Posted on 04/17/2019 1:16:43 PM PDT by Windflier
The good news: we have a highly-detailed digital template for how to rebuild.
From Bits to Atoms
The world watched in horror Monday night while flames tore through the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. As fire consumed the roof and toppled its iconic central spire, it seemed as though the historic church could be lost forever — but it’s possible, thanks to cutting-edge imagining technology, that all hope may not be lost.
Thanks to the meticulous work of Vassar art historian Andrew Tallon, every exquisite detail and mysterious clue to the building’s 13th-century construction was recorded in a digital archive in 2015 using laser imaging. These records have revolutionized our understanding of how the spectacular building was built — and could provide a template for how Paris could rebuild.
According to Wired, “architects now hope that Tallon’s scans may provide a map for keeping on track whatever rebuilding will have to take place.”
In 2015, National Geographic profiled Tallon and his unique scanning process, highlighting his digital imaging of the Notre Dame Cathedral. For centuries, the only tools we had to measure medieval buildings and structures were primitive — strings and rulers, pencils and plumb bobs — but by turning to 21st-century technology, Tallon was able to tease out the secrets of this miraculous structure.
“If I had texts at every point, I could look in the texts and try to get back into the heads of the builders,” Tallon said to Nat Geo. “I don’t have it, so it’s detective work for me.”
For his scans of Notre Dame, Tallon recorded data from more than 50 locations in and around the cathedral, resulting in a staggering one billion points of data.
Each scan begins by mounting the laser onto a tripod and placing in the center of the structure. The laser sweeps around the area in every direction, and as it hits a surface, the beam bounces back, recording the exact placement and surface of whatever buttress or column it landed on by measuring the time it took the beam to return. Every measurement is recorded as a colored dot, combining together into a detailed picture, like the color pixels of a digital photograph.
Eventually those millions of dots form a three-dimensional snapshot of the cathedral, and the resulting images are meticulously precise; if the scan is done properly, Tallon told Nat Geo, it should be accurate within 5 millimeters.
What Needs to be Rebuilt
“According to The New York Times, it took less than an hour for the fire to spread from the attic of the cathedral and engulf the roof, toppling the central spire. Construction on the cathedral began in the year 1163 and finished in 1345, according to an NYT piece about the history of the cathedral, and the wooden roof contained historic beams from the year 1220, all of which were destroyed by the blaze.
Support for the recovery efforts have begun pouring in, with wealthy Parisians and companies pledging more than $450 million in donations to Notre Dame’s restoration.
Despite the extensive damage, the NYT reports that most of the priceless artifacts and the stone structure of the cathedral remain intact — though only time will tell how long it’ll take to restore the beloved structure to a semblance of its former glory.”
cutting-edge imagining technology, like books???
Would you like to see the US Constitution (original document) or a modern printout laying in its place?
bookmark
I wish there was a way to get rid of the buttresses....cuz they certainly don't add to the beauty of the structure.
Fixed it
Where are the video tapes from security cameras showing the muslims?
Unfortunately they can’t just 3D print up a thousand skilled stone masons, labor to haul the limestone from the quarry, and a few centuries to make it all happen.
If the original U.S. Constitution were burned up in a fire, I'd be happy to at least have a perfect duplicate to admire.
We have the skills and technology to rebuild Notre Dame to better than original specs.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I think they're gorgeous, and I've seen them up close.
Is your assertion that it's better to leave Notre Dame a burned out husk since we don't have the original construction methods/techniques/materials to work with?
There is a structural reason for them.
There is no reinforcing steel in the walls of the cathedral, so when the roof (over 200 tons of lead placed on A-frame rafters) was installed on the structure it exerted a side load that would eventually cause the walls to bow outwards and eventually collapse.
The buttresses apply inward force to counteract the outward force of the roof on the walls.
The fear was that because of the fire and the subsequent collapse of the heavy roof, the buttresses would cause the walls to collapse inward. By the grace of God, that did not happen.
I am not suggesting Muslims were responsible for the fire. But the low birth rate, high abortion rate among the French (and the rest of western Europe) and high immigration from Muslim countries will make Muslims a majority in the near future.
BTW, "Figures released by French police showed that 875 of France’s 42,258 churches were vandalized last year."
GMTA - I was wondering how they might even teach those masonry skills to robots to recreate that workforce.
I think we’re going to need a bigger 3D printer . . .
No problem with stone masons. There are guilds across France that have kept the old medieval building skills and techniques alive. Coupled with modern methods, materials, tools, and transportation, they can do the job much faster than their forebears could ever have dreamed.
All things considered, it's just another restoration project. Bureaucrats and infighting are about the only thing that can stop it from being completed before 2025.
That is correct. But I feel certain that they have computerized stone cutters/grinders that will cut each individual stone to perfection much faster than a stone mason could.
Amazing, thank you for posting Windy :)
Wow!! Amazing news!!
Now, let’s hope and pray that they rebuild it precisly as it was.
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