– Miguel Augusto (*)
Notre-Dame will be reborn from the ashes. The prime minister of France has announced an international architectural competition to redesign and rebuild the damaged parts of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame after the devastating fire. Édouard Philippe said the competition would give the cathedral “a spire suited to the techniques and challenges of our time.”
Many architects and artists have already manifested their desire to participate in the revitalization of the Paris cathedral that touches even the hearts of the unbelievers.
President Macron promised the nation that Notre-Dame would be rebuilt – and will be “more beautiful than before” – within five years. The cathedral was commissioned by Maurice de Sully shortly after becoming Bishop of Paris in 1160, and built over two centuries, starting in the middle of the 12th century. But the 300-foot spire was only added in the mid-19th century, during a major restoration project completed by the architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc.
“The international competition will allow us to ask whether we should even recreate the spire as it was conceived by Viollet-le-Duc,” Philippe told reporters after a cabinet meeting dedicated to the fire, and added “Or, as is often the case in the evolution of heritage, whether we should endow Notre-Dame with a new spire. This is obviously a huge challenge, a historic responsibility.”
In 1991, Notre-Dame Cathedral was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List of culturally important sites.
Stéphane Bern, the government’s culture representative, said that €880m had been raised for the restoration so far, with contributors including Apple, the Total energy group and tycoons who own luxury French brands such as L’Oréal, Chanel, Dior and Louis Vuitton. Many private individuals in France and around the world have also donated.
Notre-Dame competition heats up
Notre-Dame Cathedral its the most famous of the Gothic cathedrals of the Middle Ages.
Since the international competition was announced, plenty of people have gotten creative in envisioning proposals for the structures damaged by the fire. Many now see an opportunity for the cathedral to receive contemporary lines in terms of architecture and new technologies in the art of building, merging with the centenary Gothic traits.
Norman Foster (Foster + Partners) has jumped into the international competition. Architect Norman Foster is well known in our region (Asia), with iconic works such as the Hongkong & Shanghai Bank Headquarters (HSBC) in Hong Kong, among many other projects.
According to an interview in an English publication The Times, Foster presented his vision for a new “light and airy” roof for the fire-ravaged cathedral. The previous attic space dated back to the 12th century and was nicknamed “The Forest,” as it contained a tangle of 1,300 timber frames, each coming from a unique oak tree – the sheer amount of wood likely fed the fire which quickly spread.
Foster’s updated vision for the cathedral calls for installing a glass topper, arched to mimic the original wooden roof, ribbed with lightweight steel supports. The new spire would be made of glass and steel and could potentially include an observation deck at its base.
“In every case, the replacement used the most advanced building technology of the age,” Foster told The Guardian. “It never replicated the original. In Chartres, the 12th-century timbers were replaced in the 19th century by a new structure of cast iron and copper.
“The decision to hold a competition for the rebuilding of Notre-Dame is to be applauded because it is an acknowledgment of that tradition of new interventions” concluded Foster.
The modernization scheme drew an immediate reaction online, where social media users compared the revamped cathedral to a Foster-designed Apple store or the glass Reichstag dome in Berlin. Additionally, several people pointed out that the plan to flood the interior with light would be hamstrung by the stone vaulted ceiling below the attic space and would blow out any light coming in from the historic stained-glass windows.
How One Man’s Legacy Could Help Rebuild Notre-Dame Cathedral
The cathedral is roughly 128 metres in length, and 12 metres wide in the nave. Its cruciform plan, elevated nave, transept and tower were borrowed from 11th-century Romanesque architecture, but its pointed arches and rib vaulting are strictly Gothic.
Andrew Tallon’s pioneering analysis of the past could hold the key to the future of Notre-Dame.
While funding is crucial, technology may well hold the key to making an accurate restoration possible.
This is where the late Doctor Andrew Tallon comes in. A pioneering art historian and father of four, Tallon sadly died on November 16, 2018, from cancer at the age of just 49. Though he is no longer with us, his work now appears more vital than ever.
Tallon was actually a historical modeler. The researcher’s work involved the use of laser-mounted tripods that built a point cloud of information on every surface of a building’s interior. Tallon scanned more than 45 historic religious buildings, but his work on Notre-Dame received the bulk of attention in a special feature for National Geographic back in 2015.
Notre-Dame was a lifelong source of fascination for Tallon. “I had this little guidebook and I annotated it like a nutcase,” he said, describing the year he was in fourth grade and living in Paris. “I longed to know the usual questions. Who made that thing? How did they make it? Could I ever go up in one of those passages?”
Many years later, as a tenured professor of Vassar College, Tallon fulfilled his wish to conduct an in-depth study the cathedral. Tallon’s primary question then became: What more can we learn about this incredible building? “When you’re working on medieval buildings, it’s difficult to have the impression you can say anything new. They’ve been looked at and written about for ages,” Tallon told National Geographic. “So I’ve been using more sophisticated technology these days to try to get new answers from the buildings.” The strategy worked. Tallon’s technique has revealed much more about the cathedral’s original builders, including the immensely skillful work they carried out – but also the shortcuts they made.
The scans accurately recorded every quirk of this intricate structure, highlighting some anomalies that verged on jaw-dropping. One billion points of data revealed that the western end of the cathedral is completely out of step with the adjacent structure. Tallon went so far as to describe it “a total mess … a train wreck.”
Despite this colorful assessment, Tallon marveled at the ingenuity of builders that created a cathedral whichtranscends its occasionally irregular parts. “There was a biblical, a moral imperative to build a perfect building,” he said, “because the stones of the building were directly identified with the stones of the Church”– the people who make up the body of the church. “I like to think that this laser scanning work and even some of the conventional scholarship I do is informed by that important world of spirituality,” said Tallon. “It’s such a beautiful idea.”
The historian’s amazingly accurate scans will surely become crucial when rebuilding work begins.
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