The Notre Dame fire and the future of history
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I am very unhappy that Notre Dame burnt. Having said that, I don't see it as "oh no, history has been destroyed" but rather as "this is the history of the Cathedral". If it's still standing (and it seems like it will be), people will talk about this fire for hundreds of years, the same way we talk today about how it survived the French revolution.
Douglas Adams has a great quote on how a building its more than its materials, which you can read in [1]. If we use 3D scans and modern technology to reconstruct the Cathedral to the way it was, I wouldn't see it as "Disneyland" (as the article puts it) but rather as an example of how far we have come and what we can do when we put our minds to it, and how the story of our civilization is written not by design, but rather by accident.
[1] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/742883-i-remembered-once-in...
I will add one quick thing: if that's true the initial wall is lost (obviously), old craftmanship is not lost. There is an organisation in France called "Les Compagnons du Devoir" [1] that does exactly this: (re)build things the way we built them centuries ago.
This organization has stonecutters and carpenters that could help a lot redo what was destroyed last night, with the know-how of the past.
So yes indeed, nothing is "lost", this is just another part of the cathedral's history.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compagnons_du_DevoirModern construction techniques are of very little use to repair a building which was itself built over the course of 150 years.
“Modern” gets you the $200mm staircase to nowhere at Hudson Yards in NY.
The question is for a building which actually struggled to raise the $7m used for the initial repair project, are people going to be patient enough to spend the $700m and 10/15/20 years to rebuild it with anything approaching the care, quality, and craftsmanship of the original?
The reconstruction should be the life’s work of a great master (or several great masters, when you consider the art and ornamentation that goes along with the architecture).
Do we still even do that sort of thing anymore?
Arguing that cathedrals' wooden roofs are built to last while we don't know how to build longer-lasting work is a very curious take on the situation.
I'd wager yes, this probably woke people up that they've let their country's icon crumble, and money (and time) will now be no objects.
The roof that burned was called the Forest because it was made from 13,000 whole oak trees (the number varies depending on source) spanning 52 acres of forest.
Something like 10 hours ago I was seeing a headline that €650 million had already been pledged for rebuilding from various private sources, so, yeah, I think it's reasonable to think that the money will be there.
a) Replace like with like (don't change materials or construction techniques)
b) Make any repair work obvious (don't try to pass new fabric off as original)
c) Repairs should be reversible.
It's a complicated field, but the general spirit is that when a building needs to be repaired, you try to make the new elements match as closely as possible to the way the structure was when it was first built. You don't say "we know better than the medieval masons, so we'll use reinforced concrete instead of stone" because that wouldn't be a restoration. It would turn the building into a hybrid of old and new technology, when what everyone wants is to experience the old way of building.
There's also an element of arrogance in trying to improve on medieval architecture—most people would agree that architecture, as an art, isn't something that progresses inexorably like science. The cathedrals are already as good as architecture gets. "Updating" a medieval structure to use the trendy structural technologies of the 21st century is a barbaric idea, because it is literally a case of destroying or interfering with an irreplaceable artefact.
Obviously, not every old structure has to be treated with kid gloves as a priceless artefact. But I hope you can see what I'm getting at when I say that "best practice" in building conservation means not acting as if you know better than the original builders. It's a case of respecting the original design and not messing with it for the sake of employing modern technology.
Music is the same, painting is the same. A piece of medieval music can be perfect on its own terms. It wouldn't make sense to say that electronic music is better because the tech is more advanced. Artistic value and technology are totally separate issues.
Painting materials have evolved and become cheaper, making art more accessible to the average person, expanding the artistic landscape.
These things have not stayed the same. It's odd that you think they have.
What I'm saying is not an unusual opinion. I mentioned electronic music, so it should have been obvious that I'm aware that "things have not stayed the same". But the point I'm trying to allude to is the fact that art is an expression of the human spirit, and because of that, it doesn't advance like science or technology.
Here's an example of someone writing in the Guardian:
"It was a year of revelations. The oldest portrait in the world – carved out of mammoth tusk 26,000 years ago in Moravia – had a long slender face, almond eyes and a rueful half-smile: just like a Modigliani. She came to the British Museum along with Ice Age drawings and sculptures so superb they have never been surpassed, proving once again that there is no progress – only change – in art."
From https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2013/dec/22/art-review-2...
Or, on a slightly different point: "It is obvious that art cannot teach anyone anything, since in four thousand years humanity has learnt nothing at all." (Tarkovsky)
Tarkovsky obviously isn't denying the growth of scientific knowledge. He just thinks there are aspects of human nature that only change slowly, if at all, and that those aspects are more significant than the accumulation of scientific knowledge and all the changes that brings about.
Progress in nuclear physics hasn't got a lot to do with progress in human politics and (dare I say it) justice/peace.
Construction technology is similar vis a vis architecture. Revit, 3D printing and advanced materials aren't an automatic ticket to making architectural work that's as good as or better than Angkor Wat. I mean, just what materials you build something out of, and what technologies you use, both obviously contribute to the particular artistic problem that the architect solves. But someone working with very limited technology can produce a fully developed artistic masterwork under those constraints. That's just something we know empirically from looking at the art of the past.
So this is more about never being complacent that what's being made today will match or surpass the artistic high points of the past. That's what the "no progress" concept means to me. There's a level playing field—none of us has any kind of technology that means we can unthinkingly produce work that compares well with renaissance masterpieces. The real picture is quite a bit more depressing that that...
>b) Make any repair work obvious (don't try to pass new fabric off as original)
>c) Repairs should be reversible.
