(Photo report) Notre-Dame finds its spire
Philippe Villeneuve
Chief architect of historic monuments, in charge of the Notre-Dame de Paris construction site
“As conductor, I am immersed in the coordination of the different projects in parallel on the site: the scaffolding phases around the spire, the installation of the networks under the paving of the nave… I have to manage the unforeseen events such as a strong wind which forces the crane to be immobilized, intense rain which hampers the carpenters… The installation of the roof should begin at the beginning of 2024. At the same time, the restoration of the North and South gables should be completed at the end of spring . The most beautiful thing is all this know-how working together. Is it Notre-Dame who creates this? There is an incredible respect and complicity between us all.”
Rémi Fromont
Chief architect of historic monuments, in charge of the cathedral’s “wood” project.
“When I go under the framework today, I am very moved, because I have the extraordinary and somewhat disturbing sensation of finding the ancient “forest” of which I, with a colleague, had made a very precise survey between 2012 and 2015. To redo that of the choir (dated 1215) and the nave (1225), we used traditional techniques of wood cutting, squaring, the ancestral “art of the line”, all these skills created by our predecessors and so effective that the framework lasted eight hundred years. We observed that they continually improved their farming system. The “forest” is a veritable laboratory of Gothic!”
