{"version": "1.0", "type": "rich", "title": "Well, \u201cbuilt, hung around a few centuries, damaged in a fire, rebuilt in slightly different fashion\u201d is basically the default...", "author_name": "kontextmaschine", "author_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "provider_name": "kontextmaschine", "provider_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "url": "https://kontextmaschine.com/post/623273531647590401/", "html": "
Well, \u201cbuilt, hung around a few centuries, damaged in a fire, rebuilt in slightly different fashion\u201d is basically the default story of monumental architecture
\n
\n\n\n
On this occasion of announcement that Notre Dame would be rebuilt in historic replica style, remember that the real reason Notre Dame wasn’t built with a glass roof in the first place was that the technology wasn’t there.
Gothic cathedrals were absolutely showily built with exposed structural elements to maximize glass surface! That’s what the stained glass and buttresses were about! It’s just that glass roofs weren’t practical until the ironwork-and-pane train station sheds and “Crystal Palace” of the mid-1800s, which universally reminded observers of cathedrals
The real problem is modern materials and architecture are so good that “symmetric glass roof” just reads as “generic neoliberal think tank”, an advanced version of the Art Deco skylights Batman busts through at society galas.
Like how people now recognize the Louvre Pyramid as a late artifact of the geodesic dome space-frame era, but somehow don’t recognize the Eiffel Tower as an Art Nouveau broadcast tower ahead of its time.
![](\"/media/tumblr_inline_pq0v4dqaXL1u6xbfw_540_0dc9e7aa726b.png\")