The fire destroyed pretty much everything within the cathedral that was not made of stone, but for now it appears that the stone structure is actually in good shape. So what should France do with the shell? Seems to me there are three main options:
1) Tear it down, build something else. This is a TERRIBLE idea and should be rejected out of hand.
2) Leave it as a ruin. This has of course been done (including a castle with the same name as me, which fell into ruin less than a century ago because the last “Earl” in charge of the joint was a friggen’ moron), but man, it’d be depressing. This idea should be rejected.
3) Rebuild it. This is the obvious choice, and apparently has already been announced.
So, let’s say France chooses to rebuild. No matter how they go about it, it will be a massive project likely taking decades to complete. But how should they go about it?
Clearly (to me) they should rebuild it so that it looks and sounds just like it did. The stained glass windows are likely all gone, but those can be remade; the organ is likely a puddle of solidified molten lead. there are a vast number of wood carvings, wood pews, wood etc. that are gone but which can be remade. But… should everything be made of the same *materials*? Whatever it’s made from should be made to last for centuries. Thought should be given to making it fireproof, or at least fire resistant.
What could the pews and wood carvings be made from that *look* like wood, don’t weigh a whole lot more than wood, are as durable as wood, and burn less than wood? The wooden beams that formed the structure that held up the roof and other stuff… those could probably be made from something like stainless steel with a wood-like (or perhaps even actual wood) outer covering. It would look the same, weigh a little less, support a lot more, burn a whole lot less. The organ and the stained glass windows: I don’t know if those could be meaningfully improved upon. It’s not like stained glass window technology today is centuries more advanced than it was centuries ago. I would imagine that the lead framing melted and the little bits of glass fell to the floor. If those bits did not themselves melt or shatter, it would be great if they could be collected and used in the reconstruction.
It would not surprise me if there are a bunch of high-rez 3D laser scans of all the artistic goodies. It’s entirely possible that a lot of the lost wood art could be remade in relatively short order on CNC mills. Would that be the way to go, though? If a machine could spit out a relief panel that is indistinguishable from one hand carved, but vastly faster and cheaper, should they do that? Or should everything be hand-carved because Of Course It Should? And if so should it be a “worldwide heritage project” with bits carved all over everywhere, or should the French people do it themselves? I would recommend the latter, if at all possible. That would be just the thing to bring the nation together and give them a sense of unity and purpose.
Probably the most important thing for the people of France to keep in mind: 9/11 and the World Trade Center. Take a good hard look at how New York went about rebuilding… and then DON’T DO THAT. An army of bureaucrats with a truckload of regulations, with infighting and corruption and CYA and politicking. Gah.