the Eiffel Tower of tomorrow?

Every evening, the flight of the Olympic cauldron into the Parisian sky from the Tuileries Gardens attracts crowds. How can we explain such enthusiasm?

It is a “flying object” that has everything to fascinate: it flies without really flying (it is held by a cable), it burns without really burning, it promises travel but remains motionless, it offers a panoramic view but no one can climb aboard… It is a seductive paradox in the sky of Paris.

Why such attachment?

It is above all a meeting. In addition to the magic of the place, the Tuileries Gardens, there is also the magic of the moment: at the end of the day, spectators come to see this pure and perfect shape rise into the air. But above all, the balloon is “instagrammable”, that is to say photogenic for social networks. The balloon is as dreamy as the one invented by Jules Verne in his novel Five weeks in a Balloon. But this time, the journeys are those of the new world, that of images and social networks. He sails in the space of the virtual which also has, sometimes, its poetry.

Does this sink have any special features?

The balloon is only worth it, in my opinion, because of the site from which it is observed. Its roundness, placed on the circle of the basin, stands out in the geometric decor and the right angles of the Tuileries, always framed in the photos with fragments of architecture: under the vault of the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, with the cornices of the Louvre, the garden gates or the parapets of the banks of the Seine. The balloon makes the decor vibrate, at the service of what surrounds it. Isolated, it would have this shape but not this force.

Many petitions are emerging to demand its continuation. Could it suffer the same fate as the Eiffel Tower?

It will have to be maintained, made to last, and that will not be easy. Perhaps it should remain a memory, like that of the aerostat experiments in the same garden in the 18th century or like the “Giffard balloon”, installed there for the 1878 World’s Fair and also acclaimed by Parisians… Look at the balloon in the Parc André-Citroën, it has been there for years, no one talks about it, it is not because it is less beautiful, it is because it has no symbolic value. Installing the Olympic balloon elsewhere would erase its significance, linked to the successes of this summer. Its aura, fleeting and brilliant, is only manifested in this monumental landscape and in the euphoria of the Games.

Could it compete with the Iron Lady?

The Eiffel Tower fascinated because it gave confidence in the future, the engineer prevailing over the architect. This balloon, modern of course from a technological point of view, alludes to the feats of the past, to the time of Montgolfier and speaks of a world of tomorrow that would largely do without airplanes and kerosene. It is in a way an ecological hope, still utopian, but already symbolic. It makes you dream because it is balanced between the world of yesterday and the future. The Tower weighs 10,000 tons, the cauldron is very light. At the Heritage Olympics, the Eiffel Tower and the balloon do not compete in the same category.