INSPIRING CONTEST
France seeks global ideas for new top to Notre Dame
Oui want your input! French officials announced an international competition Wednesday to replace the 300-foot spire that once crowned Notre Dame Cathedral but was lost in Monday night’s devastating fire.
Architects from around the globe will be invited to submit their visions of what should succeed the original 19th century design from architect Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc.
The world watched in horror as Viollet-le-Duc’s lacy spire made from wood and covered in lead burst into flames and toppled over Monday.
France will be looking for “a new spire that is adapted to the techniques and the challenges of our era,” Prime Minister Édouard Philippe said.
Philippe spoke a day after French President Emmanuel Macron vowed to rebuild the cathedral within five years — in time for the 2024 Olympics in Paris.
“The idea of a competition all over the world, I think it’s absolutely right,” Stephen Murray, a professor emeritus of Gothic architecture and medieval art at Columbia University, told the Daily News.
“We shouldn’t just slavishly imitate what was already there. We should allow the inclusion of modern materials and modern ideals,” he said.
Murray said the Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava seemed an obvious choice as a top contender.
Calatrava, who designed the Oculus at the World Trade Center, draws much of his inspiration from Gothic architecture and knows how to blend the esthetic with modern designs, he said.
“We have our own passions and concerns as 21st century people. This should be an ecologically innovative structure. To simply chop down a bunch of oak trees and put them up there again to catch fire would be a defeat,” he said.
In addition to the competition, French officials also announced Wednesday that Gen. Jean-Louis Georgelin, former chief of staff of the armed forces, would oversee the reconstruction effort.
They said new legislation also was in the works to give a legal framework to the herculean task and guarantee “transparency and good management.”
While the cost of rebuilding remains unclear, nearly a billion dollars already has been pledged by France’s richest families, through small donations and by companies including L’Oréal, Apple and Disney, officials said.
Disney, which adapted Victor Hugo’s classic novel “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” to an animated musical in 1996, announced its $5 million donation Wednesday, calling the cathedral an “irreplaceable masterpiece.”