The seat might currently be empty, then-- It does generally take a while to name a new bishop. There’s still a certain level of bureaucracy involved in running a diocese, though, and that bureaucracy has to be based somewhere.
Sure, but that doesn’t parse in the context of making custom replacement parts for a historic landmark. I’d think the goal would be opposite of YOLO, to make parts to last for ages.
I wasn’t speaking to Notre Dame specifically, just stating that in today’s world, some custom made items can actually be faster to produce than assembly-line manufactured goods that rely on the currently strained/broken global supply chain and specific component parts, especially if they’re willing to “just YOLO it” with duct tape and crazy glue, or (more realistically) parts and pieces on-hand, or made up on the fly with a little ingenuity.
You realize that if it is a medieval cathedral, then all the replacement “parts” must be made with medieval materials and craftsmanship? I doubt there will be a lot of duct tape, or mass-produced or 3-d printed pieces for that matter.
I wouldn’t think there’s much that could be bought off the shelf, apart from the very last things to go in, like seating and other furnishings. The permanent items must all be made ad hoc, and for the centuries.
And even the things that survived largely undamaged need checking, cleaning (I seem to remember reading there’d been a lot of lead and other toxic stuff released?) and stabilising. The glass, for instance.
Yes, and this why assertions that it took x number of years to build a cathedral can be highly misleading.
Cathedrals are not like modern buildings, where they start building on a certain date, finish on a certain date, and then people move in and start using it.
They built one part of the cathedral, which then started being used daily while they were building the next part. Then that part went into into use. Even before all the parts were in use, changes, redecorations, and renovations on the ‘completed parts’ would be made. And even after all parts were in use, some aspects of the building may have been left uncompleted, and only worked on decades or centuries later. Changes and work on the building would simply continue through the centuries.
Often it’s impossible or arbitrary to decide on a date when a cathedral was finished. There’s no point at which you can stop and say ‘this was the original finished state’, because there’s no point at which they stopped working on it and making changes, and no point where there wasn’t work that still needed to done.
You realize that wasn’t my point at all? I even said so twice.
Still no archbishop, but this guy was appointed by the Vatican to mind the store (wherever it might be): Georges Pontier - Wikipedia
The confusion is that few if any of us have heard that YOLO = improvise. What you are saying about custom made items being less dependent on supply chains is true in many cases.
Which church was it, I think the ruins in Glastonbury, where I noted that some arches were Roman (round) and others Gothic pointy. They even modified details up as they went along depending on the style of the day.
Why? As long as it still looks medieval, who cares if they sneak in some modern materials and methods?
I am not familiar enough with French law to be able to tell you which laws apply to this specific job. Maybe someone can track down the specific conservation plan, if it has been made public. So I do not know for sure that they care.
But often on historical projects they do care, which means that if they catch you doing it wrong they will make you tear it down and do it over. And if they don’t care, that determination will have been made by a super expert who carefully investigated and determined that such-and-such modern materials are appropriate, taking into account their appearance, compatibility with the existing structure, durability, and future maintenance requirements.
Let us say, medieval materials and methods are a known quantity, so modern stuff will only be considered if it has been tried and tested for use on historical buildings and determined to be the most appropriate thing to use on the project. The ultimate goal is to retain the character of the building.
Did they ever identify the jackass worker who dropped a cigarette and started the fire?
If the modern (or at least, certainly not “medieval”) spire wasn’t a problem, why would other non-medieval bits be?
Given the glass pyramid in the middle of the Louvre, I don’t think the French are averse to any sort of artistic mix or statement.
The desire for a near perfect restoration with as traditional materials as possible is a rather recent thing. It reminds me of historically informed musical performance. There is a remarkable amount of snobbishness involved. Popular culture now deems that the cathedral look it part, which is to be the home of the hunchback, and to be a major tourist attraction. So expectations drive the restoration.
I am reminded of the restoration of a spire on a university building that was done when I was an undergraduate. The spire was a much more modest affair, a couple of metres high. But similar construction to the cathedral. Wood frame and lead covering and ornamentation. The frame was badly degraded. They craned the spire down, carefully removed the lead, and fabricated a welded steel frame, covered it with structural plywood, and then carefully replaced the lead.
However using lead in the restoration of the cathedral would seem a really bad idea. People may demand a near perfect colour match, but I would be looking for different solution.
That pyramid was not loved at first but instead got all sorts of criticism. (And, as I remember, neither was the Eiffel Tower.)
It’s not like Notre Dame itself fit the description before the fire. It was restored in the mid/late 19th century after being ransacked and left to rot after the Revolution.
Cathedrals may have their overall architectural aesthetic preserved but the idea that they will try to deliberately match medieval materials and methods is bizarre. That just doesn’t happen in France. Checking out the history of pretty much any cathedral in France will reveal that many if not most have been partly or mostly restored after damage associated with the Revolution or WWII (if not the regular hazard of fires and natural disasters) and not to some imagined medieval baseline.
The Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Rouen is a good example of a mix of wildly different architectural styles as parts of the structure were built (and rebuilt) over several centuries. Significant design changes were made even into the last century as they rebuilt after the war.
That is what I am wondering about: is there a final official restoration plan for this iteration that we can refer to? We can ask if there will even be a wooden spire, for example. This link suggests that Emmanuel Macron has announced that there will be, that they are going to recreate what was there in the 19h century, and that they are going to do it by chopping down a bunch of 200-year-old trees.
I am also wondering what “YOLO” means in this phrase. “You only live once” doesn’t make sense. From context, you mean “make do” or “improvise”, but I’m wondering what the connection is to those letters.
Is the implication “There isn’t an off-the-peg solution, and you’re not needing to create one for the future, so improvise”…? A bit of a stretch, perhaps, but not illogical.