In Notre-Dame, We Find a Heritage That Invites Us to Breathe and Reflect: A Spire Competition Is the Wrong Approach

Abstract

Published four days after the fire at Notre-Dame Cathedral, this opinion piece rebuked the hasty decision by then French President Emmanuel Macron to replace the spire destroyed in the conflagration with one in a contemporary style. Otero-Pailos took particular issue with the process announced by the French government to hold an international competition to award an architect all of the decision-making power to determine the aesthetics of the new elements. While appearing to be forward looking, this process actually harkened back to antiquated nineteenth-century preservation methods in its fixation on the visual form of the architectural object, and its effective exclusion of the voices of ordinary citizens. Against this old model, Otero-Pailos argued for setting up an inclusive participatory social process to ascertain the kinds of aesthetic experiences that are meaningful to people who are emotionally involved in this heritage place. Such a process would result in identifying the significance of unexpected character-defining aesthetic elements of Notre-Dame, such as its smell, in addition to its visual appearance. If conducted without a bias toward positive emotions, the process would raise awareness of the negative emotions that the interested public associates with the aesthetic experiences of Notre-Dame. Such awareness would in turn help keep questions of fairness at the center of the preservation process, attuning it to the demands for social justice and making politicians and preservation professionals accountable for how it might be achieved, not only through new experimental preservation aesthetics but also through new financial models, such as redistributing the enormous sums of private capital raised by the fire to other heritage sites and communities in more precarious states.