TROPOLISM

Only today do we discover that the Eiffel Tower is not receiving its grand absurd addition, as reported here on March 20, 2008. It was a hoax, or internet fed rumor, that the suggestion they won a competition to add to the tower was widely reported, as the spokesman for David Serero Architects claims. We regret the error. There is nothing we dislike more than renderings of projects that have no chance of being built.

Because this is the first time (we think!) this has happened to us, we followed our trail back. We saw it on io9, who saw it on Dwell, who in turn found it on Archinect, who found it on Bustler, who claims the architect claims they won the competition, but without further attribution. Their website, which we visited prior to posting our original entry, did state clearly "The project will extend the top floor plate of the tower by grafting a high performance carbon Kevlar structure on it." Because the conditional isn't being used, we took it to be a done deal, or at least a winner in an "open competition" mentioned on Bustler but nowhere else.

We speculate that the architects did some studies for the Eiffel Tower's guardians, and got carried away announcing some meeting minutes. The recent mia culpa on their website is too defensive to be purely a creation of the internet.