I don't think everyone agrees to this. At least, I don't. It's absurd to put a wooden roof back onto a structure seriously damaged by a roof fire. Whatever goes up there should be non-flammable. At minimum something that won't crash in the roof again in case there is a fire. Rebuilding it in the same fashion would be monumentally stupid.
Setting aside the safety issue, I go back and forth if it should be restored in exactly the same way. Notre Dame has been modified and improved over time and I don't necessarily think it needs to go back exactly the way it was. Like the glass pyramid in the Louvre perhaps modern materials can be an improvement.
That's part of the building's history now, for better or worse. I expect Viollet-le-Duc's work will be restored, even if some people think he was crass.
This whole issue isn't something that can be resolved easily. It's important not to look down on the activities of repair and maintenance. They might not be as glamorous as artistic creation, but obviously there's love, skill and creativity involved in repair as well. We need more of that.
A bad intervention by a currently successful artist or architect would be nothing to be proud of in future years. "Move fast and break things" is not appropriate in this situation. It's not as if a repair job involves pure boredom, imitation and humility—those craftsmen will be expressing themselves and their passion just fine.
The 19th C fixation on romantic originality, on the heroic artist? We don't need that. Not to be cynical about the state of architecture, but we can't match even Viollet-le-Duc's iffy work now. We need to shift into a different mode with more emphasis on preserving building skills and historical artefacts than on altering them to suit the whim of the people who happen to be alive now.
There is beauty in reconstruction, and calling it 'fake' misses the point.
Egad, I hope one of them was that modern architects shouldn't be allowed near a building project. To see the ruins of that beautiful old cathedral next to that atrocity against beauty is almost physically painful.
The people who built Notre Dame tore down what to them would have been ancient history. Those other buildings were hundreds of years old by the time Notre Dame was built. 800 years ago, Notre Dame was the change that destroyed a 700 year old historical building. And the new construction was built in a super-modern style. They didn't try to make it look like the old building they tore down, they built it with the most modern techniques in a super trendy style.
Much like death and rebirth are cornerstones of the Christian religion that Notre Dame represents, death and rebirth are fundamental to Notre Dame itself.
A 3D rendering: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTkk2P0KabA
A picture, google image has more, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sint-Lambertuskathed...
And as you point it out we don't think much about it these days (for better or worst).
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d2/Si...
I think it's this one:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d2/Si...
If you can suffer through Quora, some answers there:
- https://www.quora.com/How-were-ancient-cities-built-on-top-o...
- https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-ground-level-of-Ancient-Rom...
It could almost be called a “brief” history of Rome.
But then, maybe San Clementes history IS the history of Rome.
In many cases, that's much of Paris, too - including underneath Notre Dame.
What makes monuments like Notre Dame or the pyramids special is that they DO imbue this sense of continuity. Everything else in our lives comes and goes, but a few things we as a society come together collectively to say "This is special and worth preserving." There is a special feeling of connection one gets from that sense of unity across time. These are the things that give us a sense of shared history and a shared future destiny. And it has the effect of simultaneously making you feel individually small and insignificant, but also important and part of something grand.
The first time I visited Paris I remember one of my most dominant thoughts was that nothing like this will ever be built again. There is so much in the art and architecture that, by modern standards, would be deemed wasteful and extravagant and a suboptimal use of resources. We don't value aesthetics in the same way. So when these things go, they're gone forever. Even if remade they will only ever be an imitation of a way of thinking and a way of life that has gone extinct.
They won't even serve to remind us of those old ways because the gestalt you get from layering generations of use and the peculiar artifacts of the material culture that created it will be gone. That's why people mourn. It's not just about the building, but the fact that the building anchors them to a sense of tradition and continuity.
And it's not the first time these things happened. It was mentioned that before it was a Christian church it was a temple to Jupiter in that location. Removing the old pagan monuments was a conscious effort to FORCE just such a break from the past. To say the old pagan ways are over and to sever any sense of continuity with that old culture and their old Gods. I'm sure it was just as troubling or traumatic then too.
We still have some collected myths and stories from the Romans and the Norse and so on, but a lot of these were written by Christian converts who were sad that the stories they heard on their grandparents' knees were going to disappear. They may have converted, but they felt like this was something important that needed to be preserved.
Get tickets well in advance.
We have Roman myths as written down by pagans pre-Christianity.
But our records of Norse myths were written down around 1200 AD, a couple of centuries after Christianity became the official religion in Scandinavia in 1000 AD. It is hard to say how much modification there was between those points.
The biggest change is that Odin/Wotan finished his long journey from being recognizably Mercury when the Romans met the Germanic people to absorbing a lot of the character of Tyr (aka Mars) and then becoming king of the gods. The historical root survives in language, Wednesday is still named after Wotan in English, and after Mercury in various Romance languages.
There is reason to believe that during Viking times, Thor was (like his analogs Jupiter and Zeus before) still the king of the gods. And therefore Odin's role as patron of kings and poets both was responsible for his elevation in the version of the myths that got written down.
Out of curiosity, what are the arguments that Thor was considered the highest of Gods originally? IIRC many of the ceremonial items they found on the boats were dedicated to Odin weren't they? (Though I suppose that being an analog to Mercury, he would make a lot of sense for voyagers to adopt as a patron).
Historical accounts such as Adam of Bremen describing Thor as the main god at Uppsala, the frequency of Thor's Hammer versus other religious symbols, the many references to Thor in Icelandic sagas.
However Tacitus did describe Mercury at the chief Germanic god. So maybe Odin was the chief god after all.
