Architecture is the Great Book of Humanity

Darran Anderson:

The story of Notre-Dame, of how it has changed and survived for centuries, reveals why we care about the survival of buildings and why even that may not be enough.

Cities are temporal as well as spatial, and iconic architecture can be seen as a form of time travel. The oldest buildings accumulate memories and meanings that are crucial to collective identities and in connecting us to long-vanished generations and eras. So much of who we are is tied to storytelling and as Victor Hugo, the literary protector of Notre-Dame, claimed, “Architecture is the great book of humanity.”