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The challenge promises to be cyclopean: to return to Notre-Dame of Paris its roof and its arrow, swept Monday by the flames, and to rebuild the collapsed vault. In his televised address Tuesday evening, Emmanuel Macron, posing as a rallying of a bruised France, has made a project shared nationwide, adding an additional constraint. "We will rebuild the cathedral even more beautiful and I want it to be completed in five years," he said.
The delay seems difficult to hold when many heritage experts, in view of the considerable damage, rely more on a decade of work. "Restoration between ten and fifteen years seems reasonable," said AFP Frédéric Létoffé, one of the two presidents of the Group of Historic Monuments restoration companies. This estimate joins notably that made by Stéphane Bern, in charge of the "heritage mission". Historians estimate that the pause of the framework that disappeared Monday was spread out over twenty years, between 1220 and 1240. Certainly, the builders of the 21st century have technologies far more powerful than those of the 13th, but one can imagine without It is painful that keeping the timetable set by the Head of State, while preserving the historical quality of the monument, will require a sharp know-how and, above all, a considerable workforce.
Crafts lacking recruits
"Given the presumed scope of work, almost all trades will have to intervene.There will obviously be work on stone, timber, metalwork, technical facilities, such as electricity, lighting, cover ... ", said in an interview with AFP Eric Fischer, director of the Foundation of the Work of Our Lady, in charge of the Cathedral of Strasbourg. For his part, Jean-Claude Bellanger, general secretary of the Companions of Duty, puts forward a figure of 450 workers mobilized for the only parts concerning the shell. "For the reconstruction site, it should be that in September, we recruited apprentices 100 stonecutters, 150 carpenters and 200 roofers," he said Tuesday after a meeting with the Minister of Labor, Muriel Penicaud. At present, "the Companions of Duty annually train about 1,000 carpenters, 700 roofers and 450 stonemasons".
These figures are too low according to Jean-Claude Bellanger, who fears that a site of this magnitude empty other sites under renovation of their workers. "We have companies that have the skills for reconstruction but we have a cruel lack of young people on these trades," he says. To avoid Notre-Dame or other monuments in danger, if priority is given to the cathedral, do not suffer from a lack of arms, sectors concerned, often little valued, will have to find a way to recruit massively. "The prestige of the construction site of the reconstruction [could] improve the image of these manual trades", hopes Jean-Claude Bellanger. For stone cutting, France only has two apprentice training centers. A young person who enters at the age of 16 can expect to leave six years later with a license.
France could therefore be forced to seek artisans beyond its borders. "Finding enough craftsmen to work with stone, wood, lead, glass ... is a challenge for the industry across Europe," says Francis Maude, director of the Donald Insall architectural firm. Associates, which was involved in the reconstruction of Windsor Castle after the fire of 1992. This shortage, combined with the time needed to properly train the craftsmen, could well impose on the yard a tempo other than the one wanted by the President of the Republic but also influence the renovation choices that will be made.
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With what materials?
The problem of a sufficiently qualified workforce is also related to the question of materials. The "forest" that supported Notre-Dame's lead roof, which had been entirely reduced to ashes, had been carved out of 1,300 oaks. "There is not in France stocks of sawn wood available for such a project," was alarmed by AFP Sylvain Charlois, the leader of Groupe Charlois, the leading French producer of oak. Rebuilding the framework will require a supply of wood at the level of "probably a thousand trees," according to Michel Druilhe, president of the France Wood Forest Interprofession, guest of France moves on Europe 1. And trees of at least two meters in diameter, ie planted in the 19th century, to obtain beams of proportion similar to those that disappeared on Monday.
However, the conservators could opt for a new type of structure, potentially lighter to support for the walls of the cathedral, which bear the weight of centuries and that the fire has weakened in some places according to preliminary findings. In this case, other trades, which did not exist at the time of the Middle Ages, could intervene, similar to those which supervised the reconstructions of the roofs of the cathedral of Reims, bombarded in 1914, and of Nantes, destroyed by a fire in 1975. Each time, concrete frames were installed. This choice will fall to other professionals: historians, specialists in the Middle Ages and heritage architects, who should also be mobilized in large numbers to draw up the plan for renovating the damaged sanctuary.