Notre-Dame cathedral burning in Paris

[viper37]

In a few years Notre Dame will have been repaired. It will have somewhat fewer original parts, but it won't look significantly different. Wear and tear, revolution, and heavy handed restoration had already made it less than all-medieval before this fire. Notre Dame will be fine and keep being a part of Paris for many years to come. As cultural disasters go this is not a major one AFAICT.

If it was only going to be a few years, I would agree with you.  But reports are it is going to take decades.  A generation or two will not be able to enjoy it.  That is a cultural disaster.

Which part of the work will take decades? Not rhetorical.

when repairing traditional buildings, you want to use materials that are as close as possible to the originals.  Say, you want electricity and heating in a mill, you will try to find a way to dissimulate the wires and conduits behind "false" walls, you need lots of woods, you try to avoid any kind of plastics or shiny metals.  That takes a while.

If I wanted to build a shining new cathedral, I'd probably use a steel structure, or a liminated wood structure and I would likely not build it so high because I don't really need to, if I want a solid structure, unlike 13th century building styles.

Getting the proper material for, well, everything, will take a while.  Then assembling it is longer than bolting&welding pieces of metal together.  Just doing a renovation instead of a new building takes longer, since you have to consider what is in place, work with constraints you don't have when there is nothing standing.
It's not that one specific part takes longer than any other, it's just a combination of everything that adds up.

Otherwise, you tear it down and build a new cultural center... but really, what would be the point, then?  I'm sure Paris has more than enough churches.  You don't need to rebuild it for a functional use, only the cultural use.

[Monoriu]

I think the most difficult part is going to be securing the funding.  It is going to have an effect on the French budgets. 

[mongers]

I think the most difficult part is going to be securing the funding.  It is going to have an effect on the French budgets.

It's a trivially small amount in comparison to the national budget.

Besides a French billionaire has coughed up a couple of hundred million euros already, Total has pledged 100 million. I think the fund already stands at 650 million and that's even before the world's general public contributions have been collect.

I know this will completely dumbfound you Mono, but, please take a seat just in case, but people can at time be generous! :gasp:

I'd guess the French state will have to find very little of the rebuilding costs. 

[Monoriu]

I think the most difficult part is going to be securing the funding.  It is going to have an effect on the French budgets.

It's a trivially small amount in comparison to the national budget.

Besides a French billionaire has coughed up a couple of hundred million euros already, Total has pledged 100 million. I think the fund already stands at 650 million and that's even before the world's general public contributions have been collect.

I know this will completely dumbfound you Mono, but, please take a seat just in case, but people can at time be generous! :gasp:

I'd guess the French state will have to find very little of the rebuilding costs.

It is going to take decades.  The bulk of the costs will go toward paying the salaries of the workers.  In this case, the costs will be high because (i) the longer it takes, the higher the salaries costs and (ii) this is no ordinary construction project.  A lot of specialists are going to be needed. 

Macron's promise won't come cheap. Early estimates put the cost of rebuilding in the multi-billion euros.

https://www.ccn.com/cost-rebuilding-notre-dame-cathedral-catastrophic-fire

Financing is really about choice.  You only have a finite number of dollars, and these have their designated uses.  Some go to healthcare, some go to education, etc.  Suddenly you need to allocate some of these dollars to rebuilding this cathedral.  It means you have to give up something else.  Somewhere, somebody is going to wait longer to see a doctor.  The troops will have fewer tanks to work with.  Etc.  It is the political part of making someone sacrifice something that is the really difficult part. 

[Valmy]

Yeah but tourism is one of France's most lucrative industries. You cannot leave a hulking wreck what was one of Paris' top attractions. So it is really that big of a sacrifice or a necessary investment?

Not fixing it might cost quite a bit as well....I mean so long as we are talking in such straight monetary terms.

[Monoriu]

Yeah but tourism is one of France's most lucrative industries. You cannot leave a hulking wreck what was one of Paris' top attractions. So it is really that big of a sacrifice or a necessary investment?

Not fixing it might cost quite a bit as well....I mean so long as we are talking in such straight monetary terms.

They have to fix it.  It is a given.  Only question is how to find the money. 

