
Notre Dame Re-Imagined with Glass Roof - WMCRUN
https://www.dezeen.com/2019/05/03/notre-dame-glass-roof-spire-cathedral-miysis-studio/
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jl6
Well, for what it’s worth, I like it. Old buildings aren’t always that old -
they are added to over the centuries, with parts reflecting the tastes of
their individual times. Why not add something reflective of our times?

I sometimes think there is an “English” approach to conservation in which
history is something to be preserved with utmost fidelity - and a “French”
approach, where history is something you are part of.

This idea seems very French.

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amelius
One objection might be that a church is probably supposed to be a different
kind of architecture from everything else; and the modern glass roof is
something we see a lot nowadays in buildings with different purposes.

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dragonwriter
> One objection might be that a church is probably supposed to be a different
> kind of architecture from everything else

There are certain design elements that Catholic churches in general (and
cathedrals specifically) tend to have related to their specific function, but
neither difference for the sake of difference nor anything particular that
prohibits a glass roof is really called for; both original and renovation
construction of churches (including cathedrals) tends to reflect a blend of
architectural fashion at the time and place of construction and liturgical
practice of the time (with renovations often blending current trends with the
desire for harmony with the remaining constructions and a desire to evoke or
pay homage to the replaced components even when not directly reproducing
them.)

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GorgeRonde
Rafel • 10 hours ago If they add a MacDonald's upstairs, it would be perfect.
I would go with my children.

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crooked-v
What you really want is a Starbucks near the door, so the parishioners can get
a little pick-me-up before services start.

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trothamel
I always find architectural designs like this very odd, since they seem
divorced from anything like customer requirements. It's something like a
programmer discussing what Twitter would be like if everyone followed exactly
one of seven accounts.

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stupidcar
It's intended as marketing, not a serious proposal. It's like how graphic
designers publish unsolicited redesigns of Facebook in their portfolio. It's
not because they expect Facebook to use them, but because they're a good way
of getting attention.

The agency in question here isn't even an architecture firm, it's just a
company that produces renderings of the kind you see in marketing collateral
when buying off-plan properties. Someone there realised this Notre Dame
business was a good opportunity to get some publicity by publishing a
deliberately radical idea, and it seems to have worked.

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davidivadavid
That's a good analogy and probably a better mental model to judge it by, but I
was thoroughly disappointed by the architects' rationale.

"We also wanted to mix traditional wood and new materials to find the right
balance between history and future"

"What could be more natural than paying homage to this place through a real
vegetated space?"

That kind of literalism sounds like it's right out of the mind of a first year
architecture student.

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robbrown451
My first thought was no no no no no.

But I'm warming up to it. ultimately, if 70 years from now they decide to
restore it to its original form, that's always an option. But the original
roof is gone, whatever is put there now is modern. I'd rather it be clear what
is old and what is new, than trying to pretend the new is old. At least if it
can be done well, and if the pictures are accurate, that seems to be the case.

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davidivadavid
Makes you wonder if people who came up with that have ever been inside Notre
Dame.

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simonsarris
Right? The stone vaulting above precludes letting any light in. And HUGE TREES
placed where worshipers are supposed to sit? Wtf? How are you going to plant
the trees without destroying everything else, including the catacombs below?

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crooked-v
In this concept, the trees are on the upper "attic" level, not ground level.

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lopmotr
How about whatever they do, wait 100 years before starting construction just
to make sure the fashion of 2019 really is as timeless as it will need to be
for the next 1000 years. There's no hurry. It took hundreds of years to build
the original.

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Insanity
Judging by this thread, I might be the only one who likes this design so far.

It's pretty neat in my opinion to try to have a bit of our century represented
in the notre dame for future generations.

I'm curious which one they will end up going for in the end.

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canada_dry
> the only one who likes this design

I'm in the thumbs up camp for a glass ceiling.

Which my friends might find odd since I absolutely detest this abomination:

[https://i.imgur.com/3U5IrQW.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/3U5IrQW.jpg)

Which was lauded as adding a modern 'twist' to an old relic.

