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Notre Dame Re-Imagined with Glass Roof
- jl6 7y agoWell, 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.
- psweber 7y agoHopefully they go with something this interesting. Moving forward while respecting the past seems like the right approach to me. Even rebuilding it exactly as it was isn't going to please everyone.
- amelius 7y agoOne 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.
- dragonwriter 7y ago> 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.)
- panarky 7y ago> This idea seems very French See also the glass dome over the Reichstag in Berlin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichstag_dome#/media/File:Reichstag_Luft_2004.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichstag_dome#/media/File:Rei...
- davidivadavid 7y agoYes, those ideas have been developed by Ruskin in the mid 19th century. He favored minimal restoration and letting buildings die when their time has come over a more continuous view of the life of buildings that can undergo deeper changes. That view was unsurprisingly espoused by none other than Viollet-le-Duc, one of many architects of Notre Dame (he was however very criticized even by the French, so it's a philosophical more than a nationalistic difference for sure).
- bassman9000 7y agoWhy not add something reflective of our times? Because the value of such an old building is that is a reflection of their times. If you want to reflect your time, build something new. You are calling for erasing history.
- cam_l 7y agoFunnily enough, the glass roof on the Gothic building is not exactly a modern idea. The earliest one i know of is Ruskin's oxford museum of natural history. I also, perhaps perversely, quite like the idea of housing the remains of the church in much the same way. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c1/Pitt_Rivers_Museum_Interior%2C_Oxford%2C_UK_-_Diliff.jpg/1280px-Pitt_Rivers_Museum_Interior%2C_Oxford%2C_UK_-_Diliff.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c1/Pi...
- Insanity 7y agoJudging 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.
- canada_dry 7y ago> 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.
- bradbeattie 7y agoHey, I'm from Toronto and I also hate the ROM's redesign. For one, it looks like sci-fi fungal growth, whereas the the Notre Dame glass design works in concert with the original. Second, the ROM's redesign somehow failed to take into account Toronto's weather. Icicles form along the exterior edges, often directly above the path into the ROM. Areas are sectioned off as "dangerous to walk under". Poor planning!
- tcbawo 7y agoIn good design, form follows function. I don't see the purpose in that angled glass structure other than trying to look different.
- scarejunba 7y agoMy god, that's amazing. For anyone else searching, it's the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Ontario_Museum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Ontario_Museum
- NeedMoreTea 7y agoYeah, 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. :)
- GorgeRonde 7y agoRafel • 10 hours ago If they add a MacDonald's upstairs, it would be perfect. I would go with my children.
- dougmwne 7y agoEntertaining design, though I imagine it would end up just as hated as the Louvre pyramid.
- Shivetya 7y agopretty sure with the right treatment using something akin to a Dichroic filter as has already been done with glass to keep the appearance of being glass limited to street level viewers. Plus there are countless ways to limit reflectivity on the exterior surface to keep from taking away from the old architecture
- shawabawa3 7y agoThe Louvre pyramid is hated? Every Parisian I know loves it
- Insanity 7y agoFirst time I hear that it is hated as well!
- moochamerth 7y agoWhen 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.
- woah 7y agoIt’s only hated by angry online commenters in the US
- davidivadavid 7y agoNot everyone loves it, but it's certainly more liked than the Centre Pompidou. I personally don't mind either, they're both very interesting proposals, and they have a lot competition.
- Yuioup 7y agoWouldn't it turn it into a giant greenhouse?
- Gibbon1 7y agoI think that can be fixed by hanging some big galvanized air conditioning ducts from the ceiling.
- return1 7y agoGreenhouse reimagined as Notre Dame
- crooked-v 7y agoThe 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.
- nsnick 7y agoThe 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.
- soneil 7y agoThe surviving inner structure would block the light anyway. The same structure that stopped the roof falling into the building too much.
- marcinzm 7y agoSunlight may be explicitly unwanted since strong light tends to cause a lot of things to decay more quickly and the church presumably has a lot of fragile antiques in it.
- trothamel 7y agoI 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.
- lopmotr 7y agoWell there isn't really a customer. It's the whole world judging it. The people who actually make a decision won't have a profit motive but are also responsible for satisfying all those general opinionated people everywhere.
- stupidcar 7y agoIt'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.
- davidivadavid 7y agoThat'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.
- sbzodnsbd 7y agoThere 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.
- alexis_fr 7y agoBecause it’s a “new world order” kind of project, not a religious one. See Celine Dion’s new brand, that sells death-designed clothes for babies, or anything new really: The goal is to change the world for the pleasure of change and loss of roots. The goal is to lose any attachment to any tradition, custom or legacy, and make every country the same mix of multicultural pot. Upside is, you won’t need to travel in 2030, all countries will look the same.
- fj39dkf 7y agoFYI this is a far-right conspiracy theory, typically found among white supremacists. there is no evidence that a secret cabal is planning some kind of new world order or plotting to burn all the history books.
- crooked-v 7y agoAlso keep in mind this conspiracy theory is often followed by goalpost-changing along the lines of "well, obviously I didn't mean that they're all actually in a conspiracy, it's because they've been influence by [other conspiracy]", generally leading either to an infinite regress of adjusted claims, or talk about cultural Marxism claptrap and claims about how the Frankfurt School academics somehow nefariously orchestrated the next hundred years of global social change in the 1930s.
- lopmotr 7y agoIt can still happen without any central control. Popular culture changes. People generally don't respect churches as much as they used to. That's not a conspiracy theory. That's kids rebelling against their parents and wanting to stamp their mark on the world.
- davidivadavid 7y agoMakes you wonder if people who came up with that have ever been inside Notre Dame.
- simonsarris 7y agoRight? 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?
- crooked-v 7y agoIn this concept, the trees are on the upper "attic" level, not ground level.
- greggeter 7y agoThis is lovely. The roof's purpose was only to shed water off the arches of the ceiling. Why not turn it into a park? It was just an attic before. Plus, allows for original interior. Brilliant.
- robbrown451 7y agoMy 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.
- lopmotr 7y agoHow 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.
- ralusek 7y agoThere 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.
- crooked-v 7y ago> 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.
- rockinghigh 7y agoThis roof and the view from the roof look stunning. A lot better than the old roof and spire.
- lurquer 7y agoI'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!"
- hindsightbias 7y agoDrop 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.
- GnwbZHiU 7y agoThe glasses are OK. But I don't like the steel/metal frames, they don't match with the rest of the building architecture.