“The Eiffel tower platform project is not a hoax, it is a manifesto to reconsider  innovation in France…”

 Our project for a the temporary extension of the  Eiffel tower is an unsolicited proposal to the Eiffel Tower management company. We are confirming that  the SETE did not organized a competition on this topic, in contrary with what was announced in the press.

This project has been a victim of disinformation ( notably by the article published in The Guardian) which contributed to discredit our proposal.  Many blogs and daily newspapers did present wrongly the project as the winner of a competition organized and approved by the Société d’exploitation de la Tour Eiffel.

However, we tried to bring an innovative proposition to a non resolved issue of the Tower: The management of an ever increasing number of visitors which to 95 % want to visit the highest level, and also the narrowest of the tower. These problems of management and reception of the visitors at the feet of the tower and on each floor are real issues.

Presented on our website on the 13th of march 2008, received great attention but also strong criticism. We have been surprised and  surpassed by the amount of reactions raised by our proposal.   This reminds us the way the initial project of Gustave Eiffel for a 300 meters tower has been  massively rejected by the Parisians at the time of construction before becoming an icon of the city of Paris. Today the Eiffel tower is completely integrated in the urban landscape of Paris to the point that Parisian did forget it, they don’t look at it anymore.

The interest raised by the project of Platform is not linked to the notion of structural performance. Is there really anyway structural engineering challenges that we did not resolve ? No. Its interest rather resides in its relationship to the existing structure, on its deep intertwining with the existing structure. The platform does not operate on the mode of the addition, but rather on the mode of the mutation, on the one of the growth of the existing structure. Our platform unfolds with the same formal freedom, the same uselessness and gratuity of the Eiffel tower itself. Like the tower our proposal is bother hideous and beautiful, completely out of place and precisely integrated.

For us the tower is a visionary project which combines within a same principle structure and ornament. This has been made possible by the mechanization and standardization of structural components which have been assembled in a non-linear manner combining the notion of variation and differentiation within the assembly process.

This proposal,  that we submitted to the SETE did not receive any answer at this date.

But this project also addresses a situation, which is becoming more obvious today: the status of Innovation in France and in particular in the field of architecture.