Say It Isn’t So
Looks weird, doesn’t it? A space age Eiffel Tower? Well, yes and no. This is the winning entry submitted by the French architecture firm, Serero, that will be restructuring the observation deck on the tower’s third level in celebration of its 120th anniversary next year.
The addition will not require any permanent modification of the tower (thank God), but will double the capacity of the observation deck to better accomodate the more than 7 million visitors estimated to visit it. The addition will be cantilevered, similar to how a wing is attached to a plane with a lightweight carbon fiber type material. That REALLY makes me feel much better about the whole thing. Oh my gosh! Insanity. It is ugly and crazy and what’s the point? Apparently, it is already creating controversy which it so should. Why attempt to change what it is already and spend oodles of dollars doing it?
I don’t often feel so old-fashioned about things. Change, moving forward…..all good things in my book. But honestly, this is too much. I am holding out that it is a hoax, like ha ha, April Fool’s, but the French aren’t usually tricky funny. Honoring something as it is, what it has given the world in its original state all these years, rather than creating something that isn’t is how this icon should be treated.
Tags: , , b5media, Eiffel-Tower, france, paris, Serero Architects, the paris traveler, travel, travel blogsRelated Stories
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11 opinions for Say It Isn’t So
Jon - The DC Traveler
Mar 28, 2008 at 7:40 pm
YUCK!!! Let’s hope it does end up as a perminant addition. It makes it look like the Eiffel Space Needle.
Sam
May 8, 2008 at 3:25 pm
As a resident of Western Washington, all I can say is that I fully endorse this renovation. If for no other reason, than so I can say that we did it first.
Although, a compelling reason for them to do it this way (although the frilled edges seem like a bit much) is to expand the capacity of the viewing deck, so that the people coming to look out from it won’t be pressed shoulder-to-shoulder.
frenchy
May 9, 2008 at 9:13 am
This IS a hoax.
Kim
May 9, 2008 at 9:28 am
Thank God!
hannah
May 10, 2008 at 4:21 am
This ISN’T happening. He submitted the idea, it was spread around and elaborated on, but NEVER accepted. Thank God it is not true.
gerard
May 10, 2008 at 4:00 pm
You have to know that this so called project was first known on the first of april! we call it “poisson d’avril”
Kim
May 10, 2008 at 4:12 pm
Your media did a good job making it seem like a reality. April fish…..
Diarmid
May 11, 2008 at 7:51 am
“It is ugly and crazy and what’s the point?”
Ironically this is how millions of Parisians feel about the Eiffel Tower itself and reactions amongst the majority of locals to its construction in the first place were more or less the same.
I don’t think there’s another monument in the world that is so lauded by tourist yet disdained by the people of the city.
Kim
May 11, 2008 at 9:17 am
I am assuming Diarmid, that you too are Parisian and dislike this particular monument. Why is it that you and many others feel that way? My experience saw Parisians enjoying afternoons and evenings there with picnic lunches and dinners like many others from different parts of the world.
Diarmid
May 11, 2008 at 11:24 am
I have never been able to understand how and why visitors have come to almost idolize a chunk of iron in a city so saturated in fascinating and beautiful architecture, art, music, museums and other centers of culture.
It’s big and therefore prominent on the landscape when viewed from, say, Montmartre, but I find looking over my shoulder to Sacré Coeur itself or Notre Dâme to be far more impressive and beautiful feats of architectural genius than the tower which, in my opinion, represents the industrial revolution and the death of newly constructed, aesthetically pleasing buildings wherein art and architecture once took precedent over practicality, cheap labor and ‘innovative’ materials.
Had the French not required the tower as a radio antenna for directing taxis to the front lines at battles (it served to send a quarter of a million French soldiers to the slaughter at the First Battle of the Marne), the tower would have been torn down as planned after the great exhibition, allowing tourists to discover the City of Lights without being drawn like magnets to this phallic hunk of metal that pales into insignificance against Paris’ many other emblematic monuments, museums and general eye-candy.
I tend to agree with Guy de Maupassant who supposedly ate his lunch in the tower’s restaurant every day because this was ‘the one place in Paris where you couldn’t see the tower’.
All this said, in typically hypocritically Parisian fashion, I’d be up in arms if anybody every suggested actually taking the thing down. I don’t know how one would go on strike against the dismantlement of a tower but we’re resourceful in Paris when it comes to objecting so I’m sure I’d find a way. I love to hate it and I love the Champs de Mars only I’m the guy at the picnic with his back to the tower.
I don’t know if the tower is art or if the way it makes me react renders it art but Gustav Eiffel has managed to get me away from my Playstation for five minutes to respond to this post, a feat my girlfriend regards more as a miracle than as the product of a work of art. Practical to say the least.
Kim
May 11, 2008 at 2:57 pm
Your english is so good that i was beginning to doubt you were, indeed French. But yes, your argument and subsequent anger should the tower be torn down rings true to what makes the French wonderful in my opinion. And, yes, there are many more monuments in the city that are much more beautiful and worthy of renown. But the Eiffel tower to those of us born elsewhere has become the iconic symbol for Paris, just like the leaning tower of Pisa reminds me of Italy or the Statue of Liberty screams the US. And how funny is it that your country sent it to us?!?!? In my opinion there are many other things that are beautiful in our country and yet tourists (American and otherwise) rush to see it.
I am glad that you do spend beautiful afternoons or evenings there even if you turn your back on it. And I am thrilled that I was able to get you to put aside your obsession for a few minutes!! Your girlfriend must be a good woman!! ;-) Good point about art! Monsieur Eiffel is doing what he probably meant to do all along…create controversy or should I call it dialog?
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