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NeedMoreTea
Yeah, now that photo perfectly summarises modern architecture taking the piss.
It's all either "as cheap as we can get away with" or "look how
{clever|edgy|controversial} I am". I hate most modern architecture as it's far
too simplistic and sympathetic of nothing whatsoever in the surroundings.
Which is not to say I think we should copy ancient styles.

This roof? Utterly beautiful, and a lovely way to get a close up view of the
reconstructed spire. It'll look stunning at night. So I expect they'll choose
something ugly instead. :)

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dragonwriter
> Yeah, now that photo perfectly summarises modern architecture taking the
> piss. It's all either "as cheap as we can get away with" or "look how
> {clever|edgy|controversial} I am".

This is true of pre-modern architecture, too; it's just that the distance of
age makes cheap either gone and forgotten or “efficient” and
clever/edgy/controversial—or, the also common in modernity, tendy followers of
a successful instance of that—into memorable and iconic of a particular
combination of time, place, and movement.

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NeedMoreTea
That doesn't seem _at all_ true. Across millennia some basic tenets have
remained - sense of proportion, symmetries etc. Even in the post industrial
revolution, Victorian and Edwardian eras there was a retention of much of
that. Even as they were discovering new construction methods and materials.

Victorians went with fussy and gothic, but even bleeding edge suspension
bridges or curtain walled mills kept much of those classic curves, proportions
and symmetries in the components, and in the styling. They seem easy on the
human eye somehow, and manage to remain so. Even dirt cheap mass housing nods
to what's around. Upto the war, as they were exploring minimalism and
modernism, they _still_ retained most of those tenets. We can look back, and
whether victorian brick and steel bridge, brick 30s public building, or
modernist it somehow looks right, while 99.99% of brutalist and other post war
schools remain ugly as sin, and "just wrong" to nearly everyone. As they
mostly did even when new. A tiny few manage to retain a little something and
become the iconic examples.

Every era upto the war managed to nod to what surrounded too - to leave the
street or cityscape looking "right" . Not the same, not a pastiche, but with
some sympathy. Even the pre-war modernists managed to usually sit well in
their surroundings, whereas currently they just take a dump on the carpet.
What surrounds isn't looked at, or cared about. "look at my shit, you can't
miss it", shit's everywhere. That was formerly an approach reserved for the
odd mausoleum, palace or monument.

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lurquer
I'm as conservative and traditional as they come... but it's got my vote.
Looks cool. Who knows... maybe in 500 years there will another 'Hunchback of
Notre Dame' kind of book but instead of the Quasimodo character having been
driven mad by his job as the bell-ringer, it will be some character driven mad
by his job as the bird-shit cleaner. Every time he sees a pigeon, he'd howl,
"The birds! The birds!"

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Yuioup
Wouldn't it turn it into a giant greenhouse?

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Gibbon1
I think that can be fixed by hanging some big galvanized air conditioning
ducts from the ceiling.

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sbzodnsbd
There is no more humility. Nothing is holy anymore.

Why can we rebuild it the way it was (as much as possible) and make the fire
(and therefore ourselves) an asterisk in the Cathedral’s history? Why must we
etch ourselves into everything?

Want a glass cathedral? Go build one. Elsewhere.

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axlee
The "way it was" is a 19th-century reimagination from people who obviously did
not follow your advice.

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sbzodnsbd
Far more faithful to the original than a glass roof.

The guy who did the spire did add his own touch (like any cathedral that took
several centuries to build). But with subtlety!

There is nothing subtle about another steel and glass monstrosity which
litters modern architecture.

Instead of looking like a place of worship it will look like a fusion of a
high rise condo and a nightclub.

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dougmwne
Entertaining design, though I imagine it would end up just as hated as the
Louvre pyramid.

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shawabawa3
The Louvre pyramid is hated? Every Parisian I know loves it

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Insanity
First time I hear that it is hated as well!

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moochamerth
When the project was presented in 1984 it was universally hated by the French
press. All lot of commentators said it would ruin and deface a national pride.

People have learned to love it - I personally think it's a fantastic addition
to a unique site.

