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the authentic laws of the energy are not always conformal
with the secret laws of the harmony
Gustave Eiffel
The Eiffel
tower in Paris suffers from its success. Since its creation the amount of
visitors coming to reach its top has increased to reach its limit capacity.
6.5 millions People wait between 35 minutes to 1H10 to reach the elevators.
The floor area of each level decreases with the height because of the tower
geometry resulting in very long waiting lines and crowd management problems.
In
celebration of the 120th birthday of the tower,
SERERO
architects proposed
to
the
SETE to
restructure the public reception and access areas of the tower. The proposal
aims to create a temporary horizontal extension of the third floor of the
tower in order to increase the quality of the access of the public as well
as experiencing the fantastic 360 degrees sight of Paris.
When
Gustave Eiffel designed the tower, he imagined that the tower would become
the support of a great variety of scientific devices and experimentations to
study gravity and wind pressure. The structure of the tower was therefore
designed for
possible
increase of its weight. During World War I, the tower
held antennas to retransmit radio waves to the whole country. Structural
simulation of the Eiffel tower indicates that it is a highly hyperstatic
structure, which is dimensioned for a weight higher than what it is
supporting today.
The
structure
Our project
will extend the top floor plate of the tower by grafting a high performance
structure
in composite
material on it. The structure will be temporarily bolted to
the slab without requiring any modification of the existing structure. It
will expand the usable floor area from 280 m2 to 580m2. The extension is
composed of 2 slabs connected to the third floor deck as well as the upper
level used as an apartment of Mister Eiffel (a space provided for temporary
resting of Gustave Eiffel).
Generative
Design
The design
is based on a generative script, creating branches out of the primary
structure of the tower. Inspired by the structural concept of Eiffel of
three-dimensional cross bracing beams, the script unfolds along curved lines
the DNA of the tower. The script used the existing structure at the top of
the tower ( a 10 by 10 meters cube) to generate 3 structural weaves, which
are interconnected. These layers are combined to create a woven complex,
which is based on the redundancy and the non-repetition of patterns to
increase its structural performance. In opposition with modern engineering
(based on the concept of repetition and optimization), the project for the
Eiffel tower extension is based on an alternative model of high performance.
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