To mark the historic reopening of Notre Dame Cathedral in December, France’s largest newspaper set out to publish an online visualization of the 2019 fire that nearly destroyed the iconic structure. But first, the editors of Le Monde needed an accurate 3D rendering of the centuries-old cathedral from which to base their investigation.

They found it in the work of Myles Zhang, a Taubman College Ph.D. candidate in architectural history who in 2021 published a peer-reviewed cathedral construction sequence that has received more than 750,000 views on YouTube. Zhang sent Le Monde his CAD source files, and the publication used his work to heavily inform its video report, which was published on December 4, just a few days before the cathedral’s reopening.  

Le Monde’s investigation was titled: “Notre-Dame de Paris could have collapsed in April 2019. This is how firefighters saved the cathedral.” The report found that one crucial decision saved the cathedral from destruction: French firefighters gave up trying to save the burning roof and instead began hosing down the cathedral’s two towers. In the end, the roof and spire were destroyed, but the towers — and the surrounding cathedral structure — survived the blaze. The Le Monde report, published in French and English, has received nearly a half-million total views. 

Zhang spent several hundred hours creating the animated construction sequence with art historian Stephen Murray, yet he still made the CAD source files open to the public. His work is being used in a range of spaces for research on medieval acoustics, for training young architects, and now to help inform a major journalistic investigation. 

“As architects and historians by training, it is important that we use the tools of our trade to inform public conversations on the logistics and politics of building renovation,” said Zhang, who’s on track to receive his doctorate in 2026. He earned a bachelor’s degree in art history from Columbia University and a master’s of philosophy in architecture and urban studies from the University of Cambridge.

Construction on Notre Dame Cathedral began in 1163, under the reign of King Louis VII, and the cathedral was largely completed by 1345, although many modifications and additions were made over the following centuries. After the fire, the cathedral underwent a five-year restoration and re-opened to the public on Dec. 7, 2024. According to the Friends of Notre Dame De Paris, the cathedral attracts more than 12 million visitors a year.

Zhang noted that French President Emmanuel Macron had promised to restore the cathedral to its state of greatness, exactly as it appeared the morning before the fire. “But there is a lack of public awareness that this cathedral has always been changing, and was never truly complete,” Zhang said. “Through a series of fires, revolutions, reconstructions, and renovations to the cathedral during each generation, Notre Dame was progressively rebuilt. So the statement that something will be made great again and ‘restored’ to the way it was before sidesteps the larger question: What was the cathedral before? To what state of ‘completion’ will it be restored?”

Zhang believes Notre Dame is “so much more than a medieval cathedral that descends to us today untouched and unchanged from how the ‘original’ builders had envisioned it in the 12th century. Much as the architect Viollet-le-Duc famously added the steeple and gargoyles to Notre Dame during the 19th century Industrial Revolution, we should not be afraid today to incorporate new materials and new architectural innovations into old buildings, so that Notre Dame’s restored form visibly speaks to who we are today and reflects modernism.” 

Being a Ph.D. candidate on financial aid from Taubman College affords Zhang a small stipend but, more importantly, the luxury of time to dedicate to his research. 

“There is no profit to be made from this research project, so this kind of research can only come from a nonprofit research university like Michigan that funds its Ph.D. program,” he said. “The financial profit is non-existent, but the benefits build toward public knowledge, to visualize knowledge that is otherwise sealed in ivory towers and in archaeological surveys that only a few dozen people will read. Notre Dame belongs to the world, and so should knowledge of its history.”