On the occasion of the 13^ Architecture Biennale, Moatti-Rivière Architecture Studio will present at Lightbox Space, the project of the refitting of the 1st floor of the Eiffel Tower in Paris.
The project / Refitting of the 1st floor of the Eiffel Tower
The project offers an improved experience of the Eiffel Tower and Paris, an entertaining sensory experience, a journey of the senses and knowledge.
New buildings and entirely redeveloped public spaces to make the Tower’s 1st floor once again one of Paris’ most spectacular and attractive locations, 57 meters above the city.
The Eiffel and Ferrié pavilions house the functional entities. They are nestled between the pillars of the Eiffel Tower.
Gustave Eiffel designed these powerful pillars on an inclined plane to project the tower 300m into the air. Each floor is a link between the pillars. We have imagined pavilions that are influenced by these pillars. They are subject to their forces in action. They are therefore inclined in two planes. This new geometry links them intimately to the Tower. Their tangible outlines are rooted in the geometries of the pillars.
The heart of the 1st floor of the Eiffel Tower is an open space. It is a small urban centre suspended 57 meters above the city’s ground-level. It gives a close view of the city and of the Tower itself. It is a knowledge space where the inside of the «Tower object» can be explored.
Surrounding this open space, the opaque floor has been partly replaced by a glass floor and the grille of the balustrade has been replaced by glass. The glass, protective, gives the experience of walking above the corbelled structure of the first floor thus revealed.
The exhibition / Tour Eiffel, an inspired architecture
« […] a subtle competition is established between the horizontal and vertical, […] the transverse lines, for the most part oblique or rounded, arranged in arabesque, seem to endlessly reinforce the vertical rise […], the platforms themselves are never relays, nor altars, everything rises in the Tower».
Roland Barthes, La Tour Eiffel, Delpire éditeur, 1964.
As in Roland Barthes quote, the exhibition follows this dialectic and the spectator eye can look in two possible directions: from bottom to top – from the city to the Tower, and from the top to the bottom – from the Tower to the city, discovering a unique universe.
The exhibition is developed following three themes: Genesis, Development and Construction representing the different aspects of the project, from the idea until the realization. All this process is illustrated by images, pictures, drawings, a video and a big scale model of the project.
Details project:
4,586 m2 redeveloped, out of the floor’s 5420 m2.
25 million € excluding tax: total cost of the reorganisation, fees included, entirely funded by SETE (Eiffel Tower Operating Company).
18 months of work in 2012 and 2013 during which the Tower will remain open to the public.
Project team:
Moatti – Rivière Studio : architecture, museography, furniture design
BATEG (Vinci Group) : construction company
Museology : Lydia Elhadad
Lighting designer : 8’18’’
Engineering : GINGER Group
Engineering façades : RFR
Economist: Fabrice Bougon
Multimedia networks: Vincent Taurisson
Tour Eiffel
The Refitting of the 1st Floor
An Inspired Architecture
by Moatti-Rivière
Opening, preview and cocktail
August 27 from 8.00 pm to 12.00 pm
RSVP: communication@moattiriviere.com
Exhibition
August 28 – November 25 2012
Spazio Lightbox
Cannaregio 3831
Venice
www.light-box.it
Lightbox Press Office
Elena Pardini
elena.pardini@light-box.it
+39 348 3399463
Lightbox
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