The elegant, tapering signature of the Eiffel Tower is to be reshaped, altering the Paris skyline, in time for the structure's 120th anniversary next year, the Societe d'exploitation de la Tour Eiffel (Sete) announced.
Serero Architects of Paris has won the competition to redesign the structure's public viewing platform and reception areas.
The winning design, which will be 276m above the ground, will not require any permanent modification of the existing structure.
It will double the capacity of the public viewing area on the tower's top floor.
The new platform will be bolted onto the tower using a web of Kevlar, an extremely strong and lightweight carbon fiber used in the construction of racing cars and body armor. The new platform will use a cantilevered design similar to the way that an aircraft's wings are attached to the fuselage.
The design is already causing controversy, with critics questioning the wisdom of tinkering with the famous silhouette and spending money on upgrading a tourist attraction that attracts 6.9 million visitors a year.
In a statement, a spokesperson for Sete said that the plan to restructure the top of the tower is in order to increase the quality of access. Average waiting times for the tower's elevators run at more than an hour at peak times.
Gustave Eiffel designed the tower as a temporary structure for the 1889 World's Fair. Initially rejected by the French public, it is now the most visited fee-charging monument in the world.
A Zurich city councilor has apologized and reportedly sought police protection against threats after she fired a sport pistol at an auction poster of a 14th-century Madonna and child painting, and posted images of their bullet-ridden faces on social media. Green-Liberal party official Sanija Ameti, 32, put the images on Instagram over the weekend before quickly pulling them down. She later wrote on social media that she had been practicing shots from about 10m and only found the poster as “big enough” for a suitable target. “I apologize to the people who were hurt by my post. I deleted it immediately when I
The governor of Ohio is to send law enforcement and millions of dollars in healthcare resources to the city of Springfield as it faces a surge in temporary Haitian migrants. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Tuesday said that he does not oppose the Temporary Protected Status program under which about 15,000 Haitians have arrived in the city of about 59,000 people since 2020, but said the federal government must do more to help affected communities. On Monday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost directed his office to research legal avenues — including filing a lawsuit — to stop the federal government from sending
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
RSS