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Workers rely on medieval era tech to reconstruct the Notre Dame

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Re: Workers rely on medieval era tech to reconstruct the Notre Dame

#51

Post by red75prime »

londons_explore wrote: post #48
bambax wrote: post #4

The rebuilding is apparently going well, but this is hiding the fact that nobody seems to be doing any inquiry about why the fire wasn't stopped in time. As far as we know, the fire was an accident (not foul play) -- but an extremely preventable one. There were works in progress on the roof of the cathedral, so people were coming and going, some of them possibly smoking, electrical devices were being used, etc. And t…

It has burnt down and been rebuilt many times in it's history. Just like we are rebuilding with original stones and techniques, one should perhaps argue that it should also be rebuilt with its original fire resilience too - ie. Low. At this point, a fire once every hundred years or so is part of the culture, and to stop doing that is in a way destroying the character of the cathedral.

I can't say whether it's sarcasm or not.

Re: Workers rely on medieval era tech to reconstruct the Notre Dame

#52

Post by mcdonje »

kelsolaar wrote: post #37
mcdonje wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's really sad. What a shame cutting down 1k large old oaks for any building at all. It's not necessary these days. Of course they need some wood in publicly viewable areas, but this amount of not only wood but large old oak trees is excessive and concerning. Is there any indication that they're improving the structure so it will be more fire proof? Or are they simply restoring it to the configuration that already…

The cathedral has been up for hundreds of years, hard to qualify that as a failure.

Not exactly in its most recent configuration that failed.

The people in charge are so concerned about historical accuracy they need to cut down a thousand large oaks, but their predecessors weren't so concerned about historical accuracy when they retrofitted a medieval structure with the electrical wiring that ended up causing it to burn down.

Re: Workers rely on medieval era tech to reconstruct the Notre Dame

#53

Post by hef19898 »

canoebuilder wrote: post #16
bambax wrote: post #4

The rebuilding is apparently going well, but this is hiding the fact that nobody seems to be doing any inquiry about why the fire wasn't stopped in time. As far as we know, the fire was an accident (not foul play) -- but an extremely preventable one. There were works in progress on the roof of the cathedral, so people were coming and going, some of them possibly smoking, electrical devices were being used, etc. And t…

> As far as we know, the fire was an accident “As far as we know” In the same sense of like “innocent until proven guilty” But is that the right lens to be looking through here? What is the rate of accidental church fires, let alone at somewhere that is such a treasured location as this? Then factor in, wasn’t there an ongoing spate of what were clearly church arson attacks going on at the time? Then factor in what y…

So, your line thinking goes:

It can have been an accident, or not. If not, well there were a lot of arsons happening at the same , maybe, so it most likely was arson. Not calling it arson is clearly political. And that means it was arson, because people in power and the establishment cannot be trustesd. It also means the arson was caused by politians, and those people in power not protecting us. Because they fail to do their job

You are aware that the moment the fire actually was an accident, the other 90% of your comment are pretty close to a conspiracy theory?

Re: Workers rely on medieval era tech to reconstruct the Notre Dame

#54

Post by barelyauser »

ceejayoz wrote: post #24
barelyauser wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what does "economic impact" means? A bunch of people burning jet fuel to get there and spend some hours looking at it? Why not working towards helping other people?

Buying from the cafes nearby. Patronizing the hotels. Going to see a show after. All the things one does in the neighborhood around a tourist attraction. A week-long golf tournament in my town brings in 200k+ people and local government touts a $190M economic impact number for that. I'm sure it's fudged to be as high as possible, but pretending Notre Dame doesn't have an economic benefit to Paris would be odd.

Money means nothing. Human time is what matters. Consider that back at their place of origin things did not get done. Economic impact means nothing. If I gave you $100 to watch me do nothing, what value this transaction created? There is virtually nothing to show for at the end but we created $100 of economic impact...

Re: Workers rely on medieval era tech to reconstruct the Notre Dame

#55

Post by hef19898 »

mcdonje wrote: post #52
kelsolaar wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cathedral has been up for hundreds of years, hard to qualify that as a failure.

