Notre Dame: a blow-by-blow account of the restoration process

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

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

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

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

(Not sure if that's true)

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

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

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

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