concr3de could rebuild notre dame using 3D-printing with stone and ash from the fire

dutch office concr3de proposes to use 3D-printing to rebuild the notre dame following the devastating fire of april 15, using the fallen wood and stone as material and thus keeping the layered history of the church visible. proposing to combine old materials and new technologies, the company suggests to take the rubble and turn it into a new stone of paris, made of the ash, the dust and damaged stone. the 3D-printable powder, which would have the color of the parisian stone yellowish grey, mixed with the charred remains of the wood, could be used together with existing 3D scans of the church, to directly 3D-print the lost parts of the notre dame.

all images courtesy of concr3de

concr3de has also 3D-printed le stryge – the famous demon originally created by viollet le duc in the 19th century atop the notre dame – using a mixture of crushed parisian limestone and ash, as an example of what it might look like. discarting the option of rebuilding the church exactly like it was, the rotterdam-based office suggests instead to embed the destructive incident into the reconstruction in order to ‘maintain the soul of the building’. ‘simply copying, pretending there never was a fire, would be a historical forgery,’ concr3de adds.

a mixture of limestone and ash loaded into a 3D printer

explaining how the building process would work, the studio notes: ‘we would crush and mix the stone and ash into a fine powder, that is loaded into a large inkjet 3d printer. the printer deposits thin layers of the powder and prints an ink on top of each layer, solidifying the powder to each other. prints are then depowdered, and can immediately be put into the building…we could start reconstruction almost immediately, without need for new expensive and hard to find materials. we also don’t need to train a large crew. the notre dame would be able to reopen within several months, and people would be able to participate and interact with the restoration. we wouldn’t need to discard and waste the materials that have so much history embedded inside them, and can instead reuse them for the renovation.’