Dear France,
I am so sorry for the damage to Notre Dame. Your cathedral means so much to so many people, not just at home, but across the world. The fire hurt us all.
Personally, I was physically ill when I saw the first images of the fire. It couldn’t be happening. It just couldn’t. I have visited that cathedral many times since I was a child. It holds a very special place in my memory and imagination.
I want to thank you for having built it. Thank you for having let me visit it so many times-- to climb the towers, wander the floors, look through the rose windows, puzzle over the flying buttresses, and contemplate the wordless Biblical tales in the art. Apparently, I am not anywhere near alone, as it is one of the most visited global tourist attractions. Though there was no loss of life, the trauma of such damage to a treasure of art and architecture must be huge for you, as also for the world.
But I was even more ill when, not a single day after the fire has been put out, that the architects had been called in.
Prime Minister Edouard Philippe has called for "a new spire that is adapted to the techniques and the challenges of our era".
He also "questioned whether we should even recreate the spire as it was conceived by Viollet-le-Duc... or if, as is often the case in the evolution of heritage, we should endow Notre-Dame with a new spire".
This is all well and good, however--
I am compelled to write a second letter -- a polemic for our polemical times. Apologies in advance to all practitioners of architecture who do not fit the description of "ambulance chaser."
Dear France:
Please do not offer up one your most beautiful architectural children to some massively narcissistic modern architect who will erect his penis or her clitoris onto the Paris skyline.
Please consider that few modern architects consider themselves members of any common culture. They do not feel their work should be expressed in the universal languages of beauty and usefulness. Instead, they wish to build megaphones to poorly understood concepts of themselves, to carve scars into our public landscape so permanent and distinctive, that they will be remembered forever.
This approach to architecture has become so common in the last century that we have come to expect the major buildings we live and work in to be uncomfortable, difficult, anxiety-producing, depressing, alienating, but “designed by someone famous.” The fashionable terms these architects aim for are “thought-provoking,” “challenging,” or “awe inspiring”, or “a powerful commentary.”
Of course we need these motivators in our world. We need firebrand speakers, writers, performers and artists to help shape our age and our future. But we do not need individual expression and statement in our public architecture.
Our public discourse changes and evolves within generations, even within decades. What we talk about responds and adapts to events of the moment.
Our public buildings endure—some even to nine centuries, and hopefully longer. The hot topic of the moment should not be the primary motivator of its design or construction, but what endures across generations in the human heart.
A 1950’s Brutalist office building is torn down in 1990 because, well, what it had “to say” is irrelevant now. All it left is a memory of ugliness, poor air circulation, leaking roofs and unwashable windows—and the architect’s name.
Yes, Notre Dame was built at a time of great Christian fervor—it was a creation of a moment. But the now forgotten specifics of that moment of faith, and the now forgotten designers who built it (and did not even consider themselves designers or architects) did their work with usefulness and beauty running in their veins. This is why people from all over the world, not just medieval Catholics, come to appreciate it—for the powerful universal in that building, whether they know one thing about its history or not.
Is Soyetsu Yanagi’s concept of the “unknown craftsman” known to any modern architects? I mean, understood? Is the concept of the person who selflessly creates objects of universally appreciated beauty and usefulness appealing to any modern architect? If so, these are the architects that should be allowed to contribute designs to the rebuilding of Notre Dame. That building is globally ours, not theirs personally as a blank canvas to further their careers.
Paris—you have a problem with famous architects. You hire Richard Rogers, Renzo Piano, and Gianfranco Franchini, and they erect a “challenging” building to themselves. You hire I. M. Pei who does the same.
Do the Pompidou Center and glass pyramids of the Louve “work”? Are they “beautiful?” I highly doubt either will be remembered, or still standing, in nine centuries. They are impressively witty commentaries, the equivalent of an evening chat with Oscar Wilde, but share nothing with the enduring power of great world architecture.
As an age, we are not building Boroboudurs, Taj Mahals, Giza Pyramids, or Notre Dames. We are building monuments to our incredible selfishness and myopia. We build Shards, Pickles and other clever shiny baubles that speak to our moment and only our moment in time, as if public buildings were the transient Fall collection on display for a few weeks, maybe months.
Our taste for architecture reflects selfish suicidal course. We don’t build for tomorrow. We build for today and for ourselves.
I make no call for a perfect reconstruction of the 19th-century spire. We should not force ourselves to live in museums or in the past. It doesn't matter to me whether any detail is from the 12th century, the 17th century or the 21st century. What matters to me is what pulls me, and so many more people from across the world, to visit--what is enduring about the building.
Please let the new roof and spire of Notre Dame speak to Notre Dame's enduring beauty and appeal.
With perhaps the hope that we will grow out of our wider cultural narcissism, and in nine centuries from now, the new spire will still be appreciated for its enduring beauty and usefulness—please let it remain a fragile human finger pointing and reaching upwards to the eternal skies.
Sincerely,
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