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Originally Posted by pdurrant
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Well I respectfully disagree. The methods and craftsmanship used by masons centuries ago has been supplanted by modern methods. After a long period of time, you lose that craftsmanship since it is no longer being practiced. We might know and understand how the stone masons did their work 850 years ago, but that is a far cry from being highly experienced in those long gone methods. In the end, experience is much more valuable than knowledge when it comes to construction. Need I remind you that attempts to shore up some of the cathedral walls with flying buttresses did not go well as later builders struggled to get that correct in many cases. And the fact that flying buttresses had to be used later is a statement about the instability of the original structures and how they were constructed. We can certainly build a cathedral today out of concrete and steel and an ornamental layer of rock on the outside, but that is not true to the way in which the cathedral was originally erected.
So if they rebuild, do they stay true to the original structure? Is that eco-friendly? Not by a long shot. Do they substitute modern materials and methods such as concrete and steel, and thus build a stable, strong structure and hopefully more fire resistant? If so do they try to include familiar structural features like the later added flying buttresses, or do they leave those off since hopefully they will have a stable structure without them. The cathedral will look different without the flying buttresses, but they were not original. These and other questions will likely take years to answer as I'm sure there will be a lot of differences in opinions.