Transforming Paris’s icon into a tower of green

The Eiffel Tower could be transformed into the world’s largest tree if a project to cover the 327-metre structure with plants comes to fruition, according to Le Figaro newspaper.

Engineering group Ginger, specialising in “green” architecture, has spent two years working on the €72-million project that would see 600,000 plants attached to the tower, the French daily reported.

Architects and engineers have already built a prototype several metres tall to assess the effect of the additional 378 tonnes weight on the structure. The results of the tests are expected to be known this month.

Seedlings would then be cultivated until June next year, which would be placed on the structure until January 2013. The plants would then grow until January 2014 and be left there until their removal in July 2016.

The plants would be placed in bags of soil hanging from hemp ropes attached to the tower’s steel structure. Twelve tonnes of rubber piping would irrigate the vegetation.

The project would produce 84.2 tonnes of carbon dioxide but the plants would absorb 87.8 tonnes, rendering the plan “carbon negative”.

The project will not replace the electric lights that have adorned the Eiffel Tower since 2002, which instead will simply shine through the leaves with a greener hue, the paper said.

Meanwhile, French authorities were forced to deny that the Eiffel Tower could be transformed into the world’s largest tree by covering the iconic structure’s 327-metre height entirely with plants.

The denial came after the report which appeared in Le Figaro.

The company that runs the Eiffel Tower, Sete, put out a statement saying that “there is no project of this nature in preparation” in response to Le Figaro’s headline: ‘Crazy plan to plantify the Eiffel Tower’. The city of Paris also put out a statement denying the existence of any kind of project.

Jean-Bernard Bros, a city councillor whose job title is “president of the Eiffel Tower”, said: “You can’t stop people having ideas.”

“Nothing has been finalised, nothing has been studied. I had knowledge of this project along with many others, people suggest new ideas for the Eiffel Tower to me every day,” he said.