Global architecture firm Gensler has unveiled designs for a charred timber prayer pavilion to be used while the restoration of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris is underway.
The unsolicited proposal deploys Shou Sugi Ban-style charred timber structural trusses to shape a nave "replicated to the same dimensions as Notre-Dame to ensure familiarity," according to a project website. The proposal includes a roof constructed out of ETFE cushions and walls built from translucent polycarbonate.
As designed, the pavilion would be located in Parvis Square, the plaza fronting the cathedral that burned tragically in April 2019. One end of the long, rectangular nave opens up to the front elevation of Notre Dame and is aligned up with the centerline of the cathedral, according to renderings. The structure is envisioned as a multi-use space that can potentially host religious services, art exhibitions, and social and cultural events.
Duncan Swinhoe, regional managing principal at Gensler, said in an announcement, “Charred timber, which is one of the oldest and most effective methods of protecting wood from fire, also symbolizes that what once destroyed Notre-Dame will only serve to make it stronger, thus expressing a language of rebirth and transformation."
4 Comments
How could anyone look at all the things Notre Dame offers to teach us about what great architecture is and the offer this up? Gensler should stop generating un-commissioned projects like this, and spend the time and money saved on staff education. For example, exact dimensions don’t make a place “feel familiar.” Colors, shapes, pattern, textures, scale, details do.
This is far from humble. It is Gensler superimposing its own egotistical will and style upon a historic place with lots of unique character, style, colors, materials, quirks, and personality, and then using words like humble and familiar that completely contradict their design as presented.
There are more great comments about this project at Dezeen.
Well said.
Or, Parisians could go down the road a few hundred feet to St. Chapelle. Just an idea.
"charred timber prayer pavilion"
See the item on Gerhardt Fjuck for similar pompous hilarity.
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