Sharp British ideas for Notre Dame

The new spire on Notre Dame could be a “super-slender needle touching heaven’s clouds”, a minaret or a work of art composed entirely of light, according to some of Britain’s leading architects.

An international competition is to be held to find a replacement for the spire destroyed in the cathedral fire and British designers have been quick to respond with their ideas.

Although much of the 850-year-old cathedral survived the 15-hour blaze which started on Monday, the spire, which was added in the 19th century during a restoration, did not and collapsed at about 7pm.

Lord Foster of Thames Bank, Britain’s most famous architect, said that the competition was an “extraordinary opportunity” that would prove irresistible to anyone in the profession. He said submissions should embrace the boldness of the original builders, who pushed the limits of the technology of the day with their flying buttresses.

Lord Foster, who added an enormous glass dome while rebuilding the Reichstag in Berlin in 1999, itself burnt by the Nazis, said that the new spire could be “a work of art about light” and should be “contemporary and very spiritual and capture the confident spirit of the time”.

Ian Ritchie, creator of the 120m Spire of Dublin, declared that he would enter the competition and proposed “a refracting, super-slender reflecting crystal to heaven”. He said: “I think it would need to be perforated — at least 50 per cent empty space to eliminate wind loads — and could be a beautiful contemporary tracery of glass crystals and stainless steel. It should get to touch heaven’s clouds in a piece of celestial gothic acupuncture.”

Ray Makin, chairman of Manchester’s Atelier MB, said plans to repair the cathedral itself should be ditched. “Why not accept that this is just another step in the history of Notre Dame?” he said. “If people really need a cathedral this big then serious consideration should be given to either restoring it with a glass roof that would flood the cathedral with natural light or alternatively building a smaller church inside the ruins.”

Ptolemy Dean, surveyor of the fabric of Westminster Abbey, also suggested a glazed element to illuminate the space and enable the area beneath the roof to be fully utilised, just as it is in London, where the medieval triforium was converted into a museum last year.

“It needs to be a holistic scheme,” he said. “But it should be useful as well as symbolic. It’s a fantastic opportunity to add a new dimension.”

Eric Parry, who created the London Stock Exchange by St Paul’s Cathedral, said he was taking the competition very seriously. “It should touch the cultural pulse of today, uniting the ground and sky, and form a lens through which to aspire to the future,” he said. “Air and light should be able to breathe through it, and we might be looking at something incomplete. My only anxiety is that the rapidity of the rebuilding is driven by a political agenda. That might taint it.”

There has already been something of a backlash against President Macron after he vowed that the cathedral would be rebuilt in only five years and called for “a touch of contemporary architecture” rather than a pure reproduction. Some left-wing and “yellow-vest” protesters have also decried the flood of donations from big corporations for the reconstruction.

Tszwai So, of Spheron, a group of younger British architects, cautioned that any new spire was likely to receive the same reception as IM Pei’s pyramid at the Louvre, which caused an outcry when it was commissioned in 1984. “Whatever is put forward will be criticised by everyone. The new design will go through purgatory before it’s accepted,” he said.

He summed up the thoughts of many ambitious designers: “We’ll need to see who’s on the jury before we submit a design, but an open competition should yield the best result. However, the French are really rushing it and need to calm down. They’re not in a good emotional state.”

One scheme that can probably be discounted is placing a graceful minaret on top, as was suggested by Tom Wilkinson in an essay in Domus, the architecture magazine. He would like to see the approximately 100 Algerian protesters killed by the French police in 1961, and thrown into the Seine near by, get a proper memorial. Failing that, he’d like a recognition of French politics today: “A monument to le gilet jaune, complete with a dayglow spire.”