The popularity of Odin could also be a reflection of their social roles. Consider the Lay of Harbard: https://thenorsegods.com/the-lay-of-harbard/. Elsewhere in the myths, Odin gives Harbard as one of his names, and it is believed that Harbard in this lay is actually Odin. Reading that, you'll see why the average peasant would be more interested in asking for Thor's help than Odin's. Conversely you'll see how a war leader would be more interested in Odin's help than Thor's.
Buildings now show incredible material science, technological development; but rarely the decades of learning of human craft directly applied to materials.
I think if we were going from rough-hewn to well-faced stonework, opaque windows or simple slits to translucent radiant glasswork, from flat ceilings to intricate vaulting, etc.. that we too would make that leap.
We are so much richer, we can afford to keep old stuff, hoard it even, and still have resources a'plenty to keep warm, feed everyone, and build glorious buildings.
I say all of this in contrast to e.g. tearing down the Notre Dame and putting up some real estate development that rents out stalls to merchants. Say the economy takes a hit and the owners start considering selling the land, only for the structure to be torn down again.
My point is that it'd be a tragic misuse if the structure fell into the hands of those solely seeking a profit from the structure/land.
Anyone have any other thoughts on this current Zeitgeist?
FTFY
If you look at the last major restoration "Once the project was approved, Viollet-le-Duc made drawings and photographs of the existing decorative elements; then they were removed and a stream of sculptors began making new statues of saints, gargoyles, chimeras and other architectural elements in a workshop he established, working from his drawings and photographs of similar works in other cathedrals of the same period." "Other craftsmen made stained glass windows in Gothic grisaille patterns designed by Viollet-le-Duc to replace the destroyed medieval windows in the chapels of the ground floor of the nave of the cathedral." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eug%C3%A8ne_Viollet-le-Duc#Not...
Artists across France should be engaged to submit works with the promise that effort will be made to preserve them for centuries, if their work is chosen for inclusion. Even the stuff that doesnt make the cut could end up somewhere.
This suggests it was supposed to be fashionable. But fashion in the modern world is "trendy" we build in an attempt to court popularity. I'd imagine Notre-Dame adopted the style it did as part of the linear architectural development, constrained by Church tradition, and needs, and liberated by new building techniques. Not built for fashion, but for longevity and utility as a place of Worship. Perhaps that's why it centred around a traditional (in C11) Romanesque cruciform plan with tower. Indeed the initial build - I gather - didn't include the flying buttresses that enable the "opening" of the walls to far more glass usage.
IMO Notre-Dame de Paris represents something of a pinnacle of Church architecture inasmuch as we don't devote that much manpower or that many resources to buildings nowadays. That's right morally, I think, but means short of Gaudi's ongoing build such opulent Church architecture is firmly fixed in the past for Europe at least(?).
It would be fascinating to see a Gothic cathedral built in modern Europe, do we even have the craftsmen to accomplish it?
TL;DR I'm not convinced.
Except those tourists were called, "pilgrims". The money they paid to enter the building was what was used to fund the cathedral itself. See also, the Holy relics, like the Crown of Thorns. It's like a roadside attraction, except there's the hope of escape from earthly damnation and enter into everlasting peace in Heaven. Which I mean, that's a nice bonus. Such promises were made to those who worked on and/or financed the cathedral's building.
That whole system isn't in play anymore (The Catholic Church just doesn't have that power, or Monopoly over things like intellectual property like books and people who can read those books) and places like Notre Dame are in serious disrepair (before the fire). That's sort of the real tragedy: this fire probably could have been avoided if the money was there to spend.
This rebuilding would be a great opportunity to document that.
Exactly! Time and physics doesn't care about history. Wood will rot, metal will corrode, stone will weather. Hell, the earth itself is undergoing continuous reshaping every single day. This rebuilding is just another chapter in the cathedrals history.
Besides, think of how prestigious it sounds to say you played a role in the reconstruction an 850 year old national landmark. I know what jobsite I'd like to work on if I were a master carpenter.
However, I think that from an architectural and art historical perspective, we can do more than just reconstruct the Cathedral exactly the way it was. Art and architecture always change with their cultural and historical context, and I think it's one of human kinds biggest strengths to create something new out of old or destroyed artwork.
A great example is the Cologne Cathedral Window, which the German contemporary painter Gerhard Richter designed in 2007, long after the window had been destroyed in World War II: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/05/12/many-colored-g...
[Greetings to the early-internet archaeologists of the 29th century, btw.]
He was rather proud that they destroyed the station and missed the Dom.
Though seeing those first pictures yesterday, with the cross glowing as it was, gave me a sense of okayness. "We" responded quickly to a super-unfortunate accident and I believe, based on several sources of comments/Twitter that I've been reading, that we'll be able to rebuild it.
I strongly believe that two-hundred years from now the history books will refer to "The fire of 2019" as a powerful entry of resurrection in the long history of the Cathedral.
Exactly. There aren't many old structures that don't have a history littered with damage or complete destruction and rebuilding. Natural disasters, invaders, accidents. I like to think that those events are becoming less frequent with increasingly better tech and a more civilized world. This one was an anomaly I think. It will be interesting to learn the cause(s) and see what practices might be put in place to avoid them in the future.
I foresee a similar thing happening here. A 1000-year old roof is an architectural treasure, but it's also a 1000-year old roof, with all its attendant challenges. The church will (someday) be rebuilt in a grand old classical style, but with a soupçon of modernity added as well. I think will be in some sense better off as a result.
