Reports that the operators of Paris’s Eiffel Tower were planning a dramatic, temporary addition to the structure proved to be tall tales. The UK’s Guardian newspaper, Architect magazine, The New York Times, and others wrote in March that a design by the French firm Serero Architects had won a competition to redesign the 905-foot-tall structure’s uppermost public viewing platform in time for its 120th anniversary in 2009. Serero unveiled renderings of a clover-shaped cantilevered platform that could be “bolted onto the tower using a web of Kevlar” temporarily, the Guardian wrote. But according to an April 15 New York Times blog, the news originated with an e-mail sent by Serero’s office—not the tower’s managers—that was picked up, unchallenged, by several blogs and media outlets, giving it an air of credibility that invited still other journalists to cover the story. Its seeming veracity was boosted by David Serero’s comments to Architect, which seemed to suggest that the platform was all but a sure thing: “(The design was) selected with the condition to verify its technical feasibility. Within the next two months, we will be able to get a definite answer,” he told the magazine. Serero now says that his efforts to negotiate with the Eiffel Tower’s management were misunderstood and that his use of the word “selected” was “unintentionally” misleading. But as the Times wrote, some are speculating that the entire incident is a publicity stunt.
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