I’ve mentioned a few times here and there how I think of the Eiffel Tower as an example of an interesting product. Whereas engineering who design bridges place great emphasis on the logos of the bridge (it has to withstand forces and stay up), the Eiffel Tower is an engineering feat that is also sensitive to it’s audience (pathos) as well as the voice of its environment (ethos of Paris and France).

Urban Modernity, written by M. Levin et al., discusses these three dimensions of the Eiffel Tower.

• Logos: Gustave Eiffel (1832-1923) “managed to use his giant structure to launch radio transmissions and experiments in aeronautics, helping tame technologies of the future” (p. 29). In addition having a logical, architecture that stands tall without falling (using principles of engineering such as trusses), there was a technological function that the tower’s structure allowed.
• Pathos: At the level of experience, it’s more than just a structure; there’s a beauty from engaging with the product. “Eiffel himself saw the tower as a thing of beauty, its asymptotic curves the material equivalents of geometrical laws and the laws of physics” (p. 43). It’s a beautiful piece of architecture that affords the public to approach it and want to experience it. In addition, when erected, it was the entrance arch and centerpiece of the 1889 World’s Fair, which had other attractions. Hence, it initiated a carefully devised experience that unfolded over time (think visitor journey).
• Ethos: It has come to symbolize French mastery of science, technology, and culture (the 1889 Fair was the 100th anniversary of the storming of the Bastille, symbol for the beginning of the French Revolution). It symbolized Paris, “the capital of Western civilization” (p. 4), “hub of industrial capitalism” (p. 15), and “the nexus of a democratizing evolutionary process” (p. 39). Noteworthy to read Emile Zola’s passage on Paris that Levin quotes on p. 21. The Eiffel Tower was established as the defining monument in the context of this emergent, industrial, and modern city.
  When a group of artists and writers signed an infamous petition against the Eiffel Tower, stating that it was visually, culturally, and morally a break between Paris’ rich preindustrial culture and the modern capitalist one, proponents of the Tower stated that its “iron skeleton laid bare the same rational principles and values at work, though hidden, in great historical monuments such as the Arc de Triomphe and Notre Dame” (p. 52). So, there was an argument made that the Tower was a legitimate continuation of Paris’ rich engineering tradition and represents the new technology of this forward-thinking culture.