unions have also denounced the state of infrastructure, which sees tourists with tickets still queuing for up to three hours.

In February, the Société d’Exploitation de la Tour Eiffel (or SETE), which operates the tower announced losses nearing $2 million as a result of the weeklong strike. Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo has sparred openly with both France’s culture and tourism ministers about the tower’s lacking historical monument status and security situation on the Champ de Mars. The presence of lead paint and the pandemic have also combined to frustrate repair work efforts. The landmark’s last official full paint job, the nineteenth since it opened, was completed in 2010.

Will the 2024 Olympic flame be installed on the Eiffel Tower?

2023-05-26T15:02:00-04:00

Paris 2024 organisers have been planning to install the Olympic flame on the Eiffel Tower, a source with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters on Monday. The source added that the flame would not be put at the top of the Eiffel Tower, for technical reasons, and it was not clear whether it would stay on the monument throughout the Games but the combination of two such iconic images would be a dramatic backdrop to the July 26-Aug. 11 event.

The new antenna array on top of the tower is the only thing preventing the flame from alighting (pun) on its freshly-painted pinnacle. The flame traditionally symbolizes the continuity of the ancient into modernity.

Notre-Dame Cathedral, meanwhile, will not have its own makeover readied in time for the 2024 summer games' commencement on July 26, as per the French government's latest update.

The Eiffel Tower is getting a new 60 million euro paint job in lieu of some much-needed repairs

2022-07-12T12:01:00-04:00

According to CNN, the unnamed need for maintenance was first uncovered in confidential reports obtained by the French periodical Marianne. Rust damage to the structure has accumulated over the years, a product of the lead contained within the paint which was originally meant to protect its steel from oxidizing but is now slowly making its condition worse in the opinion of at least one structural engineer with knowledge of the situation.

As Marianne noted, this represents the 20th time the tower, which Gustave Eiffel originally conceived of as a 20-year temporary installation, has been repainted since its debut as the centerpiece of the 1889 Exposition Universelle. The latest round will reportedly cover a mere 5% of the entire 1,063-foot structure. An unnamed expert told the magazine: "At best, it will be mostly useless, but at the very worst, it will make the defects in the existing layer of paint worse and result in corrosion."

Related on Archinect: Paris mayor announces €300M Eif...

The Eiffel Tower has grown a bit taller for the second time this century

2022-03-16T13:52:00-04:00

The Eiffel Tower grew by six meters (nearly 20 feet) on Tuesday after engineers hoisted a new communications antenna at the very top of France’s most iconic landmark. With the new antenna, the Eiffel Tower grew from 324 meters (1,063 feet) tall to 330 meters (1,083 feet).

The Iron Lady’s first such extension was installed in 1957 and followed in 2000 by the installation of a UHF display, which brought the official height to the just-surmounted total of 324 meters (1,063 feet). Tuesday’s addition of the new DAB+ antenna now brings the structure even further away from its original height of 312 meters (1,023 feet) at construction.

A helicopter was used to transport the antenna to the technicians in charge of installing it at a height of 324m A rare and spectacular technical feat! #tourEiffel330M @TDFgroupe pic.twitter.com/9qytcpAeiT
— La tour Eiffel (@LaTourEiffel) March 15, 2022

Owing to its height, Gustave Eiffel’s iconic structure has long served Paris and the Île-de-France region as a transmitting beacon beginning with its first broadcast in 1898. The radio itself is said to have in part saved the tower from its original 20-year hard cap, gaining a 70-year extension in 1910 thanks to its inventor's self-financed adaptation of then-new TSF technol...

As we celebrate its 130th birthday, we look at the copycats inspired by the Eiffel Tower

2019-03-21T15:35:00-04:00

"Beyond its strictly Parisian statement, it touches the most general human image-repertoire: its simple, primary shape confers upon it the vocation of an infinite cipher ... [Gustave] Eiffel saw his Tower in the form of a serious object, rational, useful; men return it to him in the form of a great baroque dream which quite naturally touches on the borders of the irrational."

- Roland Barthes, “The Eiffel Tower,” 1964

Who would have guessed that the Eiffel Tower, a widely despised structure at the time of its completion exactly 130 years ago, would not only become an icon, but the icon of icons? Did its image become so pervasive in the modern era because it is not a sacred monument, as Roland Barthes had observed, but rather a secular one? Is it because it signaled the escalation of the Industrial Revolution, both in its simplicity and its ingenuity of structural form?

Whatever the reason, the iconic structure has inspired over 30 imitators spread across the globe of varying scales ...

