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Notre Dame: a blow-by-blow account of the restoration process (theartnewspaper.com)
86 points by gruseom on Oct 3, 2019 | hide | past | favorite | 11 comments



I hadn't seen recent photos until this article, and I didn't realize how different Notre Dame looks now with all the wooden frames supporting the buttresses.

https://images.graph.cool/v1/cj6c28vh912680101ozc2paxj/ck167...


That is really beautiful work, I didn't know people could do things like this anymore. Much admiration for people that can pull together and put up such high levels of craftsmanship.


What, the flying buttress falsework? That looks designed in a CAD program. Probably, all the pieces were cut to match the design, then bolted together. Better to do all that in advance and then carefully move it into place than to try to build it in place by hand.

One of the sections of falsework is being hoisted in the picture. Note the custom metal lifting attachment designed to fit it.

The supports are a nice piece of work, but routine. Now, restoring the damaged decorative stonework, that will require craftmanship and hand labor.


Recent panel about the restoration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEsH2ao7PCU


Any official news on the exact cause yet? Was it definitely faulty wiring?


I was in Paris two weeks ago and a local told me it was a worker who was smoking and dropped their butt in the wrong place.

(Not sure if that's true)



An unhappy mix of accidental fire source and overly complicated intervention process is what I gathered.


> will it be the object of a contemporary “architectural gesture”, as suggested by the master-mind of Notre Dame’s restoration, President Emmanuel Macron?

Please, no. Restore it to before the spire, or with the spire, either is fine.

But please please no modern monstrosity that will age about as well as La Cité Radieuse...


It's somewhat ignorant to categorically consider everything contemporary to be a "modern monstrosity", and not just because "modern" in the context of architecture actually means a specific period that ended about 40 years ago.

The Berlin Reichstag is one often-cited example of successful combination of old and new: https://www.google.com/search?q=reichstag&client=safari&rls=...


We definitely wouldn't want an other monstrosity like the Louvre Pyramid /s




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