Truss reconstruction

HandsHouse Studio led a project in the United States to reconstruct one of the trusses that once supported the roof of Notre Dame de Paris.

As a collaboration with Charpentiers sans Frontieres, North Bennet Street School, and several other institutions and universities, we constructed the truss July 24 - August 4 at Catholic University in Washington DC. The truss was raised on the National Mall on August 5th (open to the public), and it is now being exhibited at the National Building Museum until September 6th.

To learn more about the project, please visit HandsHouse Studio’s website. You can also check out this article from New York Magazine, or this one from Architect’s Newspaper, or Smithsonian Magazine.

And if you’re really feeling it, you can read a blog post I wrote here.

Hewing the logs into timbers. HandsHouse Studio ©

All the joinery is held together with wooden pegs rived from white oak bolts (stumps). HandsHouse Studio ©

Using traditional methods to cleave two timbers out of one log. HandsHouse Studio ©

Setting up at the National Building Museum. HandsHouse Studio ©

Check out more HandsHouse Studio projects here.