In celebration of the 120th birthday of the Eiffel tower, SERERO Architects submitted an unsolicited proposal to the Société d’ exploitation de la tour Eiffel or SETE which manages the Eiffel Tower. The project proposed to expand the top floor plate of the tower by grafting a high performance carbon Kevlar structure which would be temporarily bolted to the slab without requiring any modification of the existing tower, and expanding the usable floor area from 280 m2 to 580 m2. This, claimed SERERO, would increase the number of visitors to the top of the tower and reduce the long queues and help with crowd management.

It caused ripples of interest across the globe when this was carried as a news story claiming that SERERO Architects had won a design competition organised by SETE. The UK’s Daily Telegraph and The Guardian first highlighted the story, which was subsequently picked up by print media round the world. It was not long before the real situation was made known, and the embarrassed SERERO Architects released a statement on the true situation and added that “the project was a victim of disinformation which contributed to discredit our proposal.”

The SERERO proposal, together with the drawings and other details, can be seen at www.serero.com
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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