A wall of bulletproof glass will soon enclose the base of the Eiffel Tower

2017-02-09T17:16:00-05:00

Following a spate of terror attacks including a machete attack last September, Parisian officials are making moves to protect the city’s many monuments. Most recently, they’ve announced that they’ll enclose the base of the Eiffel Tower with a glass wall. Currently, the area is cordoned off with a series of metal grills, which were put in place in advance of the Euro 2016 football tournament. The new, permanent wall will be 2.5 meters high and made of bulletproof glass. It will run along the Quai Branly and the Avenue Gustave-Eiffel, as well as bisect the parks on either side of the Tower. Whereas, not long ago, visitors could simply stroll through the iron legs of Paris’ most iconic monument, now they will have to pass through security checks. In total, the wall is expected to cost around €20 million.

via the Local

Paris mayor announces €300M Eiffel Tower renovation

2017-01-16T13:05:00-05:00

The Eiffel Tower is to undergo a €300m, 15-year refurbishment, Paris’s mayor Anne Hidalgo announced on Friday. [...] The planned refurbishment is intended to bolster the French capital’s bids to host another World’s Fair in 2025 and, before that, the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic games [...]. The project will be managed by the tower’s operator, the Société d’Exploitation de la Tour Eiffel, a public service company wholly owned by the City Council.

The 15-year refurbishment of this most-visited monument anywhere in the world (the 127-year-old wrought iron structure has been operating at its maximum capacity of about 7 million visitors since 2003, according to Wikipedia) will take more than a few buckets of paint and also comprises the modernization of the elevators, viewing gallery, security and access facilities, as well as the light show systems.

Google doodle honors Eiffel Tower's 126th opening anniversary

2015-03-31T13:55:00-04:00

The Eiffel Tower, one of Paris's most visited attractions, welcoming almost seven million visitors per year, was completed 126 years ago today - and there's a Google Doodle to mark the anniversary.

Contrary to the Telegraph quote above, the Eiffel Tower was actually completed on March 15. Today's anniversary honors the public opening on March 31, 1889.

Joyeux anniversaire, old friend!

A New Use for the Eiffel Tower

2015-02-25T18:07:00-05:00

While hard to imagine today, Paris’s most iconic monument was largely reviled when it was first built for the 1889 World’s Fair. On February 14, 1887, as construction was just beginning, a group of some of most notable Parisian artists, writers, architects and intellectuals – including Charles Garnier, Émile Zola, Alexandre Dumas fils, and Guy de Maupassant – launched a petition against the Eiffel Tower. "We, the writers, painters, sculptors, architects and lovers of the beauty of Paris, do protest with all our vigour and all our indignation, in the name of French taste and endangered French art and history, against the useless and monstrous Eiffel Tower,” their statement read.

Today, concerns over the use-value of the most-visited paid monument in the world seem comical. But throughout its history, the question of utility has been central to conversations about the Eiffel Tower. Gustave Eiffel, the engineer who designed the 906 ft. tall structure, defensively touted it’s scientific ...

HdM's Triangle skyscraper continues to divide Paris over its historic identity

2014-12-22T12:54:00-05:00

Alexandre Gady, conservationist, historian of French architecture and professor of modern architecture at the Sorbonne, argues that changing or “renewing” Paris diverts from its real need to look outwards. Paris, he says, is a “finished” city that does not need improving or anything more doing to it. “It’s not that we should be doing this or that – we should not be doing anything in central Paris ... any plan is a diversion from the need of the city to grow outwards,” [...]

Previously: Paris row after HdM's Triangle skyscraper rejected

New York state of mind: Weekly News Round-Up for November 10, 2014

2014-11-17T14:53:00-05:00

Thursday, November 13:

Smithsonian hires BIG architecture group for $2 billion South Mall renovation plan: While approval is still pending, the large-scale renovation will include "two underground levels of visitor amenities" and could take up to twenty years to complete.

Lucas museum faces lawsuit from Friends of the Parks: The nonprofit advocacy group claims that cordoning off the Chicago waterfront for Lucas' museum violates the 14th Amendment, guaranteeing "equal protection and due process" for deciding what to do with land belonging to the state of Illinois.

Wednesday, November 12:

Two window washers trapped on scaffolding at 1 WTC: The two men were shortly rescued by firemen, after uneven ascending cables left them dangling at a 65-degree angle 827ft in the air.

The Courtyard House Plug-In: A House Within The House: People's Architecture Office created a modular interior set to install in Beijing's historic buildings, as a renovation alternative to demolition.

The Race to Save Archi...

How pictures of the Eiffel Tower at night violate copyright

2014-11-11T15:06:00-05:00

Indeed, taking a photo of the Eiffel Tower at night for any reason other than personal use is, technically, a violation of French copyright law [...]. A daytime photo is fine—copyright on the structure itself has expired—but night time photos remain problematic because the light show is more recent than the tower itself. Also illegal is taking a photo of the Atomium, Belgium’s most famous tourist attraction [...].

Ginger Group Unveils Plan to Transform the Eiffel Tower Into a Gigantic Tree

2011-12-01T14:59:31-05:00

A group of consultants in Paris has hatched a plan to turn the Eiffel Tower into a giant tree by covering it with 600,000 plants. Their dream is to literally plant the 324 meter tall aesthetic symbol of Paris with 12 tons of rubber tubing, and gradually add bags planted with greenery all over.