C6| Saturday/Sunday, February 22 - 23, 2020 **** THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
Nothing’s
more
peaceful
atnight
thanthe
feelingof
being
gentlysuffocated
byacloud.
have genuine benefits: They’re
credited with helping to allevi-
ate anxiety and sleeplessness
and have been used in the
treatment of ADHD and autism
in adults and children.
Asforme,Iamyourgar-
den-variety nervous, fidgety,
leg-jiggling light sleeper. When
I go to bed, I flip around like a
freshly caught bluefish on the
deck of a charter boat. It’s a
wonder I’m still married.
So far, my weighted blanket
has been a revelation. I wrap
that thing around me, and I in-
stantly become less squirmy.
I’m not saying my mind stopster mass. “The cathedral was full of
people. My father put me on his
shoulders. I heard the organ, and I
was fascinated,” he says. “I think
that’s when Notre Dame and I fused.”
As a boy growing up in a suburb
of Paris, he pored over books his
grandfather gave him on Europe’s
Gothic cathedrals, developed a pas-
sion for Legos and returned again
and again to visit Notre Dame. In
1979, when he was 16, an exhibition
was held in Paris to commemorate
the 100th anniversary of the death of
Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, the 19th-cen-
tury French architect charged with
restoring Notre Dame after the rav-
ages of the French Revolution.
Among other changes, Viollet-le-Duc
was responsible for building the 300-
foot wooden spire that collapsed inthe 2019 fire. Art historians consider
it one of the greatest creations of the
Gothic Revival. (The French term for
the spire isflèche, or arrow.)
“The strength of Viollet-le-Duc’s
spire is that it was integrated totally
into the 13th-century monument,” ex-
plains Mr. Villeneuve. He calls it a
“masterpiece.”
The exhibition was a revelation
for the teenage Mr. Villeneuve. “I told
myself, ‘Ah, so there’s a profession
that corresponds to my passion,’” he
says. He decided to pursue the same
career as the great Viollet-le-Duc—an
architect of historic monuments.
Mr. Villeneuve studied architec-
ture at the École national supérieure
d’architecture de Paris-Val de Seine,
writing his dissertation on the
Church of Saint-Pierre-Saint-Paul, aWEEKEND CONFIDENTIAL|ELIZABETH WINKLER
Philippe
Villeneuve
A French architect works to
rebuild Notre Dame as it was
that the devastation happened on his
watch. He is “responsible but not cul-
pable,” he concludes. “I feel deep
grief,” he adds.
The repair effort is now focused
on stabilizing Notre Dame’s struc-
ture and removing the burned re-
mains of the scaffolding that had
been in place for repairs. (The scaf-
folding is Mr. Villeneuve’s biggest
anxiety; if it topples, it would fall on
the vaults, causing further damage
to the cathedral.) He hopes to com-
plete that work this spring, at which
point he will be able to analyze theextent of the damage and propose
options for reconstruction.
“It’s not just how to reconstruct
but also why to reconstruct. Why use
this material, this technique, this
structure?” he says, turning philo-
sophical as he walks around the pe-
rimeter of the cathedral. “Why rebuild
the spire? Why do something else?
This is a masterpiece on which we’re
intervening. It’s iconic, like the Mona
Lisa. How would you intervene on the
Mona Lisa? It was created and has not
changed. Notre Dame was created and
has not stopped changing.”
The question of how to rebuild the
spire is proving especially conten-
tious. The cathedral falls under the
control of France’s Ministry of Cul-
ture, and President Emmanuel Ma-
cron favors rebuilding the spire with
a “contemporary” touch. Like
Georges Pompidou’s Pompidou Cen-
ter or François Mitterrand’s champi-
oning of I.M. Pei’s pyramid entrance
to the Louvre, a modern spire would
give Mr. Macron’s presidency a signa-
ture architectural project.
Mr. Villeneuve, however, wants to
see Viollet-le-Duc’s spire rebuilt ex-
actly as it was before. Last fall, he de-
clared on French radio that he would
resign rather than allow a modern
spire to deface Notre Dame. Mr. Ville-
neuve should “shut his mouth,” re-
plied Gen. Jean-Louis Georgelin, a for-
mer army chief of staff who is now
Mr. Macron’s special representative
overseeing the reconstruction.
“When we reconstruct the cathe-
dral, we must do it with infinite pre-
caution, infinite respect and, above
all, we must not leave our trace on
it,” says Mr. Villeneuve. “We must be
very modest.” He disdains the
“starchitects” who have proposed
new designs for the spire, eager to
leave their imprint on Notre Dame.
“It doesn’t need anyone,” he says.
The French parliament, appearing
to side with Mr. Villeneuve, passed a
law last summer requiring that the
cathedral be restored to its “last
known visual state.” Viollet-le-Duc’s
spire seems to be safe, at least for
now, although the law still allows
room for unspecified variations in
material, structure and technique.
Mr. Villeneuve will make his recom-
mendations, but the final decision for
how to rebuild the cathedral rests
with the French government. Mr. Ma-
cron has promised that Notre Dame
will be completed in time for the
2024 Summer Olympics in Paris.
Mr. Villeneuve would rather the
discussion not be rushed. “It must
mature,” he says. “It’s like aragout.
It must be well-cooked.”‘This is a
masterpiece on
which we’re
intervening.’P
hilippe Villeneuve was
300 miles from Paris
when Notre Dame started
burning. The chief archi-
tect of France’s historic
monuments, he had begun overseeing
restorations to the cathedral in 2013.
