Entirely just to do something different? Or for any actual reason?
I mean things like: https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/france-notre-dame-gree...
are just outright plain ugly due to many reasons and this is one of the nicer looking alternative proposals that I could find.
part of the reason was to have it ready for the olympics since a design competition would take a long time.
By that standard other Europeans are even more conservative.. Germans rebuilt the Dresden Cathedral and palaces despite them being a complete ruin for decades. The Polish rebuilt Warsaw, Gdansk and I assume other cities almost entirely from scratch pretty much as replicas of their pre-war state.
What does that say about them?