The architectural tragedy of the 2019 Notre-Dame fire

Kevin Murphy | OUPblog | 25th February 2020

An interesting update. A year ago this week, fire ravaged Paris’s Notre Dame cathedral. Work since has revealed how little of the structure is truly original. Does this change the dilemma facing the project – faithful restoration versus modern adaptation? Perhaps, suggests the writer, there is no choice: “[R]estoring a work of architecture [may mean] giving it an imagined completeness which may never have existed.”