Not exactly in its most recent configuration that failed. The people in charge are so concerned about historical accuracy they need to cut down a thousand large oaks, but their predecessors weren't so concerned about historical accuracy when they retrofitted a medieval structure with the electrical wiring that ended up causing it to burn down.

Lucky for Notre Dame, HN is not charge of reconstruction...

Re: Workers rely on medieval era tech to reconstruct the Notre Dame

#56

Post by malartic »

mcdonje wrote: post #32
soco wrote: post #5

They also rely on medieval era trees to reconstruct it, as the more than 1000 oak trees painstakingly sought through entire France had to be more than 1 m wide. Okay not medieval - they are only about 200 years old. Could have made a nice title though.

That's really sad. What a shame cutting down 1k large old oaks for any building at all. It's not necessary these days. Of course they need some wood in publicly viewable areas, but this amount of not only wood but large old oak trees is excessive and concerning. Is there any indication that they're improving the structure so it will be more fire proof? Or are they simply restoring it to the configuration that already…

> Or are they simply restoring it to the configuration that already failed?

780 years is not that bad for a building. (or, more precisely, the roof frame)

Macron & co had some idea for new things. They were all horrible. While I do think with good taste one could do some new things nicely ( e.g maybe a titanium-based roof instead of the lead one ), a restoration is the next best choice when proposed new things are crazy ugly/out-of-touch.

Btw, in our age, and since at least the early middle-age in France and old Europe, the use of old, large trees is the main political reason to keep alive some old, large forest with old trees. For ordinary wood they do plantations of fast-growing stuff and cut at maybe 40y or so.

Re: Workers rely on medieval era tech to reconstruct the Notre Dame

#57

Post by ceejayoz »

barelyauser wrote: post #54
ceejayoz wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buying from the cafes nearby. Patronizing the hotels. Going to see a show after. All the things one does in the neighborhood around a tourist attraction. A week-long golf tournament in my town brings in 200k+ people and local government touts a $190M economic impact number for that. I'm sure it's fudged to be as high as possible, but pretending Notre Dame doesn't have an economic benefit to Paris would be odd.

Money means nothing. Human time is what matters. Consider that back at their place of origin things did not get done. Economic impact means nothing. If I gave you $100 to watch me do nothing, what value this transaction created? There is virtually nothing to show for at the end but we created $100 of economic impact...

> If I gave you $100 to watch me do nothing, what value this transaction created?

That seems entirely up to you.

Re: Workers rely on medieval era tech to reconstruct the Notre Dame

#58

Post by mywittyname »

shirleyquirk wrote: post #29

I came here to share that the importance of using contemporaneous materials, if not methods, was highlighted for me when I worked on Bath cathedral and saw how the victorian 'improvements' of using iron rather than wood to fix the stonework caused much damage a century later; iron expands when it rusts and causes cracking. Then I see linked in that article that Notre Dame was a very early example of using iron staple…

> iron expands when it rusts and causes cracking.

This is often a contributing factor in the failure of modern steel-reinforced concrete structures.

Re: Workers rely on medieval era tech to reconstruct the Notre Dame

#59

Post by barney54 »

ars wrote: post #47

> it’s ethically and artistically far more imperative to stay true I could maybe understand artistically if the end result looks different. But ethically? It's a building, ethics don't apply to it.

I didn't realize that using power tools was unethical.

Re: Workers rely on medieval era tech to reconstruct the Notre Dame

#60

Post by jltsiren »

bambax wrote: post #4

The rebuilding is apparently going well, but this is hiding the fact that nobody seems to be doing any inquiry about why the fire wasn't stopped in time. As far as we know, the fire was an accident (not foul play) -- but an extremely preventable one. There were works in progress on the roof of the cathedral, so people were coming and going, some of them possibly smoking, electrical devices were being used, etc. And t…

Intact historical buildings and artifacts are rare, because something like this is the expected outcome. People are careless and incompetent, except by accident.

Restoring a major historical building is always a one-off project. You follow the best practices, and the chance of a catastrophic outcome may be 10%, 1%, or 0.1%. You can't tell those scenarios apart in advance, because they all look very similar. Success is overwhelmingly likely. If a catastrophe occurs, the reason is often obvious in retrospect, and you will take that into account in the next project. But it clearly wasn't obvious in advance.

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