Free Essay Describing What Lead to the Creation of the Eiffel Tower

Alexandre Gustave Eiffel has, without a doubt, revolutionized the history of Architecture during the 19th century. His buildings, designs, and ideas have not only gained remarkable fame, but have also become international emblems in present-day society. For my paper, I had the possibility to choose between varieties of talented architects, but only Eiffels name sparked me as distinguishable. Gustave Eiffel was an engineer by training. He was involved in building some of the worlds most recognized and technical structures through his specialization in the metal structural construction. The fact that I come from Morocco, a country vastly influenced by French culture, has enabled me to quickly identify who Eiffel was as an artist. The French culture has shaped my lifestyle, my society, and me, as an individual. As a result, I was eager to examine what lead towards the creation of the Eiffel Tower and the reasons behind Eiffels lasting eminence.

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Gustave Eiffels philosophies took concrete form through his numerous projects. His philosophies consisted of using structural theories and methodical calculation in order to establish stable, elevated constructions (Rondal, 636). Using such skills, Gustave Eiffel was able to create The Eiffel Tower, the construction that cemented his name in the modern world. Soon after the building of tower, Eiffels name changed from unpopular to a recognized name worldwide. The tower, at that time, acquired the status of the worlds tallest building, and it withheld that status for forty years after its installation. Even more striking is the fact that the tower was twice the height of the worlds tallest building existing during the late 1800s. Before proceeding to going into details and exploring the creation of the Eiffel Tower, we should trace back on the elaborate architect who designed it, Gustave Eiffel, a designer who fused grace with elaborate craftsmanship.

This grandiose designer was born in 1832 at Dijon, where he studied in Ecole Centrale des Arts et Manufactures and began pursuing in the domain of architecture. Gustave Eiffel started being fascinated with metal construction, soon after graduating from college, and his first specializing focused mainly on building bridges. In fact one of his earliest works involved the finalization of the basic structure of the Great Railway in Bordeaux in 1858, France through which he refined the process of compressing air, a perplexing system to the French at that time of history. Gustave Eiffel started studying, calculating, and experimenting with ways to create more robust and lighter structures. After the creation of the Railway in Bordeaux, he undertook major bridges.

In 1858, Eiffel oversaw the creation of an iron bridge in Bordeaux, France, as one of his earliest projects. Afterwards, also worked on Ponte Maria Pia Bridges five hundred twenty five foot arch made out of steel. Consequently, by the moment he devised the arched Gallery of Machines in 1867, his name began to gain recognition. He started getting praise for the way he experimentally calculated the dimensions of massive structures. With time, he was able to employ the subsequent system of wrought-iron beam constructions, replacing the existing masonry piers and iron supports. Afterwards, he launched a system that enabled bridges to erect from their ground location across previously assembled priers, recognizing him with the ultimate fame. He was also amongst the earliest engineers in France to engage in the method of erecting bridges and piece-by-piece constructions, without using scaffold and employing substantial span. In 1882, he started working on the most elevated bridge at that time of history, the Garabit viaduct. The Garabit is a five hundred forty foot viaduct that is suspended four hundred over water and situated in Truyere France.

Later on his career, he shifted from bridgework, leading to the significant masterpieces in the field of architecture. He worked on the observatory of astronomy in Nice, France, noteworthy in the fact that its dome was transferable. The Observatory at Nice has a dome with a diameter of seventy five feet. Its weight exceeds one hundred tons hovering within a round trough, thus, requiring unimaginable and remarkable labor to transport. Such unconventionality was the root of his brilliance and expertise. During the late 1860s, he was directed by M. de Nordling with the task to construct iron piers and viaducts.

Another triumphant construction is the Statue of Liberty, offered to the United States by France, and prototyped by Bartholdi. In 1879, Eiffel was hired to plan the metallic structure of this famous Statue of Liberty, after its chief engineer, Eugene Viollet-le-Duc, passed away. Eiffel designed an original support system while working on the figurine, one that would depend on the skeletal structure as opposed to the mass to maintain the copper. While building the Statue of Liberty, he managed to equally distribute mass amongst the statue in order to create endurance and substantiality. He planned his construction in such a way that it would endure years and remain stable. The success of this genre of planning expanded to carry out several of Eiffels work.

Then, he started working on what would solidify reputation, the Eiffel Tower, uniformly presented was an assurance of stability and elegance. As a result of the natural forming of years of architectural ideas and Eiffels investigations, the Eiffel Tower was constructed. In 1889, Gustave Eiffel began planning of the design of the Eiffel tower, which was finished in 1910. Being Frances trademark, the Eiffel Tower was one of the first models of huge-scale wrought-iron buildings. Gustave Eiffel supervised the Eiffel Tower with triumph, making him founder of his private company and gained him the reputation of a wrought-iron builder.

