Smith and Wallwork are working on a two historic buildings dating from the 1860’s and the 1870’s and we are always impressed with Victorian engineer’s boldness in structural design. Such slender designs would sometimes be testing to achieve even with modern analysis software (as we are finding out).

This boldness in design literally reached new heights in 1890 with 68 entries for a new London Tower to challenge the recently constructed Eiffel Tower. Many of the designs received chose to mimic the Eiffel Tower form and style, the winning design adopted an octagonal plan and would have stood 120ft taller than its Parisian rival.

The competition was celebrated in a book published in 1890 and through the wonders of modern technology the book can now be viewed online here.