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Viollet-le-Duc, an inspired vision of restoration

“ Restoring a building does not mean maintaining, repairing or remaking it, it means restoring it to a complete state that may never have existed at any given time, according to Viollet-Le-Duc. ”

  • Publish On 1 August 2024
  • Bérénice Gaussuin
  • 29 minutes

Viollet-le-Duc is famous for restoring the spire of Notre-Dame, which had been knocked down in 1792. In the course of this construction project, he reinvented the statues of the portals and the Kings’ Gallery, which had been decimated during the Revolution, because, in his words: “Restoring an edifice does not mean maintaining, repairing or remaking it, it means re-establishing it in a complete state that may never have existed at a given moment.” Bérénice Gaussuin, PhD in architecture, whose book Viollet-le-Duc : La forge d’une théorie de la restauration par la pratique (Viollet-le-Duc: Forging a theory of restoration through practice) has just been published (CNRS Éditions), takes a look at the approach of this extraordinary restorer.

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Reshaping myths to reveal pressing realities

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“ Artificial intelligence is revolutionizing our relation to history, giving us access to previously indecipherable archives. ”

Using AI to tell history

On February 10 and 11, France hosted the Summit for Action on Artificial Intelligence, bringing together international companies and heads of state to identify the potential and limits (notably environmental) of this tool. This is an opportunity for us to discuss the subject of generative AI with Raphaël Doan, a specialist in the sciences of Antiquity and author of the uchronia Si Rome n’avait pas chuté (If Rome hadn’t fallen), an essay imagining, with the help of AI, what might have happened if the Industrial Revolution had taken place under the Roman Empire. Through this experiment, fascinating possibilities for historical and archaeological research are outlined, as AI facilitates the processing of archives, the translation of lost languages and the deciphering of burnt texts. Read here the transcription of our interview with Raphaël Doan

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Podcast transcription: Raphaëlle Guidée

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