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.
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
Which was lauded as adding a modern 'twist' to an old relic.
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. :)
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.
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.
edit: upon seeing it, it reminded me of the Jewish Museum Berlin. Which was designed to give a feeling of 'unrest' due to the holocaust. It turns out, the ROM and Jewish Museum Berlin are designed by the same architect. Not sure if he was the right person for the job there :P