Today, if a person mentions the city of Paris, you will probably subconsciously visualize and associate it to the Eiffel Tower. The Eiffel Tower is presently known as a national symbol for France, exhibiting strength, symmetry, magnitude, and beauty. In 1889, the year the tower was finalized, Eiffel took advantage of an original medium, structural steel, thereby creating the first and foremost breakthrough and a prototype for the worlds modern skyscrapers. That tower has become one of the most known and visited monuments in France, allowing Gustave Eiffels name to continually and eternally exist. I ought to be jealous of the tower. It is more famous than I am, he claimed, showing how successful and revolutionary his creation was (Gustave Eiffel).

In 1884, the main engineers of Eiffels business, Maurice Koechlin and Emile Nougier, proposed the concept of an extremely high tower. The tower boldly extended upon this principle reaching three hundred meters of height. In 1884, Gustave Eiffel reported a license that allowed the configuration of pylons and metal bracing that are greater than three hundred meters. The idea was to design the tower to resemble a huge pylon with four lattice work girder supports that are disconnect at the base but joined at the upper part at rhythmic intervals by metal girders. By that time, the company has perfectly mastered the ground rules of making bridge supports. Furthermore, the clockwork precision of this engineer allowed him to meet his deadline.

The tower measures nine hundred eighty four feet, without its antennae, and was made of material unsusceptible to wind. It is composed of eighteen thousand different parts that are supported by two million five hundred thousand rivets in order to give such elevated height to the skyline dominating tower. The towers legs are bending and curved towards the interior until joined in a single narrow tower. The tower is also composed of three levels, which include a restaurant and communication stations, and seven hundred tons of wrought iron material.

The goal was to press safe metalized piers of viaducts ascertained with maximum limit. Calculations and schemes were made by architect Sauvestre, and two of Gustaves main planners, Koechlin and Nouguier. Eventually, Eiffel adopted fundamentals of loftiness, assigning angles and curves that could withstand wind-pressures, without requiring diagonal braces to connect angles. Therefore, the iron tower is built of four voluptuous columns and linked only by areas of grinders at differing heights, up to the union of columns towards the upper-part, where a regular brace joins them. But despite being built of a relatively strong material, iron, the construction was incapable of resisting stresses. For that reason, the building is considered over engineered according to contemporary standards. But its simple beauty is retrieved through its flaws. Taking a closer look at the tower, one might notice that the beams lattice work resemble a plants biological arrangement.

But to fully grasp and comprehend the roots of these architectural innovations, one should have a synopsis of the origination of art and architecture. The conception of buildings of supreme height, the way Gustave Eiffel was influenced by preliminary ideas dates from pre-historical ages, and years and years of architectural experimentations.

Art, as known today, has continuously allowed present society to grasp, uncover, and visualize the lives of the people of the past, acquiring them understanding of people's cultures, customs, and beliefs throughout different areas and periods of history. Artworks are ever-lasting forms of communication that conquer the boundaries of time and enables present societies to glimpse the lives of those whose lives preceded theirs. Approximately two million years ago, ancient hominids in east-central Africa, created stonecutting devices that facilitated advancement, geometrically expanded knowledge, and extended skills as well as their ability to reason. From there, these ancestors acquired a measure of mastery over their surroundings and gradually shifted from a nomadic hunting and gathering life-style to relatively stable agricultural communities. These people, then began developing a sense of awareness on the connection between function and form, and produced technological as well as writing and architectural advancement. These primitive architectural structures, known as Neolithic constructions, demonstrate sophistication and expertise. As understanding and knowledge spread, civilizations emerged, leading towards the creation of phenomenal constructions. These early civilizations are formed of elaborate social orders technical progression.

Amidst the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers, the Mesopotamian civilization of the name of summer surfaced and created the worlds earliest form of writings. This ancient civilization also established ziggurats, or temples embed on vast platforms (smaller platforms are positioned on the base), in every government and religious city-state. Ziggurats symbolize the notion of the sacred mountain that connects the mundane world to heaven, thus inspiring the formation of several towers and demonstrating peoples preliminary desires of building sky-reaching structures. Using this same vision, Gustave Eiffel designed the Eiffel Tower as an objective to create the worlds tallest tower. Undoubtedly, the conception of elevated towers was not novel as preliminary engineers had for ambition to build towering buildings that soared to heaven. However, Gustave Eiffel refined the idea of charm, harmony, support, and voluptuousness within colossal buildings. His designs were innovative and unconventional, even for his time period as they differed from prevailing, masonry buildings of his time. More importantly, Gustave Eiffels architectural style lead to the birth of skyscrapers, which now dominate cities around the world(Down).Thereby, the remain...