Church of Saint-Joseph des Nations

Our company H.Chevalier was involved in the construction of the Parisian church of Saint Joseph des Nations, and in particular in the reconstruction of the stone spire, which was suffering from serious damage. In view of the building’s pathologies, this project was particularly technical.

Following the sanitary condition, it was determined that the corrosion of the metal reinforcements supporting the spire was causing the stones to break. The scenario chosen was the complete dismantling and reconstruction of the spire and the replacement of the metal clamps with stainless steel bracing.

To begin with, a scan of the spire was carried out in order to model the spire in 3 dimensions, stone by stone. In addition to being used for the matching and block-by-block modelling of the 500 or so stones, this model was also useful in the structural study for the reconstruction of the spire.

It took more than two months to dismantle the entire spire stone by stone. The re-installation started at the end of July 2020 and was completed in January 2021.

The entire project required nearly 100m3 of new stone from the Paris area, cut on site and in the workshop.

© Franck Renoir