investigate the intricate mortise-and-tenon joinery of Notre-Dame’s remarkable timber roof system and copper rooster.
From the outset of our project, we ambitiously hoped to contribute to the monumental task of
reconstructing the world heritage lost in the Notre-Dame fire. With an unwavering commitment to craft education and a genuine gesture of global solidarity, the endeavor
highly skilled collaborators who actualized its
success in ways no one could have imagined.
Our Charpentiers sans Frontiers partners had in fact brought our project to the attention of General Jean-Louis Georgelin, special representative appointed to oversee the
reconstruction of Notre-Dame-de-Paris and whose interest in the project later proved pivotal in opening doors for us to exhibit the Choir Truss #6. The National Park Service fast-tracked our efforts to exhibit the truss on the National Mall; the National Building Museum greenlighted an indoor exhibition of the Truss in their fifteen-story Great Hall. In 2022; our partners at Catholic University invited us to bring Choir Truss #6 back to Catholic’s campus for a second raising; Atlanta native William Rawson Smith spearheaded an effort to exhibit the truss at Millennium Gate Museum in Atlanta where the project was brought to the attention of Francois Asselin, owner of Asselin, one of the French traditional carpentry companies awarded the job of reconstructing Notre-Dame’s 315-foot timber spire. Further collaborations and opportunities to exhibit Truss #6 followed allowing more volunteers to participate in hands-on activities and further highlighting the beauty of this architecture, traditional building skills, and their relevance today.
Thanks in part to this attention, Handshouse
was invited to join the Asselin carpentry company on the physical reconstruction of Notre-Dame's iconic spire in France. With
education at the core of our mission, we selected a preservation carpenter and dedicated teacher, Michael Burrey, of the North
Bennet Street School, and heavy timber expert and an ambassador for the craft, Jackson DuBois, Executive Director of the Timbers Framers Guild. Burrey and DuBois held the remarkable job of shaping and carving the open stories and ornamental tracery — the quatrefoils, trefoils, and dormers — that have now been installed and remain visible on the
spire in Paris. Burrey and Dubois are just two of nearly 2,000 experts who participated in the cathedral’s reconstruction; a list commemorating the hands that touched this project is inscribed on a scroll inside the new rooster at the top of the reconstructed spire. We are honored to participate in this project and believe that students and members of the community will benefit from the knowledge exchanged during this collaboration for years to come.
A Case for Hands-On Intelligence
In a world constantly scrambling to integrate the newest technology into every aspect of our lives, we here at Handshouse Studio ask: how do we value the physical knowledge embedded in our bodies? Can we recognize the information learned by-hand and the intellect
carried by complex cellular programming activated by muscle-memory? Can we still appreciate that some truths can only be
These immersive, interdisciplinary learning environments enmesh diverse groups of people together, stimulating the kind of dialogue from different perspectives that cultivates connections cutting across skill levels, ways of thinking, and language barriers, as well as generational, ideological, national, and cultural divides.
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