The Eiffel Tower
The Eiffel tower was built in 1889 for the international exhibition of Paris. It was built in celebration of the French revolution. The design was chosen from a competition where 700 proposals were entered in which Gustave Eiffel’s tower was the chosen design. Gustave Eiffel was a French engineer and entrepreneur; he was 57 years old when the tower was built.
The competition was launched to “study the possibility of erecting an iron tower on the Champ-de-Mars. No one understood that just bare iron could be attractive on a building as all the most beautiful palaces and cathedrals were built from stone, “to leave it exposed was just poor taste. It was like showing your dirty laundry”. From a distance the tower looks lacy and elegant but the closer you look the more structural and hard it gets.
The Eiffel tower has been painted a number of colours over time but today remains beige, which at different levels lighter shades are used to accentuate the height of the tower. When the tower was built Gustave Eiffel encouraged a number of scientific experiments and also used it as an observation tower to measure the speed of wind. The tower these days is one of Paris’s major tourist attractions and is used for radio transmissions and observatory purposes.
The Guggenheim Museum
The Guggenheim museum which opened in 1997, was designed by Canadian architect Frank O. Gehry and is home to contemporary art. The museum was opened as part of a revival effort for the city of Bilbao (Spain) and for the Basque Country. An architectural competition was held from which O.Gehry’s design was chosen. It became a significant tourist attraction in Bilbao.The structure was made from titanium, glass, and limestone. Using these materials was made possible by the use of a 3D design computer programme called “Catia.”
Frank O. Gehry is world renown for his explorative research into new forms and materials and how he pays very close attention to the surrounding environments of his structure’s which was particularly important for the development of the Guggenheim museum.
The museum is still used for the same purpose as when it was first built although it has had a great impact on the city itself bringing in a forever increasing amount of tourism, “the Guggenheim Museum has put us on the map, and – like every other city – we’ve experienced substantial inward migration that impacts on us all.”
Compare the two architectural structures, by noting their similarities and differences:
The two structure’s discussed have certain similarities in design and their functions. Both designs were chosen from an architectural competition and have both been hugely successful in bringing in tourists from all over the world. They both act as major landmarks in the cities Paris and Bilbao. The design of each share a common concept in creating fluid shapes and forms while using unique materials to construct them from. The Eiffel Tower was a revolutionary design for its time measuring in as the tallest man- made structure in the world. The Guggenheim also shares this podium as it was named “the greatest building of our time” due to the organic and twisted shapes created by titanium and limestone.
References
http://paris.eiffel-tower-faq.com/construction/
http://opencities.britishcouncil.org/web/index.php?photo_bilbao_en