It has been done for prehistoric caves for instance. For a whole building it's more tricky, but it could be fine to have it on a remote part of the city, and let people experience it as it was before.
That would also allow to do representation or over more risky uses that could damage the historical monument but would be fine in a replica.
Which is to say a roof without leaks, walls without holes, and a foundation with good drainage.
I think what hurts really is the fact that a cathedral that took 200 years to be built, and had been standing there for 800 years can burn down in a single night. It makes one wonder about the vanity of many of the humanity's achievements and it's a harsh reminder that everything eventually comes to an end.
In a child age I weaved a spider from wire. It was a state of the art toy, I used techniques of making wire toys I learnt from others and extended them futher with my own inventions. And I remember how I played with that "robotic spider with computer mind" by chopping it with a knife and then fixing damage done. (It was like spider got a serious fight and was damaged) Every iteration was a fun and in a very short time my spider become a battered and somehow much more valuable for me. It was so much fun that I almost chopped off my own finger accidently.
I mean, this is somehow an inherent property of a human perception of things: past events connected with a thing cast a shade on that thing and with a time passing the thing becomes a container of the memory for all that events, and for all the times when events took their place.
It reminds me the project of rebuiling Tally Ho[1]. You can change all the wood the boat was made of, but it would be the same boat. Moreover, the ongoing project of rebuilding Tally Ho enriches history of Tally Ho beyond imaginable, maybe all the previous 100+ years history of Tally Ho is being outshined by the current events in her life.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB00JHoTw1TeX82Qw8hoF...
The debate was, of course, whether this project was a restoration or a replication. I don't think there's a difference.
A few years ago I visited a hangar in Everett where some enthusiasts had borrowed an Me262 from a museum in order to take it apart and produce mechanical drawings of everything. Then they built flying replicas from the ground up and sold them. Some changes were made for safety and practicality reasons.
So were they real Me262s or not? I'd say they were real. I wished I could have bought one.
The market certainly distinguishes replicas from originals, even in situations such as you describe. For example, modern replicas of 19th century firearms can be 10x cheaper than the originals, even if they are perfect reproductions down to materials used. So, whatever the reason, people do care on average.
But information can be destroyed permanently. And that is what was lost.
At least, this is implied by the signs saying 600 year old temple, when in fact the current building was built 150 years ago.
We don't really have projects like that anymore. Contemporary structures and infrastructure are designed to be completed within the lifetime of the creator.
We might be able to attribute that to advances in technology allowing for faster development times. But sometimes it seems we've lost sight of the grandeur that existed at those times, and perhaps we are not challenging ourselves enough.
This pattern continues today – witness the speed at which funding for rebuilding has been publicly pledged by people wishing to be widely seen to do so.
Not only that, but the ones who followed them didn't balk at working on a "legacy" project.
And we plan new bridges and tunnels that might never benefit the people that drew up their first plan.
Practically though, this doesn’t really make sense. Kind of like waterfall development but tripled down on all the bad parts
After millenia of using horse powered travel we've gone from vehicles, to planes, to the moon, to mars in about 100 years.
Daimler (internal combustion cars): 1892.
Wright Flyer III (plane): 1903
Apollo 11: 1969.
Even steam powered trains were almost inconceivable to the average person living in say, 1700, just imagine what that person would have thought about Apollo 11! Heck, I imagine even Napoleon in 1821 couldn't really imagine the mechanized world awaiting just 50 years in the future.
* subway system in Los Angeles on par with NYC
* any-speed rail link between US and Russia
* (saw this from a poster below: interstellar probe )
It's only constructions like cathedrals that you can't really use until it's nearly complete.
Imagine having to wait until 2015 for Google to ship its first suite of products. The cashflow and other things wouldn't make sense. Google is essentially under constant construction though, as is a University which adds buildings every so often.
"Ok, remove the support scaffolding"
"Oh crap it's falling! Put it back, put it back!"
followed up by a design tweak.
Or the King/Bishop decided that they wanted something different and the design was changed.
Not that I'm thinking about all that while struggling with a race condition.
The Long Now Foundation was established in 01996 to develop the Clock and Library projects, as well as to become the seed of a very long-term cultural institution. The Long Now Foundation hopes to provide a counterpoint to today's accelerating culture and help make long-term thinking more common. We hope to foster responsibility in the framework of the next 10,000 years.
Sad but true, although one that is still running is the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. Started 1882, and expected to reach completion in 2026.
I'd argue it's a good thing that our modern political systems aren't well-suited for pissing away our society's resources on monuments to hubris.
For that matter, what if a megaproject is required for a space faring race, and democracy is the great filter?
If the Cold War was still raging and Russia decided -today- to colonise Mars, it'd immediately go from a "someday/maybe" to "within the next 5-10 years".
I posed Proxima Centauri simply b/c it wasn't religious, and perhaps palatable as something humanity should undertake, but not feasible within a lifetime, as a counter-example to show that not all lifetime-spanning projects are worthless.
Or we could forget about the probe and focus on developing better propulsion technology. That would have immediate applications, but could also allow the probe to reach its destination orders of magnitude sooner.
I don’t see any reasonable motivation for generations-long megaprojects until technology has well and truly stagnated.
Even ignoring the hyperbole, this isn't accurate. It's only because of survivorship bias that we think of building standards as having decreased over time, but they really haven't. Take an average person from an average house 500 years ago and put them in modern construction and they would be amazed by how nice it is, how it's well-insulated and climate controlled, how smooth the walls are, how level the floors are, and even simple stuff like how the roof doesn't leak one bit when it rains.