[crazy canuck]

In a few years Notre Dame will have been repaired. It will have somewhat fewer original parts, but it won't look significantly different. Wear and tear, revolution, and heavy handed restoration had already made it less than all-medieval before this fire. Notre Dame will be fine and keep being a part of Paris for many years to come. As cultural disasters go this is not a major one AFAICT.

If it was only going to be a few years, I would agree with you.  But reports are it is going to take decades.  A generation or two will not be able to enjoy it.  That is a cultural disaster.

Which part of the work will take decades? Not rhetorical.

I am not sure.  But that is what architects are saying

[PDH]

I would think that rebuilding a flying buttress cathedral will take a bit more time than an overpass stretch of interstate or somesuch.  First of all, the stones needed are not going to be poured from concrete, they will be cut stones, the timbers may well be amalgams of woods, but I would bet they will be not so easy to make as assumed, etc. etc. 

The point is that they will be remaking a Gothic cathedral, using modern knowledge and understandings of not only what works but what the original builders used or wanted.  Why?  It is grandfather's pocket knife - sure the blade is new, but handle was his and that blade was made properly.  They are not making a new structure, but instead salvaging a partially destroyed monument from a bygone period.  To do it justice they should not simple repave or replace, but instead find a way to be true to the intentions of past times - even if earlier changes, fixes, destructions were not so gentle.

To do it right, proper, and good means that it will be harder than some think.

[alfred russel]

I would think that rebuilding a flying buttress cathedral will take a bit more time than an overpass stretch of interstate or somesuch.  First of all, the stones needed are not going to be poured from concrete, they will be cut stones, the timbers may well be amalgams of woods, but I would bet they will be not so easy to make as assumed, etc. etc. 

The point is that they will be remaking a Gothic cathedral, using modern knowledge and understandings of not only what works but what the original builders used or wanted.  Why?  It is grandfather's pocket knife - sure the blade is new, but handle was his and that blade was made properly.  They are not making a new structure, but instead salvaging a partially destroyed monument from a bygone period.  To do it justice they should not simple repave or replace, but instead find a way to be true to the intentions of past times - even if earlier changes, fixes, destructions were not so gentle.

To do it right, proper, and good means that it will be harder than some think.

The first difficult decision will be, "to what era should the building be reconstructed?"

I suspect that most will say that the late 19th century version that it essentially was before it burned. I would like to propose an older version of the building - with a more inclusive use - when it served as the "Temple of Reason".

[dps]

I would think that rebuilding a flying buttress cathedral will take a bit more time than an overpass stretch of interstate or somesuch.  First of all, the stones needed are not going to be poured from concrete, they will be cut stones, the timbers may well be amalgams of woods, but I would bet they will be not so easy to make as assumed, etc. etc. 

The point is that they will be remaking a Gothic cathedral, using modern knowledge and understandings of not only what works but what the original builders used or wanted.  Why?  It is grandfather's pocket knife - sure the blade is new, but handle was his and that blade was made properly.  They are not making a new structure, but instead salvaging a partially destroyed monument from a bygone period.  To do it justice they should not simple repave or replace, but instead find a way to be true to the intentions of past times - even if earlier changes, fixes, destructions were not so gentle.

To do it right, proper, and good means that it will be harder than some think.

Yeah, and I also don't see any need to use new methods, for the most part.  The roof timbers that burned were supposedly the originals--if that's accurate, then I don't think there are any new methods that could be used that could be expected to last any longer than the originals did.

Now, it may not be possible to find oaks of the appropriate size and all anymore, requiring them to rebuild it differently, but using a different method out of necessity is different than making a deliberate choice to do so.

[jimmy olsen]

Are they going to do everything by hand in the original way (as understood by historians)?

[garbon]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/apr/16/notre-dame-fire-is-devastating-but-iconic-cathedral-will-live-on

Notre Dame fire is devastating – but iconic cathedral will live on

The history of beloved, culturally significant buildings is inextricably connected to a history of destruction – and very often fire. Less than a century after building of the present Notre Dame began in 1163, fire damage is thought to have prompted the remodelling of parts of the cathedral. The Gothic structure replaced an earlier church that had been built on the site of a Roman temple to Jupiter. By the 19th century the building was in a state of deep neglect: almost a ruin and lacking its spire.

