As the world’s eyes turn to Paris, the home of the 2024 Olympic Games, construction crews are putting the final touches on restoring Notre-Dame de Paris ahead of welcoming Pope Francis for its reopening in December.
In May, Wood Central revealed that 500 carpenters, stonemasons, scaffolders, sculptures, gliders and glassmakers worldwide finished work on the cathedral roof, appropriately known as “la forêt,” or “the forest.”
Now, work is turning to the interiors – including the cathedral’s 1500 wooden chairs, a key part of the cathedral choir. Last week, French seat manufacturer Bosc delivered the 1,000th wooden chair to the cathedral – a major milestone celebrated by Sylvain Bastiat, the company’s commercial director:
“This project is an incredible adventure. The Archbishop of Paris’s choice to trust us to create the chairs designed by Ionna Vautrin (one of France’s most promising industrial designers) is a strong marker that salutes the know-how we have been cultivating for 60 years and our commitment to the sustainability of French forests.”
Like la forêt – constructed using timber from 35 French sawmills sourced from 175 local forests, the chairs are fully certified under the PEFC French scheme: “As a long-standing manufacturer of wooden chairs, sofas and armchairs, it is now unthinkable for us to use wood without a guarantee that it comes from sustainably managed forests,” Mr Bastiat said, “This is what the PEFC certification allows us to attest.”
In April, Wood Central spoke to PEFC International, the world’s largest forest certification scheme, who said Notre-Dame de Paris’s wooden roof was one of the largest and most culturally significant to achieve project certification.
According to Christine de Neuville, the President of PEFC in France, “the certification recognises the commitment of not only the client, Rebâtir Notre-Dame de Paris, but also of the entire forestry and timber industry to the long-term survival of the French forest.”
At the same time that work continues on new seating, acoustic engineers are also working on the internal sound, “mapping out the cathedral’s acoustics, calculating how sound reverberates against each interior feature of the building.”
Earlier this year, Wood Central reported that engineers are using a recorded concert, the “Ghost Orchestra Project,” and a computer model to determine how acoustics vary between sections of the cathedral.
“We are painting audio frescos,” said acoustic engineer Brian Katz. Adding that the team was using “a medieval castle from the same period and the same tools to recapture the original sounds of Notre-Dame’s construction.”
According to Mt Katz, the sound inside the cathedral evolved as construction materials changed: “In the Middle Ages, before there was all this seating, the floor would have probably been covered with straw or hay to absorb water and mud from people.”
“Then there was the transformation from a religious to a mass tourist site,” he said, adding that “carpeting was added in the ’90s to reduce footfall.”
The restoration of the UNESCO-listed building, which had 12 million visitors a year before the fire, is forecast to welcome 14 million visitors a year after it reopens.
- For more information about the Notre-Dame restoration, visit Wood Central’s special features on the certification of the Notre-Dame de Paris roof, the construction of the wooden spire, the installation of the trusses over the cathedral roof, guidelines for carpenters working in the cathedral, and the Golden Rooster, which now stands atop the cathedral spire.