There's going to be many more modern buildings still standing hundreds of years from now than there are buildings from hundreds of years ago still standing now (both in absolute numbers and proportionally).
Take your hypothetical person from a half millennium ago - yeah, they'd be amazed by how comfortable the house is, and all that... but they'd also likely be appalled by the level of maintenance required to maintain that, both in terms of the actual structure and the amount of work necessary to fund the ongoing use of things like air conditioning and electric lights. With that taken into account, we spend a good deal more of our lives providing ourselves with shelter.
Also, as part of that, there's the fact that the home of five hundred years ago was likely built with the most durable materials that were feasible for the time and budget. Today, even the most expensive homes are made of materials that explicitly will not stand the test of time. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that our culture values things that are more fragile and fleeting - a home with a beautiful bay window is a thrown rock away from being essentially uninhabitable until that window is replaced, at great expense. We delight in our ability to impact the world around us, and very rarely build things to last longer than they need to.
"they'd also likely be appalled by the level of maintenance required to maintain"
Modern materials have much lower maintenance requirements. You can put up a tar-asphalt roof and aluminum/vinyl siding and be fine for multiple decades without needing any maintenance whatsoever. Meanwhile, a lot of older houses needed extensive maintenance every year to keep the roofs and walls in passable shape. Wattle and daub was a common material used for walls, for example, and thatch a common material for roofs. Both are incredibly labor intensive to maintain.
"With that taken into account, we spend a good deal more of our lives providing ourselves with shelter."
Huh? How are you measuring this? The average person centuries ago lived at just barely subsistence level. They spent most of their efforts on basic survival, and sometimes didn't even have enough to eat. We spend much less of our lives laboring now than our ancestors used to. Compare how hard and long a subsistence farmer or serf works vs a modern office worker. It's much easier for us to provide shelter; we just spend some fraction of our salary on it.
"home of five hundred years ago was likely built with the most durable materials that were feasible for the time and budget"
Yeah, so only the palaces were built amazingly well and everything else was not. The living standards were so much lower back then that almost no one had the money to get access to the best available stuff, whereas nowadays most people do.
"a home with a beautiful bay window is a thrown rock away from being essentially uninhabitable until that window is replaced"
I don't even understand this criticism. The only way to not have this be a problem is to literally not have glass windows at all. Either you have an empty hole in your wall that's terrible for retaining warmth in cold weather and keeping out bugs and rain, or you don't have holes in your walls at all and live in darkness (both were common options). Would you seriously rather live in a house without windows??? To the extent that people didn't used to, it was only because glass was so expensive that the average person couldn't afford it. Now that we have modern production methods, glass is cheap, and everyone can benefit from it. I guarantee you that if you went back in time offering free glass, the average person would gleefully put it in their house. It was only used in palaces, cathedrals, and the like because of how expensive it was.
The average person 500 years ago lived in what you would call nowadays a ramshackle hut. I don't know what is coming into your mind, but you're probably thinking of one of the few well-made structures that persists to this day, rather than what was actually commonplace. Keep in mind that entire cities used to burn down too, which no longer happens in good part because of modern fireproofing codes and materials. Drywall, for instance, is an amazing material.
The overall idea that I'm trying to get across is that the best homes of today are not nearly as durable as the best homes of 500 years ago. The historical home would have had likely had stone walls if the owner could afford it, and a heavy timber-framed roof with lead or zinc overlaid for protection from the elements - exactly like Notre Dame, in fact. A modern home of the same cost (i.e., belonging to a person of equivalent economic class) is going to be much more comfortable but is much less likely to stand the test of time - at least, unless it substantial ongoing maintenance.
To put it another way, after a hundred years of abandonment, the historical home would likely still be standing. Barring extreme weather, the roof would likely be still in place. A modern home however would decay much more quickly, because of the assumptions that we make today about the availability of quality materials for repair and maintenance - and yes, because the materials to which we have access today allow architectural styles that were previously impossible, like huge bay windows.
Give people a choice between two houses, one that will last their full lifetime and then some, and another that costs double and that will last 500 years, almost everyone is rationally going to pick the former option. There simply isn't much present-day utility in over-building to such an extent.
And keep in mind, there are plenty of all-stone buildings that have collapsed from earthquakes and other natural disasters, killing many people, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_2016_Central_Italy_eart... . A lot of construction methodologies that last 500 years only do so in some environments. Against a lot of common risks, a modern building constructed of dimensional lumber is better.
And anyway, I still think the better comparison is between the average building in different time periods, not the best buildings (which are basically just outliers).
> pissing away our society's resources on monuments to hubris
Is it impossible to imagine a cause that transcends vanity or hubris?
Must every collective effort be corrupted by selfishness?
Collective efforts directed to realizing the vision of the few are inherently suspect.
We've been making steel in some form since at least antiquity and possible a couple of thousand years longer.
See Gaudi's Sagrada Familia for a modern day equivalent. Under construction for 137 years and counting. Current estimate for completion is in the 2030s, if all goes well.
(I highly recommend the guided tour if you're ever in Barcelona. The history of it's engineering and construction is fascinating even if you're not that into Gaudi, or cathedrals.)
A complete metro network might take 150 years to build but each line is useful on their own, the final network is composed of several semi-independent lines which get added and expanded over time, and even if the system's fulness is designed at its origin with multi-decade plans it's useful long before that.
Same with road & highway systems, or other public transport networks (trains, tramways, …). They're useful and have a point long before they're "finished", assuming there's even such a thing.
