Tools of tomorrow will help bring beloved icon back to past glory
As the first images of charred wreckage inside the Notre Dame cathedral appeared, engineers around the world said one thing was already clear: To return the ancient structure to its glorious past, builders will likely have turn to cutting-edge technology that many associate with the future.
Even before engineers had been able to access the deepest corners of the still-smouldering structure, design experts, preservationists and engineers were pondering which modern technologies might be brought to bear to restore one of Europe’s most iconic structures to its fabled past.
It’s a speculative exercise, they admit, but one that is to be expected with the future of a Unesco World Heritage Site at stake.
The rebuilding effort will likely draw upon expertise gleaned from disasters like the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan and the Brazilian National Museum fire, where experimental robots and new digital tools have been used to go places people cannot safely venture and replicate detailed artefacts lost to fire.
Throughout the rebuilding effort, experts say, engineers and preservationists will be forced to wrestle with an ever-present question.
“How do they meld brand new 21st century technologies with ancient craftsmanship and building trades in ways that keep the cathedral preserved and alive?” said Katherine Malon-France, the interim chief preservation officer of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, a privately funded nonprofit based in Washington. “This is going to be a very interesting intersection of technology and craft, and the world will be [watching] how they pull it off.”
Some of the technology that will be used to restore Notre Dame has already been on display. As a wall of orange flames roared across the cathedral’s roof, a pair of Chinesemanufactured commercial drones equipped with HD cameras — the Mavic Pro and Matrice M210, made by DJI — helped firefighters position their hoses to contain the blaze before it destroyed the cathedral’s two iconic belfries, according to French newspaper Le Parisien.
“It is thanks to these drones . . . that we could [stop] this fire at a time when it was potentially occupying the two belfries,” Paris firefighters spokesman Gabriel Plus said.
On the ground, Colossus, a robotic fire extinguisher, blasted the nave with water, lowering the temperature