Yes for sure, I never had much hope for any kind of change because of the reasons you gave. I think it's quite telling of our time how we cling to some idealized idea of the past.

> everything was so lazy and dull I'm really glad they got dismissed.

The McMansion Hell lady introduced me to the idea of "PR-chitecture." You'll see it everywhere once you're familiar with it, including many other fields of design.

You chose to ignore the fact that each time Notre-Dame was rebuilt, it was done in a way that reflected the era. Why should we attempt to preserve the last version, that only dates back to the 19th century, and is a fantasy of what it never was?

Why not contribute to this piece of art? Be it a glass roof or something less controversial. To me, merely repairing is like admitting the building is dead.

> I'm totally unbothered by the Royal Ontario Museum

I loved the design when I originally saw the architectural drawing and models. The blend of modern with traditional. The way the crystal reflects part of the museum's mission.

That said, the resulting building is hideous when seen at street level. The finish of the structure makes it look like a tornado dropped an oversized aluminum garden shed on the museum, then they never bothered to clean up the mess.

Architects can design some really beautiful structures, but it can go really wrong for reasons other than over eagerness to make a point.

(Or maybe I was bitter about them dropping the free Tuesdays around the same time. Not only was it an affordable night out, but the museum was much more lively with the visitors and special events.)

>the mentality it represents

Could you share more about what you mean by this?

Why shouldn't churches reflect evolving ideas of how "sacred" looks? The Sagrada Familia doesn't feel the same as the old Notre Dame or Milan, but it's no less sacred for it. The Crystal cathedral and Thorncrown Chapel don't reflect traditional ideas about what a sacred space should look like either, but it's hard to deny that they reflect something sacral even if you don't like them.

> These ideas are simply inappropriate for a church, a sacred space.

Why? On a conceptual level, wouldn't a glass roof allow the people to feel closer to the heavens, while still enclosed by the holiness of the cathedral?

> Do you think a walkable garden at the top of a cathedral would be respectful of the christian faith or do you think only other religions deserve respect?

Personally I find nothing disrespectful about putting a walkable garden on top of a cathedral.

> Put it this way: you put your walkable gardens on top of christian cathedrals, I build up tennis courts on top of mosques and swimming pools on top of synagogues.

I don't understand what you compare a hypothetical walkable garden on a cathedral to a tennis court on a mosque or a swimming pool on a synagogue. I think it better to compare a walkable garden on a cathedral to a walkable garden on a mosque or a walkable garden on a synagogue. Whether that is disrespectful is up to the individual.

That cathedral is property of the state and the Catholic church is only allowed to use it for its office, to be clear.

Private (owned by the church) churches, synagogues or mosques are not under that statute. But then they have to pay the maintenance themselves.

Notre Dame is paid by public taxes so its fate and purpose are decided by the French public, not by the church, although of course its opinion is taken into account.

It's the same reason many churches in other countries and up transformed into apartments, libraries or destroyed altogether when the Church can't pay for them anymore. It's not a question of "respect" for a religion or another.

>Put it this way: you put your walkable gardens on top of christian cathedrals, I build up tennis courts on top of mosques and swimming pool on top of synagogues.

Sure, why not? They're just buildings, and that sounds like fun.

And I'm pretty sure that as far as the Christian faith is concerned, one isn't supposed to put value in the temporal universe or its constructs, and a grand cathedral is as meaningless to God as a mud hut.

Why try to frame me as some rabid anti-christian?

I respect the opinion of the majority which clearly wanted to keep it as it was, I am merely expressing a slight disappointment over the final decision.

Also, why would adding more modern features to the church be disrespectful to christians??

And no, the church has been rebuilt many times since the middle ages. Each time differently, reflecting the era.

I don't think it's obvious what it means to preserve historical works. A really clear example of my point is the Cerne Abbas Giant, a chalk figure on a hill in England. For a long time the idea was to try to leave it untouched. Adding chalk was seen as something like touching up the mona Lisa. But it was in danger of being lost and if memory serves it was discovered that when it was made people would refresh the chalk regularly. It's inherent to the work that it is maintained.

Let's say this giant is at one end of the spectrum, and the Mona Lisa is at the other. Its subjective where you place cathedrals, but certainly the builders intended it to be an operational building, and throughout its history there have been additions and modifications.

Notre Dame had multiple accidents over the centuries. Every time something was rebuilt there was a war against changes. And yet many things changed - what you see is not what it looked like before the incident.

What exactly is different this time so that we do not leave a piece of contemporary history in Notre Dame?

Context: French, huge amateur of Middle Ages history.

It's a bit different I think because the roof itself was never "preserved the best we can", it's "just" a sort of fantasy roof built at a time when Violet le Duc rebuilt many monuments using his imagination and fantasy with little historical basis.

I can't really say which would be best myself, but the point is since the roof is already the not historical part of the cathedral, it makes little sense to rebuild it exactly in that precise not historical way. Instead, it could keep being the one evolving part of the building.

Historically the answer was "yes, rebuild the Colosseum with different materials," it's not just a modern thing. The desire to make it more original is stronger now than ever before in many places IMO.

Would the glass dome merely be a curiosity, or would it restore it to a functional building that's used for more than historic tourism?

Yeah, you have the right to your opinion too, and you're clearly in the majority so I respect that.

The last time Notre-Dame was rebuilt, by Viollet le Duc, it had been left in ruins for over a century and was redesigned as an idealized version of what it never was. So we are only preserving this version of the past by rebuilding it this way.

Also, a glass dome over the collosem would be hideous, which I think is reason enough not to do it :)

Since I’ve made pihole a part of my home infrastructure, using this same phone away from home is noticeably much more painful.