I can absolutely agree on this. As a staunch atheist I have no relationship to religion or the catholic church, but the creativity and dedication of this man is really fascinating -- even his death had a relation to the building. The architecture is truly awe inspiring and so rich in detail, you could surely spend several days there and discover something new every day.
From an engineering POV what has inspired me the most was the method with which the stresses/strains of the structure was modelled (without numerical methods or finite element analysis).
Technology changes too fast for that to be reasonable these days. Let’s say I design some massive bridge that will take 100 years to build. Why would we start construction today, when technological changes might render it completely obsolete before it’s even done?
The fact that people were able to plan and execute a centuries-long construction project for a monument to society’s shared imaginary friend is fascinating and speaks well of them but it doesn’t seem like the sort of thing we should strive to emulate.
And got paid (which, in fairness, still means the money-men were thinking that far ahead).
>We don't really have projects like that anymore. Contemporary structures and infrastructure are designed to be completed within the lifetime of the creator.
The deep space probes from NASA took something like 20 years to reach their destination, on top of the mission planning time, and involved a lot of senior engineers, who didn't get to see it to completion. But you're right, I can't think of anything on a 100+ year timescale.
I wonder, in all that hierarchy, and in all those networks, who was "thinking far ahead", and who was cynically participating in the endeavor for personal gain, while quenching existential thirst elsewhere. In modern society, the majority of our lives are spent in the latter mode, I think: no one's passionate opus is sugar water or targeted ads, yet they occupy millions of us.
Incredible things can be done by people who are "phoning it in," by firms stacked top-to-bottom with talent whose passions lie elsewhere.
Is it possible that cathedrals, too, were constructed entirely obligatorily?
It opens with following conclusion: There were only 3 bottom-level motivators where it comes to achieving grand things in human history: * Survival * Wealth * Praise of deity
There are things people still do that span generations to satisfy the first 2 drivers (like Norway being cautious about its oil reserves or overall push towards clean energy and mitigating climate change, China's investment in its own and Africa's infrastructure).
People simply got smart enough not to throw monumental amount of effort and resources to please a deity. Of course that's a massive simplification as then there's a question if the organisation that "wrote the check" really did that purely because of the spiritual beliefs of their own or their people.
But there have also been great things achieved for other reasons, like the moon landings or the ISS. Is that survival? Wealth? Or does it count as something we believe in?
When it comes to the moon landing or the ISS... Of course you can say that's because we're explorers. The moon landing was pure survival (don't let the commies win), ISS is research and maybe the researchers put in the effort for a sense of discovery but the money comes from governments and it flows mostly because of a promise of economic or military advancement.
I'm not a cynic in that regard. I love the architecture of religious monuments, I love the fact that we as a species achieved magnificent things like reaching the moon or discovering how black holes work. You can appreciate all of that without kidding yourself about where the money comes from.
Well, it might not be intentional, but the new Berlin city airport certainly looks like it's going to be a contemporary example.
It was actually my favorite structure in Rome when when I visited with the Pantheon in a close second.
I believe that it counts as an example of a long running and grandiose engineering project.
I think we still have those projects but they are more utilitarian rather than religious. Chernobyl and Yucca Mountain will be our generation's cathedral to nuclear power. Outside of the weirdly curious I don't imagine it as a major tourist destination.
Well, there is the ITER nuclear fusion reactor project. It was planned in the 70ies, construction started in the 90ies, projected construction-finish will probably be around 2025 and the first projected long-term-stable plasma will probably be achieved around 2035. OK 60 years is not 200, but this still is far longer than any other contemporary infrastructure building I can think of.
Also, some of our space missions are like this, e.g. Voyager 1.
We do. I propose - the greatest testament to the Might of God and the insignificance of Man - the Second Avenue Subway.
In democracy this kinship frequently does not exist between successive entities, and there is even often an effort to dismantle the works of a previous administration as well as blaming any faults on them. There are also basic democratic political problems. One very myopic, and very common, political argument is of the form: "You want to [do something amazing] while there's [people dying of cancer] [kids starving to death in Africa] [etc] [etc]?!" This argument feels reasonable to most people, and can be used to frame a candidate (who wants to do grand things) as being out of touch. And it's extremely effective. It makes it difficult to spend large amounts of money on things outside of those that can be justified on a very immediate level, such as war.
The space program is probably the greatest project the modern United States has engaged in. And if it had carried on it's likely our species would now today inhabit bodies beyond just this planet. But it was not continued. This [1] is a song from the 70s that was published shortly before Nixon, who had a long standing animosity with JFK since losing a razor thin election to him in 1960, would completely gut the space program - which was very much a reflection of JFK. So determined were his efforts that in 1972, as Apollo 17 was returning to earth during his presidency, he stated "This may be the last time in this century that men will walk on the Moon." He initially even wanted to cancel both the Apollo 16 and 17 missions fearing that a mishap during them could negatively affect his reelection chances. The entire space program emphasizes all of the issues with democracy and grand projects.
We strive for Mars, knowing full well neither us nor our children will ever see the cities to come.
Not really. At least not in the sense that structures are built today. The first mass was held just 19 years after construction began [1]. And many additions were added, and plans modified along the way. It's not like the original plan was 200 years of construction before it would serve any real useful purpose. There was actually construction being done at the time of the fire, but that doesn't mean it took 900 years to build.
[1] https://www.nationalgeographic.com.au/history/as-notre-dame-...
Gnu HURD?
The Second Avenue Subway in Manhattan is giving that line a run for its money.
