How does the building address the issue of light?

The building, despite its weight and size, is lacy and light. It is reduced to a minimum in order to achieve height, much like a giraffe has a thin but strong neck, or a butterfly has a delicate lacework structure to support its wings.

Does color play a role in the building's design?

The building is best seen at night in silhouette, so color makes little difference. Its profile allows the lights and atmosphere of Paris shine through its latticeworks.

Is your attention drawn to the texture of the building's material?

Completely. The steel of the building is the reason for its construction. It announces "Look at me! Before me it was impossible to make such a tall, massive and yet light and lacy structure." It is an obvious advertisement for the then-new virtues of strength and lightness offered by iron and steel.

What principles of design inform the architectural scheme?

The design is based on the simplest of engineering principles, the triangular supporting frame. It was designed to be light, but the technology was new. According to Roy Huss:

The Eiffel Tower may seem beautiful to some because its...

However, an engineer, aware of its having used a great deal more metal than necessary to support its structure, might see it as ponderously ugly (Huss)
Is there significant use of visual rhythm and repetition of elements?

One might imagine that if Eiffel were to do it today, he would have taken out the semicircle at the bottom, in order to create a 'purer,' cleaner line from the base to the top. In fact, in the upgrade in the early 1980's, over 1,600 tons of "unneeded" material was taken out. Eiffel overdesigned the tower, perhaps due to the lack of CAD-CAM and computer-aided stress analysis. Its sheer scale belies its massiveness up close, and contributes to its butterfly-wing delicacy from a distance.

Does the building's facade seem balanced? Symmetrically? Asymmetrically?

The building is symmetrically balanced on four sides. Its choice of symmetry is a convenient way to keep down weight and structural size. Any asymmetric add-ons would only add to the total weight and support needs of the structure (Meyer)..

Doe the building's various elements seem proportional, and how does the question of its scale affect your relation to