The world had never seen anything like the graceful iron form that rose from Paris’ Champ de Mars in the late 1880s. The “Eiffel Tower,” built as a temporary installation for the Exposition Universelle de 1889, became an immediate sensation for its unprecedented appearance and extraordinary height. It has long outlasted its intended lifespan and become not only one of Paris’ most popular landmarks, but one of the most recognizable structures in human history.
How can we use what is already here, what came before, what can be found nowhere else? How can we perpetuate traces of previous lives, heed the clues the site provides, incorporate the emotions it arouses, its singularity, its materiality? Each locality requires its own solution.