In 1982, a great national
design competition was launched as an initiative of French president
François Mitterrand.
Danish architect
Johan Otto von Spreckelsen (1929–1987) and Danish engineer
Erik Reitzel (1941–2012) designed the winning entry to be a late-20th-century version of the
Arc de Triomphe: a monument to humanity and
humanitarian ideals rather than military victories. The construction of the monument began in 1985, with most of the work being carried out by
French civil engineering company
Bouygues. It has a
prestressed concrete frame covered with
glass and is covered in Bethel Granite. ''
was inaugurated in July 1989, with grand military parades that marked the bicentennial of the French Revolution. It completed the line of monuments that forms the running through Paris. The Grande Arche is turned at an angle of 6.33° about the vertical axis. The most important reason for this turn was technical: with a Paris Metro and RER station, and a motorway all situated directly underneath the Arche'', the angle was the only way to accommodate the structure's giant foundations. From an architectural point of view, the turn emphasises the depth of the monument and is similar to the turn of the
Louvre at the other end of the . The '''' is placed so that it forms a secondary axis with the
two of the highest buildings in Paris at the time, the and the . The two sides of the
Arche house government offices. The roof section was closed in 2010 following an accident without injury and the marble tiles which had begun to peel off were replaced with granite ones. It opened again in 2017 after seven years of renovation work. It features panoramic views of Paris and includes a restaurant and an exhibition area dedicated to photojournalism. The void contains skeletal shafts for panoramic lifts and a
PTFE-and-
fibreglass tensile-membrane sunshade known as the "Cloud" (''''). The Danish architect, von Spreckelsen, chose Italian
Carrara marble for the tile cladding of the façade, for the marble's gleaming, milky white exterior. This caused structural problems, as marble is porous, rainwater got into its pores, and when the temperature froze, the ice in its pores cracked the marble, and tiles began buckling and falling down, luckily without hitting, injuring or killing anyone. The monument had to be closed for a few years while French engineers (von Spreckelsen had retired from the project before it was completed and was dead by the time of the collapsing tiles) had the marble tiles removed and replaced with granite quarried in
Vermont, which has proved durable, at a cost of some €200M. ==Gallery==