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crooked-v
The trees are an interesting touch, but this seems like it misses out on the
greatest active benefit of having a glass roof for a church: having natural
sunlight fill the pews when services are held on nice days.

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nsnick
The problem with filling the interior of the cathedral with light is that you
won't get the same effect from the stained glass windows and the candles. The
great thing about this design is that it leaves the traditional experience of
the interior of Notre Dame exactly the same while also offering a new space
for contemplation.

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hindsightbias
Drop the steel and use timber frame arches. Glass optional. Maybe partially
stained with topics of great thinkers, artists, scientists of the last 500
years. Those rising us higher.

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GnwbZHiU
The glasses are OK. But I don't like the steel/metal frames, they don't match
with the rest of the building architecture.

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rockinghigh
This roof and the view from the roof look stunning. A lot better than the old
roof and spire.

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return1
Greenhouse reimagined as Notre Dame

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ralusek
There is definitely something very odd about French culture at the moment, as
this has become a left vs. right political issue. As it was burning, I caught
a reporter say that they'd overheard people in a case saying "good, let it
burn," that "isn't France anymore." I thought this was odd, but has since
proven to be emblematic of the prevailing opinion.

“We mustn’t say to ourselves, by dogmatism, that we must absolutely redo the
cathedral as it was. We won’t decide to do something modern or something new
just for the sake of it."

\- French culture minister Franck Riester

Macron himself has decided to hold an architecture competition to redesign
something "even more beautiful," which belongs to all of France/the world.
Attempting to preserve the cathedral is now actually an explicitly
conservative position.

“Before proclaiming ourselves builders, let us recognize first that we are
inheritors. Notre-Dame de Paris does not belong to us. We are the first to see
it burn: Our only duty is to restore her."

\- Right-wing candidate for the Republican Party François-Xavier Bellamy

Now, I'm by no means a traditionalist or conservative, but there is something
very off-putting about the attitude of those attempting to reimagine the
structure. I think the thing that bothers me the most is that it's just
another skin-deep tribalist gesture of identity, that we must visually
reimagine a Catholic icon, because it's important that it belong to "everyone,
everywhere." But that's precisely the problem, because it already DID. Notre
Dame has been a _global_ icon for hundreds and hundreds of years. I'm neither
French nor Catholic, and have always been in complete awe of that structure.
Who is looking for Angkor Wat to be reimagined in a modern style for the sake
of global identity? Nobody, because Angkor Wat _is_ a part of our global
identity exactly as it is.

I had a friend share something on Facebook that absolutely blew my mind. It
effectively stated that "if you think the Notre Dame burning is bad, you have
no idea what Muslims have gone through by seeing ISIS destroying Assyrian
artifacts." I thought that this was an absolutely insane position to take.
Those Assyrian artifacts were priceless to all of humanity. I am exactly as
devastated at the loss of Assyrian artifacts as I am with the burning of the
Notre Dame, even more-so because it was done intentionally, but I can't help
but feel that the people who are ostensibly attempting to take a globalist
perspective are revealing to the rest of us that they have been internally
nationalizing cultural achievements this whole time.

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crooked-v
> Now, I'm by no means a traditionalist or conservative, but there is
> something very off-putting about the attitude of those attempting to
> reimagine the structure.

Notre-Dame has been "reimagined" repeatedly throughout history. For example,
fron 1857 to 1864, the inside and outside were heavily refurbished, including
many new decorations put in placee, entire sets of supports and walls
replaced, and a brand new and taller spire designed from scratch to replace
the previous onee. From 1991 to 2001, many of the exterior stone blocks,
turrets, and gargoyles were replaced again, as industrial pollution had caused
them to erode at an accelerated rate.

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ralusek
I'm aware, it's also been constructed and reconstructed over centuries. Don't
be pedantic, you understand that I'm talking about the two general
attitudes/positions being put forward. If the reconstruction internally used a
stronger concrete or something while still trying to recapture the essence of
the cathedral, that is not the same thing as wanting to reimagine it for the
sake of dismantling its identity. And that's not catastrophizing or making
assumptions on their behalf, that is literally what they are saying.

