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Originally posted by StarTraveler:
Mr. Foster must not be very familiar with the building or must be planning to make much more drastic changes than are shown here. With the current cathedral configuration (with the roof missing), the only space below that the glass "would allow natural light to illuminate" would be the tops of the ribbed vaults. True, two vaults were damaged and opened to the sky in the fire, but those would have to be repaired to restore the building's structural integrity. With that done, no light more light would make it down into the cathedral than did before the fire.

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Originally posted by StarTraveler:

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Originally posted by BansheeOne:
There's no shortage of architects making suggestions. This is Norman Foster's proposal.



I'd not be against using modern (and less fire-prone) materials for the new roof, like rebar instead of the original wooden supports, but I don't think they will go for glass; if Macron wants to make a show of national unity of the reconstruction effort, it's going to piss too many people off. The best you can say about this concept is that it kinda reflects Paris' Belle Epoque architecture like the Grand Palais etc.

Mr. Foster must not be very familiar with the building or must be planning to make much more drastic changes than are shown here. With the current cathedral configuration (with the roof missing), the only space below that the glass "would allow natural light to illuminate" would be the tops of the ribbed vaults. True, two vaults were damaged and opened to the sky in the fire, but those would have to be repaired to restore the building's structural integrity. With that done, no light more light would make it down into the cathedral than did before the fire.

With the viewing platform shown on the spire, perhaps he means to turn the former roof space above the vaults into a tourist attraction where people can look out of the glass roof structure on the city itself (similar to the greenhouse photo), but that's different than what it's appearing to promise.

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That image looks to me like an excellent plan to totally screw up a historical monument and prime example of classical architecture.

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Originally posted by ersatzknarf:
Have they even tried to track down the islamist arsonists, yet or are they still projecting their denial?

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French Senate says Notre-Dame must be restored exactly how it was

The Local
news@thelocal.fr
@thelocalfrance

28 May 2019
12:29 CEST+02:00

French Senators have stipulated that Notre-Dame cathedral must be restored exactly how it was before the devastating fire that tore through the Paris landmark.

On Monday evening, the French Senate approved the government's Notre-Dame restoration bill - but added a clause that it must be restored to the state it was before the blaze, striking a blow to the government which had launched an international architecture competition to debate ideas on the restoration.

The subject of the rebuilding of the cathedral - which was left badly damaged after fire tore through the roof and destroyed the spire on April 15 - has become a fraught battleground between traditionalists who want an exact restoration and others who favour a more imaginative take.

Some of the suggestions have included a rooftop garden, an 'endless spire' of light and a swimming pool on top of the building.

The Senate has now approved the restoration bill already passed by the French parliament to allow work on the structure to be completed in time for the Paris Olympics in 2024 - but requires that the restoration be faithful to the “last known visual state” of the cathedral, in an attempt to check the government, which has launched an international architectural competition soliciting designs for renovation.

The question of whether Notre-Dame will be restored identically has become a political battleground. French president Emmanuel Macron has called for “an inventive reconstruction”, while Paris' Socialist mayor Anne Hidalgo favors an identical restoration and called herself “conservative” on the subject.

Senators also removed a controversial clause from the law which would give the government the power to override regulations on planning, environmental and heritage protection and public tenders. Many members of the Senate, dominated by the right-wing opposition, have been especially critical of President’s Macron’s promise to finish reconstruction within five years.

The law would enable the government to create an établissement public à caractère administratif (EPA), or public project, to oversee the reconstruction project. This EPA would itself be placed under the authority of the Ministry of Culture, currently directed by Franck Riester.

Another minor modification is the backdating of a proposed tax break for those who have made donations for the cathedral’s reconstruction.

The bill approved by the Assemblée nationale outlines a national subscription project to be put in place in order to manage funds collected, making donations made from April 16th through December 31st eligible for a deduction of 75 percent, up to €1,000. The Senate has pushed the beginning of this period back to April 15th, so that those who made the earliest donations will not be penalised.

Because of the changes imposed, the bill cannot now pass directly in to law, so the Senate and the Assemblée nationale will now attempt to come to an agreement on a version of the bill that will become law.

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Notre-Dame came far closer to collapsing than people knew. This is how it was saved.

By Elian Peltier, James Glanz, Mika Gröndahl, Weiyi Cai, Adam Nossiter and Liz Alderman

A baffling alert. A race to the wrong building. Notre-Dame still stands only because firefighters decided to risk everything, a New York Times reconstruction has found.

July 17, 2019

PARIS The employee monitoring the smoke alarm panel at Notre-Dame cathedral was just three days on the job when the red warning light flashed on the evening of April 15: Feu. Fire.

It was 6:18 on a Monday, the week before Easter. The Rev. Jean-Pierre Caveau was celebrating Mass before hundreds of worshipers and visitors, and the employee radioed a church guard who was standing just a few feet from the altar.

Go check for fire, the guard was told. He did and found nothing.

It took nearly 30 minutes before they realized their mistake: The guard had gone to the wrong building. The fire was in the attic of the cathedral, the famed latticework of ancient timbers known as the forest.

The guard went to the attic of a small adjacent building, the sacristy. Instead of calling the fire department, the security employee called his boss but didnt reach him. The manager called back and eventually deciphered the mistake. He called the guard: Leave the sacristy and run to the main attic. But by the time the guard climbed 300 narrow steps to the attic, the fire was burning out of control, putting firefighters in a near impossible position.

The miscommunication, uncovered in interviews with church officials and managers of the fire security company, Elytis, has set off a bitter round of finger-pointing over who was responsible for allowing the fire to rage unchecked for so long. Who is to blame and how the fire started have not yet been determined and are at the heart of an investigation by the French authorities that will continue for months.

[...]

Some of what went wrong that night has been reported in the French news media, including Le Monde and Le Canard Enchaîné. Now, The New York Times has conducted scores of interviews and reviewed hundreds of documents to reconstruct the missteps and how Notre-Dame was saved in the first four critical hours.

What became clear is just how close the cathedral came to collapsing.

The first hour was defined by that initial, critical mistake: the failure to identify the location of the fire, and by the delay that followed.

The second hour was dominated by a sense of helplessness. As people raced to the building, waves of shock and mourning for one of the worlds most beloved and recognizable buildings, amplified over social media, rippled in real time across the globe.

That Notre-Dame still stands is due solely to the enormous risks taken by firefighters in those third and fourth hours.

Disadvantaged by their late start, firefighters would rush up the 300 steps to the burning attic and then be forced to retreat. Finally, a small group of firefighters was sent directly into the flames, as a last, desperate effort to save the cathedral.

[...]

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Originally posted by BansheeOne:

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Originally posted by RichardC:
"Wildfire."