Notre-Dame de Paris ablaze
(photo by LeLaisserPasserA38 - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=78064310)
Great edifices, like great mountains, are the work of the ages.
― Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame
Like countless others around the world, I was grief-stricken a week ago by the sight of the historic cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris engulfed by flames, its very survival threatened by a conflagration so sudden and violent we feared it might be lost altogether. “Oh no! Paris’ Notre Dame Cathedral is on fire,” I tweeted when I learned of the news. I don’t know whether it’s because I’m someone with an informed appreciation for its architecture or because I visited Notre-Dame years ago and recalled my sense of awe and wonderment while before it, but the spectacle of the angry blaze consuming the roof and flèche (spire) very much felt like a punch to my gut.
Many took to Twitter as I did to express their anguish, among them the venerable journalist Dan Rather:
“Why has the burning of Notre Dame moved so many? Because we believe in beauty, majesty, faith, art, history, and the human expressions thereof. We recognize in this cathedral our common humanity. A scar now emerges in our connections to our past, our future, and each other.”
To some, the symbolism of the fire’s occurrence on the holiest of weeks for Catholics did not go unnoticed. They took comfort in knowing that from temporal death comes the promise of resurrection.
Thought to have been accidental and perhaps caused by faulty electrical wiring, the tragedy did not entirely consume the structure. Yes, it is badly damaged, but Notre-Dame de Paris can become whole once more.
Talk of restoring the great cathedral ensued even as the heat of the fire had yet to fully cool. French president Emmanuel Macron immediately declared his government’s commitment to rebuild, and subsequently announced its intent to host an international design competition to replace the lost timber spire. Pledges of nearly a billion Euros toward the restoration effort poured in within days(1). With matching alacrity, renowned architects (including Norman Foster) declared the destructive fire to be an opportunity to remake Notre Dame in a manner that acknowledges today’s technology and contemporary spirit. (Foster famously designed the new glass dome that crowns the 19th century, neoclassical Reichstag building in Berlin as a symbol of German reunification).
The spire before the fire
(photo by Jebulon [CC0])
So, the spire and the roof over the nave, transepts, and choir will be rebuilt. The question posed thusly is: In what manner should they be? Should Notre Dame be resurrected as an utterly transformed building for the 21st century? Should the destroyed elements be replicated exactly as if the fire never occurred? Or is doing something between these two poles the correct path forward?
In discussing the question of how to repair Notre-Dame, Michael J. Crosbie of Common Edge cited the Trappist monk and mystic Thomas Merton:
“. . . Merton warned against recreations of religious buildings; he saw them as denying the possibility that the sacred could be encountered in anything but a structure that looked like it had been built ages ago, as if God did not belong to all ages and as if religion were really only a pleasant, necessary social formality, preserved from past times in order to give our society an air of respectability. Merton believed that it’s up to every new generation to create architecture that speaks to the spirituality of its time, whatever it is.”
What do I think? Unlike many of my contemporaries, I don’t believe all architecture today must be immediately recognizable as new and original; fealty to that unbending modernist dogma may likely impose a less than sympathetic vocabulary upon Notre-Dame. On the other hand, like Merton I don’t favor replicating in every detail what has been lost, nor am I an advocate for rebuilding anew in a strictly “Gothick” fashion as Witold Rybczynksi prefers. Instead, I subscribe to an attitude that underscores the primacy of the idea of “wholeness” and the adaptive process of wholeness-generating transformations.
Notre-Dame de Paris is not the product of a single, stylistically consistent vision. Begun in 1160, its initial construction would not be completed until centuries later, and throughout its life it would further be modified along the lines of a number of styles, albeit all variations of or sympathetic to the original Early Gothic (including the Rayonnant or “High Gothic” style). Notably, the spire in the fire was not the first; it was instead a 19th century design by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc. Importantly, what the work across the cathedral’s long history shares in common is a consistent appreciation for the interconnectedness of and the relationship of parts to wholes. As an example of “traditional” architecture, Notre-Dame de Paris has remained a unified composition that belies its layering over time and the complexity of its expression.
Applying an adaptive, recursive, and unfolding process of “creative transformation” toward a preferred state and the production of wholeness in the environment is the prescription for Notre-Dame. Christopher Alexander pioneered the application of this process in urban design and architecture. It was further expounded by others, including Nikos Salingaros. The core principle is that the components of which a final product (building) is comprised are not themselves the only thing of importance; it’s the pattern of how the structure is developed and works as a whole that’s primary. Additionally, both Alexander and Salingaros postulate that, irrespective of culture, there are universal rules discernible in nature that govern human appreciation of architecture.
According to Salingaros, good buildings present us with rich information we can “decompose” into manageable units that are still related among themselves and to the overall whole. This means structures at different scales do not have too abrupt an association to one another, but instead have a coherent, proportional kind of relationship. Geometrical coherence, both on the same scale and across different ones, seems to play a key role in what we perceive as beautiful and visually nourishing. In architectural terms, this translates to geometries of differentiated symmetries, boundary groupings, and fractal scaling. The design process relies upon the identification of wholes, and the reinforcement of those wholes and their mutual contribution to successively greater ones. The resultant geometries are often evident in traditional architecture but far less so in contemporary designs. These include multiple levels of detail across a range of scales.
Notre-Dame de Paris as we remember it (photo by Madhurantakam [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)]
The Gothic idiom is characterized by ribbed vaulting, flying buttresses, pointed arches, circular rose windows, massive towers, and soaring spires, but also by more intricate features: pinnacles, moldings, tracery, gargoyles, and narrative sculptures integrated with the architecture. The eye shifts comfortably between these features because they exhibit geometries associated with physical properties of life we naturally resonate with.(2) Every element of the most beautiful examples of Gothic architecture is a center strengthened by other centers, each one reliant upon the others and reinforcing comprehension of the entire composition.
Suitably, what might a new spire and roof for Notre-Dame look like if designed with these principles in mind? Regardless of their modern provenance or even the materials they are crafted from, they would look “right,” as if they were a logical and organic outcome of a striving for wholeness. The new spire and roof would each be “living centers,” mutually intensifying the structure’s other, existing centers. The new spire and roof would not utilize unique and isolated geometries but rather relate to their context within the overall fabric of the building and the city. Each would be made of other strong centers, at different scales, which in turn contribute to our awareness of the whole of which they are an inextricable part.
A striving for wholeness does not preclude creativity or innovation. We may be pleasantly surprised by the originality of the design solutions for a new spire and roof structure, but we won’t find them awkward or alien if they are the products of a process dedicated toward ensuring the relatedness of the new parts with the greater whole. I’m hopeful this Easter Sunday the outcome of the planned design competition will be a resurrected Notre-Dame Cathedral everyone will continue to celebrate as truly one of the finest examples of its type. Paris and the world of architecture deserve nothing less.
(1) The overwhelming and immediate offering of financial support—including President Trump’s offer of US assistance—struck a discordant tone for some. As noted by Teen Vogue, while rebuilding a great landmark is a good cause, all aid comes at the expense of something else and does say a great deal about identity and compassion. What about the historically black churches in Louisiana’s St. Landy Parish, malevolently torched by an arsonist? Are they less worthy of our caring and money? What about the continued suffering in Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane Maria more than a year ago, or the ongoing lack of access to clean water in Flint, Michigan? Will the deadly terrorist bombings of churches in Sri Lanka move the meter?
(2) Christopher Alexander described fifteen fundamental properties of wholeness and living things in his magnum opus The Nature of Order.
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