Constantine Issighos

Gustave Eiffel Constantine Issighos

Gustave Eiffel: Genius of Iron Works is Vol. II in the Gustave Eiffel Exploration Series. In order to do justice to the intricate features of his monuments, nothing less than full-colour illustrations would suffice; therefore, all three volumes in this series contain real life full colour pictures taken by the author himself. The French engineer Gustave Eiffel was an innovative engineer-cum-millionaire whose success as a builder of churches, bridges and railway stations emboldened him to apply his unique technology to the construction of many iron projects including the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France and the central support system of the Statute of Liberty in N. Y. Each of Eiffel's iron projects around the world has its own architectural beauty and its own fundamental lines of construction that were determined by its use. In this respect, his structural and ornamental projects have effectively and literally embedded their presence in the cultural landscape of the places and the countries in which they are found. Eiffel's choices on aesthetics, as well as the technical grounds for each of his iron structures, were inspired by expert calculations and an admirable economy of material, a crucial fact and significant achievement. As such, Eiffel indirectly redefined the post-Industrial Revolution term of "Triumph of Iron" for the modern age. He made use of advance knowledge of the behaviour of metal arches and metal structures under duress, including the stress of wind forces, which earned him the nickname "Magician of Iron." Eiffel's iron structures attract meaning--as an exciting art form--the way "beauty" and "strength" are harmoniously drawn towards each other. For Eiffel, those were pressing goals that would exalt science and technology and solidify robustness with elegance Due to Eiffel's German-Jewish heritage, the industrial look of his creations was branded as "nothing more or less than a German-Jew whose French taste was laced with disguised elements of his German-Jewish ethnicity. However, Eiffel was a Catholic and the attacks on his person were based on his parent's birthplace, religion and perhaps on some jealousy of his fame as the architectural engineer who designed and built the Eiffel Tower.