But we still have public works projects that span eras. Some of our big infrastructure projects, and things like national parks are constantly evolving. If I were president I could make a national park today but it's just lines on a map. Generations of work may have to be done to turn it into a functioning forest, especially now when we are questioning what the definition of 'functioning forest' is and how humans fit into it. Whatever we build today, we know it's gonna be wrong and a great deal of it will have to be redone.
I also love the solution Christopher Wren came up with after the Great Fire. Everyone wanted him to design their church. He made a compromise: I'll build you your church but you don't get a bell tower until after everyone else gets a church. So he went around building churches and then swung back through to add bell towers onto them.
Well, the workers did it out of a sense of devotion, and in some cases as a way to guarantee their spot in heaven. They Catholic Church would use this quite a bit. For example: Commission a grand religious painting? Go to Heaven. That's why you sometimes see the people who paid for say, a mural in the mural itself getting blessed by ol' JC himself.
Most projects but not all. This is why spacex has such a big fan base because if you have seen their pictures of mars, they are not only trying to colonize it, but terraform it and even options like sending hundreds of nukes at the poles to induce warming and atmospheric buildup are expected to take hundreds of years.
Cities like Venice, Barcelona, Paris and Amsterdam need to address how we can preserve history while also considering how unfettered access makes it unappealing to participate as a local.
[Edit: I don't mean to single out Americans! That was just her comment. I know it applies to all unruly tourists of all countries]
It's very noticeable in churches, but also in theatres, libraries, restaurants, pretty much anywhere where a lot of people gather.
This being said, I don't think one culture is any better than the other, but they seem noticeably different to me.
Every time you hear a loud tourist, you reinforce your bias/opinion of their nationality.
But every time you don't hear a loud tourist, you can't really know their nationality, so your opinion of them can't improve.
Once again, I don't think the "american style" is worse or better than the french one, but I maintain it feels different.
And yeah, generally Paris and its touristy sights are way overrated. Crowded with annoying tourists. Touristy Paris totally blows (and so does Rome). I much prefer to spend time in the Netherlands, Ireland, and Germany myself.
There's even a term for the utter dissapointment people feel when the reality doesn't match expectations in Paris: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_syndrome
TBH though, for a lot of places like Paris, going outside of peak times--assuming you have the flexibility--go a long way towards decreasing the crowds factor, at least away from the "must see" sites.
Venice for example stinks, is crowded, and covered in bird shit. I would never go back, but I'm happy I visited before it sinks into the water at some point.
But yeah, the thing promised (e.g. Paris: a magical romantic city) vs the reality (a metropolitan with people who can be rude, plus other obnoxious tourists) differ, I guess your standard tourist lies to themselves saying they're having a great time. Which is easier with Instagram, you curate your own memory, and as a bonus you get validation from other people while doing it.
Life is weird...
Unappealing for many tourists too.
Rome was by far the worst tourist experience I've had, despite it having the most beautiful/interesting sites of any place I've been.
The building will be restored and revised and will be beloved again. Some will complain it's not the same, some will swear it's as good as it was and some will celebrate "improvements." I just hope the acoustics survive, though IMHO there are other, smaller churches that sounds better.
There's plenty of hideous stuff in Paris as well but I won't name names because what I consider dreadful some celebrate -- and perhaps we're both right.
(former Paris resident, though I wouldn't call myself a "Parisian")
As it happens nddp was built with some other palaces already there (e.g. pieces of what became the louvre) or contemporaneously under construction (e.g. Sainte Chapelle). But still it almost certainly housed businesses among other activities over the centuries.
And let's assume that we're okay with modern building methods (such as cranes) as long as the results are the same.
Do we still have access to all of the specialized knowledge that went into that building? E.g., stone masonry, wood carving, preparation of varnishes, etc.? And is there enough supply of the required building/decorating materials?
Does the world currently have enough qualified artisans to allow construction at some "acceptable" pace? Heck, do modern governments and Parisians even have the patience for a multi-decade construction project to succeed?
It is in fact likely that the fire was caused by the renovation work that was ongoing...
I know a lot of people who leave their day job in high tech to practice some low tech old method. There are also a few who work at museums who show the old methods. Getting these people to leave there day job for a few years is probably not affordable. For example I know how to plane by hand boards just like they did - but for my time you would have to pay me $100 to make a 2x4- or you can go to Home Depot and buy the already planed 2x4 for $3. (Note that my 2x4 would be made to fit, while the home depot the rest of the building is designed to fit - this means the architects verifying that everything is strong enough can actually work with a 2x4 in advance, but my made to fit board needs to be measured after to make sure it doesn't change the calculations of something elsewhere in the system)
Paris seemingly has good contingency plans for events like this.
EDIT: https://twitter.com/_theek_/status/1117895531563372544
The largest oak forest operator in France has offered to find the trees needed: https://mobile.francetvinfo.fr/culture/patrimoine/incendie-d...
It's not like we've stopped building things out of stone or carving and varnishing wood. The trouble is not building these structures. We can relatively easily and inexpensively build a new Notre Dame. The expense comes from restoring the old items and trying to seemlessly integrate replacements when absolutely necessary.
Freiburg minster [1], which was completed around 1300, recently had a restoration of its spire (which took about 12 years), done with the original medieval technique of interlocking the stones with lead anchors. There is a very good 8 minute video about the work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egVOaTrRYZ4
Don't forget that big cathedrals have to be worked on constantly, so most of the European cathedrals have very old workshops attached to the church, where the knowledge was (and still is) passed down over centuries. These people usually have very strong opinions regarding craftsmanship and work quality. They don't want their colleagues in 250 years to think badly of them.
