Modern architects hate beauty. Don’t let them ruin Notre Dame

Don’t even think about trying to turn Notre Dame into some cold, brutalist palace of progressivism by appointing modern architects, writes James Morrow. Just put it back the way it was.

The world watched in horror this week when Notre Dame burned.

And as plans are made for its reconstruction, we should be ready to recoil again.

“(An) international competition will allow us to ask the question of whether we should even recreate the spire,” the French Prime Minister, Edouard Philippe said in a press conference two days ago, laying his cards clearly on the table as to what he thinks should replace one of the church’s most distinct features.

“Or”, he continued, “as is often the case in the evolution of heritage, whether we should endow Notre Dame with a new spire. This is obviously a huge challenge, a historic responsibility.”

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Sadly, no reporter present asked the obvious question. Namely, “What’s the challenge? We know what it looked like.”

Flames and smoke engulf the spire and roof of the gothic cathedral, visited by millions of people a year. Picture: Fabien Barrau/AFP

As the ashes of Notre Dame smoulder, the last thing we need is a bunch of big-name designers who, if the history of post-World War II architecture is any guide, can’t stand beauty and aren’t that keen on the ordinary people who are forced to use and live with their creations either, swooping on the ruins hoping to turn an 800-year-old cathedral into their signature project.

And there’s one simple reason why: They just aren’t any good.

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As Brianna Rennix and Nathan J. Robinson point out in a brilliant 2017 essay, Why You Hate Contemporary Architecture, which brutally details the way today’s architects are taught to hate the lovely and embrace the unsettling: “For about 2000 years, everything human beings built was beautiful, or at least unobjectionable. The 20th century put a stop to this, evidenced by the fact that people often go out of their way to vacation in ‘historic’ (read: beautiful) towns that contain as little post-war ­architecture as possible.”

There 👏does👏not👏need👏to👏be👏a 👏competition👏we👏know👏 what 👏it👏looked👏like! https://t.co/QFGVOhGLRl

— James Morrow (@pwafork) April 17, 2019

This is the reason homes in suburbs like Paddington, which was once very working class, are so coveted today.

When those terraces were built a hundred years ago, there was no question that everyone deserved details such as mouldings and wrought-iron lace balconies.

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It was only by the action of what today we would call NIMBYs that developers weren’t able to bulldoze the joint out of existence.

These days, architects push their clients towards cold, featureless concrete cubes with all the charm of a remand centre, largely because they were never taught to build anything else.

Can we please just have the cathedral restored to its original state? Picture: iStock

This is also what those who claim it is possible to rebuild a ruin using contemporary techniques of the time miss.

Any attempt to “modernise” the cathedral will be old and tired and clichéd five minutes after the ribbon is cut.

Despite all our advances in material and technology, we’ve forgotten how to build to inspire.

When Christopher Wren rebuilt St Paul’s in London after it was gutted in the Great Fire of 1666, he wanted to build a soaring, beautiful monument.

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Today’s geniuses would likely come up with a giant crumpled concrete structure garlanded with LED banners spelling out the word “coexist” in various languages that wouldn’t stir the heart of a gnat.

And this is before the design is run through the filter of progressive politics.

In a massive rewrite of the Holy Week story, it was decided that Notre Dame had to burn for our sins — just as it had to be sacked by the left’s ancestors during the French Revolution and turned into a “Temple of Reason”.

The choir of the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris prior to the fire. Picture: AFP

In America this week, far-left progressive magazine The Nation ran an article by Daniel Judt suggesting the tragedy is actually “an occasion to consider a more expansive idea of what it means to be French”.

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Rolling Stone quoted Harvard University architectural historian Patricio del Real, saying, “The building was so overburdened with meaning that its burning feels like an act of liberation.”

Closer to home, University of Sydney academic Nick Riemer tweeted, more in sorrow than in anger, how the fire showed “how deep the cultural attachment to Christianity still is in the West, despite everything”.

Well, God forbid. Can’t have that.

Sadly, what is clear is that an unholy alliance of big-name “starchitects” and progressive academics and activists is shaping up, like a conquering army, to stamp the ruined temple with the marks of the new faith of tired left-liberalism.

Unable to create anything as grand or gorgeous as Notre Dame, and lacking the imagination to understand the philosophy and metaphysics that inspired it, our modern intellectual pygmies would prefer not to stand on the shoulders of giants but rather to kneecap them.

James Morrow is opinion editor of The Daily Telegraph and co-host of Sky News’s Outsiders.

@pwafork

Originally published as Modern architects hate beauty. Don’t let them ruin Notre Dame