Out in the French countryside of Briey, massive planks of oak wood are being fitted together for a very, very special purpose.
They are forming the new spire for the resurrection of the Notre Dame, and by using a marriage of master woodworkers and expert computing, all the pieces of the spire’s central and chief component—the shaft—fit together perfectly.
The spire, which collapsed through the lead roof of the famous cathedral in the fire, was built in the 19th century by architect Eugene Viollet-le-Duc, and the drafts for its construction were kept. With them, the team has been able to remake all 60 feet of structure exactly as before.
For the 286 specifically carved pieces of wood needed to create the shaft, which really is the wooden heart of the spire, only the tallest and straightest oak trees were used, donated for posterity in use for the Notre Dame by private landowners and public forests, some of which were owned by past kings of France, or the Catholic church.
In late July, a crane lowered the final piece of the shaft into place where it stuck fast.
French Army Gen. Jean-Louis Georgelin, the man in charge of the project, said it was a very emotional time.
“The symbol of the fire was a crash of the spire, and people will be confident in the reopening of the cathedral when will we see again the spire of a cathedral in the sky of Paris,” he told NPR News.
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“It will be exactly the same as it was by Viollet-le-Duc,” Georgelin told CBS News. “But we do that with the means of our time: We use computers… We have probably less genius, but more calculation, more certainty by using computers.”
Also speaking with CBS was Axelle Ponsonnet, an architect who said the project was unlike anything she had ever worked on before, not only because of its historic nature.
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“It’s not only the famous part of it,” she told CBS News. “Of course, I’m extremely proud to be part of this team and to rebuild Notre Dame. But it’s also a very interesting project, because it’s a very complex structure and today we are never building such structures, and what’s amazing is that we are really trying to be very specific in the way we rebuild it.”
At the moment, the cathedral of Notre Damn is on schedule for a 2024 reopening.
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