Eiffel Tower to get skyscraper rival

A towering 71-storey skyscraper to rival the Eiffel Tower is to be built on the edge of Paris.

The Signal Tower is expected to be completed in 2015 and will be 987.5 feet tall and stand in the La Defense business district.

The rectangular tower will be divided into four levels to house shops, a luxury hotel, offices and apartments on the top – crowned with green from the atrium.

The building, designed by award-winning French architect Jean Nouvel, will be 75 feet shorter than the Eiffel Tower, making it the second-tallest building in the Paris metropolitan area.

It is part of a broader project to renew the business district.

The Signal Tower will be built near the business district’s reigning landmark, the Grande Arche, which is lined up with the Arc de Triomphe at the top of Champs-Elysees Avenue and the obelisk at Place de la Concorde.

Nouvel, 62, won the 2008 Pritzker prize, considered the world’s top architecture award.

His design beat proposals by four other architects, Britain’s Norman Foster, American Daniel Libeskind and two other Frenchmen, Jean-Michel Wilmotte and Jacques Ferrier.

His previous works include the Institute of the Arab World in Paris, the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid and Paris’ Quai Branly museum for the primitive arts.