Notre Dame de Paris

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• France

History

2019: Recovery from laser 3D copies and scenes from the popular game

On April 15, 2019, Notre Dame Cathedral caught fire. Thanks to the efforts of firefighters, most of the interior was saved, but the roof and spire of the cathedral were very badly damaged. Scores of people who sought to capture the beauty of Notre Dame de Paris at different times shared their materials in the hope of helping the restorers.

Among these materials are the files of the late Andrew Tallon, an American professor who used laser scanning to recreate a digital replica of the cathedral. In 2011, he and his colleague at Columbia University, Professor Stephen Murray, co-founded Mapping Gothic France, an open-source project designed to explore the connections between the architectural space of individual buildings, geopolitical space and social space. Work on Notre Dame has been carried out since 2000 and was reflected in Tallon's 2013 book Notre Dame de Paris.

Nort-Dam de Pari caught fire on April 15 at about 18:30 local time. The fire quickly engulfed the wooden structures - the cathedral has been undergoing restoration for the past few months.

Tallon used the Leica Geosystems laser scanner, which measures the distance between the instrument itself and any objects in the path of the laser beam, providing a deviation of no more than 5 mm. Tallon then matched the scanned points with panoramic photographs and created detailed three-dimensional reconstructions of the cathedral. Tallon carried laser scanners throughout the cathedral, including space above the vault and several unusual spiral staircases and transitions.

Tallon's work is not the only digital copy of the cathedral. Assassin's Creed: Unity video game designer Caroline Miousse has spent two years studying Notre Dame and creating a game model. Muess even used the help of historians to reproduce the cathedral as accurately as possible in the game.

The French authorities have announced their readiness to use all kinds of materials, including Tallon or Muess data, to restore the historical monument. French President Emmanuel Macron has promised that the cathedral will be restored in five years.^[1]

1853

Notre Dame Cathedral, France, 1853.

Notes