Gutted by fire, the art school that made Mackintosh famous

Even the greatest talents need a break. Charles Rennie Mackintosh was a young assistant at Honeyman and Keppie, a prominent architectural firm, when they won a competition to design the Glasgow School of Art.

The project was entrusted to Mackintosh in spite of his being a junior employee. It was designed and built in phases between 1897 and 1909.

Today, the A-listed building, now known as The Mackintosh Building, which has been gutted by fire twice in the last decade, is considered an outstanding example of Art Nouveau, (also referred to as Modern Style or The Glasgow Style).

It is also one of the few examples of Mackintosh’s designs that were built, and considered “one of the world’s architectural treasures” by the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland.

Mackintosh is arguably Scotland’s most famous architect, and with influences from Japonisme, and architectural styles such as Scottish Baronial and Art Nouveau, he created a magnificent and novel structure for the Glasgow School of Art.

Initially, the design was not popular, but in the intervening years has gone on to not only inspire universal admiration, but to influence architecture and design to the present day.

As in many other projects, Mackintosh worked with his wife on the design of the furnishings and interiors.

The building is described by the Charles Rennie Mackintosh Society as the architect’s “masterwork” and in 2009, the Mack, was voted Britain’s best building, by a poll conducted by the RIBA Journal.

The building, an elongated E-shape stretching along Renfrew Street, presents a simple, asymmetric volumetric mass to the street and is made of ‘snecked rubble’ sandstone from Giffnock, with an ashlar finish.

Reminiscent of Scottish Baronial architecture, this façade is interspersed with huge windows, which without mullions, seem almost industrial in their design. These large windows allow weak northern light into the large studios which lie behind.

The building is set behind a sunken basement area and a low stone wall, with wrought iron railings, where spars topped with roundels, present designs based on diverse animal forms.

Wrought iron is also used for decorative features on the façade: there are brackets at the base of the first-floor windows, an arch over the sweeping entrance steps and wrought iron railings crossing an oriel window, (behind which sits the director’s room) next to a rectangular two-framed, transomed, arched window with a segmental-headed pediment.

Above that, is the director’s studio, accessed by a stair within an attached, polygonal tower which extends above the top of the building.

The east and west elevations are narrower and present more detailed facades.

The Mackintosh Building, was seriously damaged in a fire in May 2014 and then almost destroyed in a second fire in 2018.

The board of governors of the GSA stated at the time that the Mackintosh Building would be rebuilt. “It will be as Mackintosh designed it, to the millimetre”.

The reconstruction process is now under way.

IN ASSOCIATION WITH CITY COLLEGE, GLASGOW