[beat]

Only if the modern materials and design are done with the same eye toward longevity that marked the original designs. Part of the beauty of these ancient churches is psychological... they feel permanent and timeless in a changing world.

Modern materials, on the other hand, are designed for productivity, not permanence. They hit cost targets. They're cheap and effective and sometimes even elegant, but it's highly unusual for a modern building to be built in a way that reflects an expected lifespan of centuries or even millennia.

[jacquesm]

> timeless

I think one thing that's proven beyond a doubt by now, once more by this fire, is that everything that man puts up is almost by definition not timeless, unless you make it out of large piles of stone such as the pyramids.

[beat]

Truly timeless is a very difficult thing (see the work by the Long Now Foundation for more on that). But I don't think that detracts from the point that these cathedrals were designed to last forever, from the perspective of the designers - the Notre Dame is 856 years old. It took about a century just to build it. It was epic, and clearly, it still is.

Who builds a building like that today? Other than the Long Now's clock, who is really building things designed to last for centuries, millennia? That's my point. Even the most epic of modern architecture generally isn't thinking beyond a century or so. Hell, my house is over 100 years old. So modern materials thinking, in its usual box, is not really up to the task of re-roofing Notre Dame in the way it deserves.

That doesn't mean we can't do it, or we should just build another flammable wooden roof. But it does mean that we need to think about how it should be done, to protect and preserve the legacy of that historic triumph of the human spirit over time itself.

If you're worried about true timelessness... even the pyramids will die someday, eaten by the relentless desert sands. But we can maybe make something that lasts as long as human civilization itself, if we try.

[yourduskquibble]

One could argue that we do have moderm day timelessness; single use plastics that will take a few thousand years to be destroyed.

[beat]

Eh. I'm talking about things we intend to keep in their current structure. Getting all negative about trash is kinda boring, really.

Given a reasonable extension of existing technology, we could eliminate that trash eventually. Imagine, say, machines designed to find plastic trash in the ocean, powered by ocean currents/thermals, that decompose the trash into basic releasable organics like CO2 and water. Just takes the will to do it. And hopefully someday, that will will exist.

And cleaning up the wreckage of the Industrial Revolution for the sake of future generations would be a legacy we could be proud of.

[p0nce]

When concrete was introduced it was considered highly elegant.

[beat]

I think concrete is elegant, myself. I suspect a lot of the Brutalist architecture that's considered horrid today will be re-evaluated much more positively in a couple of centuries. It was, in its way, a way of looking forward and trying to create something timeless, which is a lot more ambitious in terms of human spirit than the anonymous glass throwaways that dominate modern architecture.

[p0nce]

It's easy to have opinions on things, but that doesn't mean these opinions have any substance. If modern architects choose glass buildings maybe there is more to it than just our immediate reaction.

[beat]

Stewart Brand said the three enemies of all buildings are time, money, and water. He renounced is own faith in geodesic domes because they introduce unnecessary seams, especially as they get older and settle - seams that leak water.

Look at a glass building. Count the seams. Ask how serious they are about architecture that lasts.