Replica of Eiffel Tower

Global engineering consultant Aurecon has completed the construction of a replica of  Paris’ most famous landmark, the Eiffel Tower, in Macau (now a special administrative region of China) as part of an integrated resort project, the Parisian Macao. The topping-out ceremony for the project was held in October. Development of the Parisian Macao is underway, which is being built by Sands China, a subsidiary of the resorts giant Las Vegas Sands.

Aurecon was involved in the planning and design and had delivered full structural engineering consultancy for the project.

The consultancy’s Macau Eiffel Tower project leader Dr Alecs Chong said that the original structural performance criteria for the project was specified at an early stage and largely based on the criteria commonly used for conventional offices or residential buildings. However, given that the tower behaves as a slender, open-lattice structure, some of the serviceability performance criteria were too conservative, and after consultation with stakeholders, were subsequently relaxed.  The firm had used Revit building design software for drafting the tower design, which enabled the team to visually represent the complicated design connections in 3D.

Dr Alecs also said that recreating the Eiffel Tower using modern steel construction technology was vastly different from working with the wrought-iron that features on the
original.  Extensive consideration had to be paid to disguising the modern steel construction, while at the same time, achieving a cast-iron lattice appearance. And it’s been rewarding to see how the extensive use of advanced techniques such as finite element analysis, 3D drafting and shop drawing preparation have delivered successful solutions for the design fabrication and erection of the complex lattice geometry, he expressed.

The replica, which is half the size of the 19th-century tower in Paris, includes
several decorative features of the original tower such as cornice scrolls, balu-strades, lattices, staircases and mesh screens around the observation decks.