France has dozens of cathedrals being restored at any given time (don’t forget that we have 1000x more old buildings than the number foreign tourists go to :-) ), restorations that often take 5-10 years. I wouldn’t be too worried about not having the skill set.
https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/208826-mysteries-of-notr...
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/06/150622-andrew-ta...
Talk about Notre Dame.
Those are just a few of the competing concerns. There is a good argument to be made for each (even the skyscraper), whatever you choose will be at the expense of the others. We are forced to have this argument now: expect a lot of shouting and nobody to be happy with the end result. Try to see all sides. (I was going to say help to a reasonable compromise, but then I realized that compromise is not always reasonable)
I'm curious...what's the good argument towards replacement with a skyscraper?
Don't get me wrong, there is value in history and culture. However sometimes being able to step outside it and see alternatives is useful.
Skyscrapers are quarantined outside the city itself, at La Defense.
In several regional papers, they are now discussing if such a fire would be possible in the local cathedrals (it would, of course) and whether sprinklers should be installed in wooden roof frameworks (which brings all sorts of problems). Only some newer cathedrals (for example the one in Cologne) or cathedrals that burnt during WWII have steel frameworks under their roof.
On an emotional level, I am quite touched by the international reaction to this catastrophe. Basically all cathedrals here in Germany rang their bells today at noon out of respect.
[0] http://www.pwein.at/Webpage-Holocaust/Geschichte-1938/Stepha...
The damage wasn't as pronounced thanks to the stone used for the top, which was chosen for its lightness but had the added benefit of having volcanic-like properties. And especially thanks to a local mason who made the call to pull the fire brigade and sacrificed more of the wooden roofing to prevent the water weight from making the vault collapse.
I haven't found much info in English but here's a detailed account in a Spanish blog: http://cosinasdeleon.com/el-incendio-de-la-catedral-de-leon/
https://www.ted.com/talks/blaise_aguera_y_arcas_demos_photos...
I believe they used to have a viewer for the model available on the web, but I can't seem to find it at the moment (maybe it died when Microsoft killed their PhotoSynth product).
It's a royal palace that was pillaged and burnt down, that would require unmeasurable amount of money to restore.
It's hard to overstate how hard this fire would have been to fight. That any of the structure was saved is testament to the skill and herculean efforts of the firefighters involved. If they had simply kept the fire from spreading to the buildings north of the cathedral, that would have been a "win".
It's clear from reports that the decision was made very early on to salvage what they could from the structure and set up to defend the western towers. The first fire streams put in place were in defense of the towers, not attacking the main body of the fire[1]. That was clearly the right tactical call, and trying to fight the fire head on likely would have resulted in the loss of the whole structure.
To highlight a few of the challenges...
The building itself had a huge amount of fuel (the tons of wood that have had centuries to dry), plus the significant amount of wood in the construction scaffolding supporting the renovation.
The fire likely burned undetected for some time in the attic space. By the time it was visible, it had a solid head start, and extinguishing it was never an option.
Once the fire was detected, getting sufficient manpower and equipment to the scene would have been the next challenge. The cathedral is on a small island, with limited access, and limited room to park vehicles in the vicinity. This would have been an "all hands on deck" fire, with off-duty staff recalled, but that takes time, and the initial incident had to be managed with relatively limited manpower (relative to the scale of the fire).
The next issue would be getting enough water to the scene. A fire like this requires tens of thousands of gallons of water per minute. There's likely only one or two water mains serving the island, which puts a hard cap on the amount of water that could be drawn from the local hydrants. The fact that it's an island obviously means there's a huge amount of water near by, but using that water has its own logistical challenges, as it requires special equipment (you can't 'suck' water through a soft fire hose), and special training. While I'm sure they had some capability to "draft" water from the river, it's not a skill that gets used often by urban fire departments, and it's likely not something they were set up to do in any significant way. In any large scale incident like this, there are often more firefighters working in "water supply operations" than there are actually fighting the fire.
Huge kudos to the firefighters on scene, and hopefully they'll have an opportunity for some well deserved rest in the coming days.
[1] https://twitter.com/shivmalik/status/1117864730453061634
A cross-section of The Notre-Dame:
https://www.thechildrensbookreview.com/wp-content/uploads/20...
Illustrator: http://www.stephenbiesty.co.uk/home.html
Some of the techniques and materials may be lost to history, but the detail is perfectly preserved so at least there is a path to follow.
There is even a movement to stop the demolition (it has not building permits) because many people consider it a monument.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justo_Gallego_Mart%C3%ADnez
Paintings are treated to remove as much detritus and patina as possible without damaging the underlying pigments or lacquers that might have been part of the original artwork (some might argue this is itself destructive and might accidentally go too far.)
To make this process easier to future treatments, restores take great care to make their contribution visibly obvious to a careful (and close) observer rather than blend it with the original.
I think something along these lines will be the best solution for all; perhaps we can avoid reinstalling that pike which - however beautiful in its own - was more suited to an Alpine parish church.
[] https://paysages.ille-et-vilaine.fr/IMG/jpg/5_3_stmaloarretc...
Also there's been a fire at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. It's a bad day for old places of worship.
I wonder if you see the hypocrisy here.
It makes you wonder why more priority wasn't placed on retrofitting it with sprinklers. Yes, sprinklers do change some things, but not nearly as much as everything burning down.
Still beautiful though !
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basilica_of_Notre-Dame-des-Vic...
It seems like we should be able to make a system that can be installed in older buildings that isn’t unsightly and damages them at this point.
This shouldn't be downvoted. That would be more interesting and useful work than most of the Apps everyone's working on.