A complete restoration in the 1850s by the architects Jean-Baptiste Lassus and Eugène Viollet-le-Duc reversed the cathedral's dire situation. Viollet-le-Duc also added a replacement spire in the style of, though more elaborate than, the original.

By this stage, the medieval spires of the Amiens, Reims and Rouen cathedrals had already been destroyed – Rouen's by fire caused by lightning in 1822.

Notre Dame, before Monday's fire, was not a 12th-century time capsule, but consisted of layers of remaking and reworking – in the case of Viollet-le-Duc's work, based on careful, loving research and a deep respect for the methods of the medieval builders. Which is not to minimise the tragedy and loss involved in the terrible damage to this numinous building, but rather, to suggest that there is hope: Notre Dame can, and surely will, live on.

On 19 September 1914, Reims cathedral – another edifice of huge symbolic importance to the French nation, where generations of monarchs were crowned – was hit by German shells, setting wooden scaffolding on fire, melting lead in the roof and causing fire to consume wooden fixtures and pews. The cathedral sustained yet more damage through the first world war, but its ruins rose again after a huge post-war international effort, to which Rockefeller millions contributed. It reopened in 1938.

"Nous rebâtirons Notre-Dame" (we will rebuild Notre Dame), promised the French president, Emmanuel Macron. Donors such as the billionaire luxury brand owner François Pinault have already pledged funds.

But many questions lie ahead. What, precisely, will rebuilding mean? To what extent could, or should, the damaged parts be re-created precisely? In any case, what might "re-creation" consist of in a building that to a degree mingles the medieval and the 19th century, and serves a society so different to that of the 12th century? What modern building materials and methods should be introduced? How could a cathedral's spiritual atmosphere be evoked afresh? Should the restoration retain traces and memory of the fire damage – for example, in the way the architect David Chipperfield, in his celebrated work on Berlin's Neues Museum, preserved some of the scars that the building sustained during the second world war?

The damage is seemingly not so complete as to require the radical solution offered in the case of St Paul's Cathedral in London, when a medieval edifice was replaced with a bold new building in a fresh baroque style after the 1666 fire. But it is certainly possible that a rebuilt Notre Dame could, and perhaps should, contain architectural and artistic gestures that speak of our own time.

There are lessons to be learned about buildings and shared cultural memory. The causes of the fire are unknown and will be until the proper investigations are completed. What is well understood, however, is that complex, multi-layered historic buildings that are undergoing building or restoration work – as was the case for Notre Dame – are at particular risk from fire.

No city understands this better than Glasgow. The School of Art, Charles Rennie Mackintosh's masterpiece, was gutted by fire for the second time last summer during the final stages of its rebuild, after a first fire ravaged the school in 2014. The causes of the blaze have not yet been – and may never be – precisely determined, though it was recently reported that investigators were considering the theory that linseed-oil soaked rags, used to treat the school's wooden panelling, may have been to blame.

The cost of neglect of buildings can be unspeakable: the Museu Nacional in Rio, for example, which was destroyed by fire last summer along with most of its contents, had been starved of funds and was palpably incapable of protecting its collections, which represented the memory of a nation.

Some observers, within hours of the Notre Dame tragedy, have turned their attention to the dilapidated and dangerous state of the Palace of Westminster. Its restoration, which may cost more than £3.5bn to renovate and make safe, has been delayed through political inaction for years. Some may feel that if the Houses of Parliament, where fires break out regularly and is monitored 24 hours a day, were to burn there would be little to mourn. But people might feel rather differently if the worst were actually to happen. The sight of Parisians lining the Seine bridges to watch the flames on Monday night recalled similar scenes – the night of 16 October, 1834, when Londoners gathered to watch, aghast, the medieval Palace of Westminster burn down.

Whatever happens to Notre Dame, the restoration has the capacity to be an act of archaeology and study as well as an act of remaking. Researchers would have the chance to learn much about the building that would in turn inform its future. It could be a training ground for a new generation of craftspeople and a cradle of art. France already shows signs, by sheer force of will, of transforming this moment of grief into a moment of optimism.

[The Larch]

Money won't be a huge issue, it's a matter of national pride.

[Threviel]

Just seasoning the huge oak timber the old way could take decades.

[crazy canuck]

Money won't be a huge issue, it's a matter of national pride.

And not just a local concern