On April 15, 2019, though, he was in
La Rochelle, a port town on the coun-
try’s western coast, supervising the
reconstruction of the city’s 13th-cen-
tury town hall—the oldest still in op-
eration in France. He raced back to
Paris and joined the firefighters trying
to stop the flames tearing through the
iconic cathedral.
“It’s a horror. My heart does flip-
flops,” he says (in French, though us-
ing the American slang for somer-
saults). “To see Notre Dame in flames,
it hurt.” He clutches his chest. “This
monument is a part of me.”
Notre Dame, which sits on the Ile
de la Cité in the Seine River, is now
walled off, its facade blocked from
public view, but the famous bell tow-
ers and flying buttresses are still visi-
ble above a barbed-wire fence. In the
early morning, theancien cloître—the
tangle of medieval streets in the
shadow of Notre Dame—is bustling
with construction workers and secu-
rity guards. Mr. Villeneuve, 54, is here
nearly every day, overseeing the re-
construction. At a cafe tucked up
against the back of the cathedral, he
recalls how the soaring Gothic church
first captured his imagination.
He was 6 years old, attending Eas-Renaissance church in the village of
Goussainville that retains elements of
its earlier Romanesque and Gothic
incarnations. For years, he was re-
sponsible for historic buildings and
monuments in southwestern
France—in the provinces of Charente
and Charente-Maritime. In 2011, he
began overseeing restorations to the
Château de Chambord, a 16th-century
castle in the Loire Valley. In 2013, he
returned to Notre Dame.
“When I arrived, I realized that it
was not in a good state,” says Mr.
Villeneuve. The French government
had proposed a €150 million ($170
million) renovation program, which
included repairing the stonework of
the flying buttresses and the fissures
in Viollet-le-Duc’s spire. “We were
working on the spire when the fire
broke out,” he says.
The blaze started in the attic of
the cathedral, spreading to engulf the
wooden frame of the roof—among
the oldest in church architecture,
constructed in 1220 from oak—and
eventually bringing down the legend-
ary spire, which plunged through the
vault below. Many in France worry
that the fire might have been caused
by the renovation work; prosecutors
opened an investigation into possible
criminal negligence, but no cause has
been determined. “We may never
know,” says Mr. Villeneuve.
Asked if he feels responsible for
the fire, Mr. Villeneuve first says,
“No.” Then he hedges, acknowledgingLAURA STEVENS FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
REVIEW
JASON
GAYracing—Did I lock
the front door?
Will the Knicks
ever make the
playoffs again?
Am I really going
to never be the
kind of person
who has a back-
yard pizza
oven?—but it set-
tles me. Turns
out, with the lux-
uriant weight of a
sedentary house cat upon me, I
am not just a better sleeper but
a better person.
Now I’m the Linus of
weighted blankets. I need it all
the time. Which leads to some
other issues. You can’t really
bring a weighted blanket into
work—yet. If people can get
treadmill desks, I don’t think a
weighted blanket is such a big
deal.
But what about at a restau-
rant? Curling up in a booth at
Chipotle, burrito in front of
me, my weighted blankie
wrapped over my shoulders?
Weird? Says who? Apple sells$250 icicle earrings and can’t
keep them on the shelves.
What’s weird anymore?
I’m waiting for the first air-
line to announce weighted
blankets for passengers. I guar-
antee it would be a huge hit.
You’d probably have to carry
fewer passengers, but that also
seems like a plus. Who wants
to fly with more people?
I know, I know, we’re becom-
ing a soft culture, consumed
with self-pampering. The tur-
moil of the outside world is
driving an indulgent economy
of high-thread-count sheets,
foam rollers, soothing eye
masks, brushed-cotton boxers
and relaxation candles. I think I
saw an advertisement on Insta-
gram for travel sweatpants
that are 100% made from the
daydreams of unicorns.
We’re getting squishy to the
point of gooey, unrecognizable
to prior generations made
from flinty, harder stock. I
know I should toughen up. But
I don’t care. I’m under my
weighted blankie, and nobody
can bother me here. ZOHAR LAZARI NEED TO TELL YOU ABOUT
my weighted blanket. You’ve
probably heard about these
gizmos: cozy blankets stuffed
with beads, discs, pellets or,
should you desire something
more exotic, the skulls of your
enemies—any object to give
your blankie some extra
weight, some heft, so the sen-
sation of wrapping yourself in
it is akin to being gripped in a
tight hug, or getting gently
suffocated by a cloud.
To say weighted blankets
are trendy is to sell them
short. They are a cultural rage.
Weighted blankets are basi-
cally Fortnite for stressed-outparents. I bought
one immediately.
No, you can’t bor-
row it.
My weighted
blanket weighs 20
lbs. There was an
option for a 10-
pounder—an in-
troductory
weighted blankie,
if you will—but I
figured I’d skip
the appetizer and
go straight to the Big Boy.
What does it feel like? Well,
it’s possible that you wake up
every morning and do 20 lb. bi-
ceps curls, but 20 lbs. is about
the weight of a good-sized
Thanksgiving turkey, or a very
sedentary house cat. The blan-
ket’s weight is distributed
evenly, however, so it doesn’t
feel like you’re snuggling a tur-
key or a cat with Friskies-
bingeing issues. It’s more like a
sleeping bag, filled with nickels.
When does one use a
weighted blanket? Anytime
one needs it, my friends. A
weighted blanket is said toI’m in
Love—
With a
Weighted
Blanket