Notre-Dame The witness of magical Paris
On April 16, 2019, the day after the roof of the Notre-Dame de Paris Cathedral burned, the President of the Republic of France, Emmanuel Macron, promised to rebuild the church without changing a single beam compared to the destroyed model. Public opinion reacted with general relief to that promise and contributed 1,000 million euros donated for the reconstruction, although at that time there were already those who remembered that
the Notre-Dame we knew was a romanticized reinterpretation of the original church
, a medieval fantasy directed by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc in the 19th century. Two and a half years later, Macron's promise is uncertain. The Archdiocese of Paris, the church's concession holder, has announced its intention to
refurnish the interior of Notre-Dame with modern criteria
.
What does "with modern criteria" mean?
In a strict sense, it means a more complex staging:
play of lights that will change depending on the season, new benches on wheels that can be adapted to different configurations, a looped music system
, new contemporary-style stained glass windows, projections of video on the walls ... In a more abstract sense, the Diocese hopes to make Notre-Dame
a less static space
, more changeable in its circulation.
The church that we knew before the fire had been a succession of spaces that progressed in an architectural crescendo.
The one we will meet will presumably be more changeable and more theatrical.
In some chronicle, the words "more immersive" have also appeared that have set off alarms.
Doesn't that sound "more immersive" like a theme park?
One hundred French intellectuals signed a public letter
denouncing the plans of the Archdiocese of Paris
and which was published in
La Tribune de l'art.
They are right?
BERTRAND GUAY
"Everything that arises in Paris can be done well or it can be done badly. I would not disqualify it without seeing it", responds David García Asenjo, architect and author of the book
Architectural Manifesto Step by Step; an essay on contemporary architecture through churches
.
"It doesn't seem like anything to me that hasn't always existed. The use of music has been fundamental in the architecture of churches since Bach made his living writing masses, it is nothing different from the organs of baroque churches.
The Cathedral of Toledo has screens that accompany the liturgy
. There are Romanesque chapels in the Pyrenees that project onto the walls the images of the frescoes that were taken to the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya. And that, when done delicately, has worked well. "
"I believe that it is reasonable to incorporate everything that is in the culture of our time to a church,
including art and technology,
" adds architect Pablo Oriol. "The problem is making a mistake when choosing which art to bring to a church. If these pieces have nothing to do with a mystical sense, if they do not dialogue with the architecture and art that existed before, if they do not add positively, it can be a I don't think Notre-Dame has to become a center for contemporary art, really. But if the artists know what that church means and are willing to add, of course they can be valuable. "
Is a place as significant and as saturated as Notre-Dame an architecture conducive to spiritual transmission? "From Borromini to the Romanesque capillaries,
there are very different architectures that convey a religious idea
. Of course, Notre-Dame is, above all, a place where the religious sense is what really matters," Oriol responds. The problem is that Notre-Dame is a very hierarchical space that does not resemble the idea of 20th century religious architecture, the churches that we have become accustomed to in recent decades. "The Second Vatican Council expressed itself in a type of churches based on recollection and a sense of community. Instead of longitudinal naves, they began to build naves with an assembly plan. But,
Like everything that has to do with the Second Vatican Council, that idea has also come into crisis
and there are many people within the church who believe that it is the old staging that really moves the faithful ", concludes García Asenjo .
Churches have always been works of architecture made to convey a mystical sense.
Think about the
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