A CERTAIN controversy is gaining momentum regarding the future of the Glasgow School of Art’s Mackintosh building. After being badly damaged by fire for the second time in four years, views are being openly aired as to whether it should be reinstated or razed to the ground and a new “modern” art school erected in its place.
This is a question that never should be asked.
The real question must be why it is not still standing proud at the top of Renfrew Street, the city’s greatest architectural and cultural icon.
In 1910 when it was completed it was a masterpiece of architectural design but it was only much later it was given the credit by critics and the public that it greatly warranted.
Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s work became a symbol of the “Glasgow style” in architecture and art, his work standing proudly with the paintings of the Glasgow Boys and Girls and Colourists et al.
Everyone recognises the Mackintosh/Margaret Macdonald flower motif and its relationship with Glasgow as a cultural city.
The Glasgow Art School is not some museum from the past, it is a living, breathing working building that is a joy and pleasure to enter and work in, an inspiration itself to the students who walk those beautiful and quirky corridors and spaces.
The interior could not be anything other than an art school, the hint of linseed and oil paint, plaster casts of heroic proportions lining the corridors and the eye catching details of the building itself, every nook and cranny proclaiming the genius of Mackintosh.
I first fell in love with this building about 0 years ago, when as a young child I was privileged to be sent to Saturday morning painting classes at the GSA. Its effect on me was subtle but staggering. It was and still is the most influential building that I have had the pleasure of entering.
As an architectural student there in the 1960s, I was reacquainted with my first love, and I never ever took it for granted when I have visited it since. I could go on but you get the idea. This building’s future is not up for grabs. This is not just a building that can be replaced, any more than Barcelona would knock down the Sagrada Familia, the Romans flatten the Sistine Chapel or the Australians not rebuild the Sydney Opera house.
The Sydney Opera house was controversial when it was designed with building costs way over budget but it is undoubtedly the iconic symbol of Australian culture and identity.
There has been enough municipal vandalism in the City of Glasgow over the decades but this would be up with the worst should it not be reinstated.
I heard one radio presenter telling listeners that there is not the money for a rebuild, that it should be a new modern building in its place. Critics pooh-poohed Glasgow as City of Culture when it was put forward.
Look at that now. Glasgow was reborn after the 1990 Year of Culture and boasts a massive increase in visitors from overseas, many lured by Mackintosh and the GSA.
Let the faint hearts have their say but Glasgow needs the GSA and it will generate even more interest now that the second fire disaster has hit news world wide.
What will Glasgow and Scotland show to the world now, and make no mistake there is great interest throughout the world around the future of this amazing building.
We have to ask are we the “Mean City”? There are many questions to be answered about how things like a second fire came to pass, however I would call on every person of like mind to support the rebuilding of this iconic Glasgow building.
Matthew Kavanagh
Architect
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