A half hour downriver from Kew towards central London the character of the riverbank development changes radically. You really experience the results of the big economic surge before the recession – and the continuing result of investment money flowing into the London area from troubled areas abroad. Buildings like this one, obviously representing wealth from an earlier era, drop away.
And are supplanted by their 21st century descendants.
The Glasgow School of Art was designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, chosen for the commission by the school’s director, Francis Newbery, who oversaw a period of expansion and fast-growing reputation. The first half of the building was completed in 1899 and the second half in 1909. The School is organized into three academic schools, the Mackintosh School of Architecture (named after Charles Rennie Mackintosh), the School of Design, and the School of Fine Art, each with its own academic programs and research centers. Alongside the three schools there are a Digital Design Studio, specializing in 3D visualization and interaction, a Forum for Critical Inquiry, which provides a range of non-studio-based learning, teaching and research, and the Graduate School. The GSA also has a long-established portfolio of non-degree provision, including leisure classes.
The building is well-known in the architectural community; and architects visiting Scotland invariably pay a visit. The school limits one’s ability to report on a visit by not permitting photos of the interior (“to protect the intellectual property rights of the students”) so I have had to make do. The entrance facade dominates the narrow street and is difficult to photograph in its entirety. This is the very sculptural main entrance with the large upper studios clearly presented.
A view from the corner gives a sense of the massiveness of the form and the scale of its elements.
Here’s a picture of a model that was in the visitor lobby. It helps to show the whole form.
And in this view, a sense of the steep hill on which the building sits
The floor plan shows how the simple and powerful layout focuses all the studios to the north, anchored to a circulation spine and then to a central stairway and museum display area in the center of the composition.
A ‘design’ room and stair terminates the east end, balanced by another stair and the library at the west end.
Unfortunately, in the recent May fire, the library was destroyed (though most of the building was protected). There are discussions under way about rebuilding it. I’m not sure about the status of the collection it contained.
The School’s campus has grown over time and in 2009, an international architectural competition was held to find an architect-led design team which would develop the Campus Master plan and design the Phase 1 building. The Phase 1 building is opposite the Mackintosh Building on a site now occupied by the Foulis, Assembly and Newbery Tower Buildings. The competition was won by New York based Steven Holl Architects working with Glasgow based JM Architects.
For me, there’s not much conversation going on between the buildings; but it was also difficult to gain a clear impression as the new building was still under construction when we were there.
The drawings I’ve seen of the Holl building do include some intriguing vertical spaces, light wells, and circulation – similar in spirit to the kinds of things going on in the School of Art – so it may be that the two buildings will form a pair in the long run. Here’s a view of one of the art studios in the older building that gives a sense of what sorts of spaces Mackintosh’s design emphasizes.
At the end of the guided tour we got to see a collection of Mackintosh’s furniture in a gallery/museum on one of the lower level of the building. Unfortunately we couldn’t take pictures or try out any of the chairs. We did, however, go on to see another major building that is not as well known but that contains many of Mackintosh’s signature elements, the Scotland School Museum. I’ll show that in another post.
Charles Rennie Mackintosh worked with the Honeyman and Keppie architectural practice where he started his first major architectural project, the Glasgow Herald Building (now known as The Lighthouse), in 1899. After completing several successful building designs, Mackintosh became an official partner in Honeyman and Keppie in 1904, where he designed most of his well-known buildings in just a 10-year period (1896-1906). When economic hardships were causing many architectural practices to close in 1913, he resigned from Honeyman and Keppie and attempted to open his own practice.
Mackintosh lived most of his life in the city of Glasgow. Located on the banks of the River Clyde, during the Industrial Revolution, the city had one of the greatest production centers of heavy engineering and shipbuilding in the world. As the city grew and prospered, a faster response to the high demand for consumer goods and arts was necessary. Industrialized, mass-produced items started to gain popularity. Along with the Industrial Revolution, Asian style and emerging modernist ideas also influenced Mackintosh’s designs. When the Japanese isolationist regime softened, they opened themselves to globalization resulting in notable Japanese influence around the world.
Mackintosh met fellow artist Margaret MacDonald at the Glasgow School of Art and they became members of a collaborative group known as “The Four”. They married in 1900. The Room de Luxe at The Willow Tearooms features furniture and interior design by Mackintosh and Margaret Macdonald. We were on a bit of a Mackintosh quest in Glasgow, but we decided to start slowly with lunch and a cup of tea at the Willow Tearooms, on Sauchiehall Street, just a few blocks from our hotel.
There were several Willows Tea Rooms back in the day, run by a friend of Mackintosh’s who asked for his help on several. Not all have survived; but this one has and has been kept in pretty good shape. It was probably pretty unorthodox to paint the stone building white; but that was undoubtedly part of the newly arrived Asian aesthetic. The theme continues on the interior.
There are in fact two tea rooms at the Willows, this one which is an informal mezzanine located above the first floor gift and memorabilia shop and another, more up-scale one on the floor above.
You can see that both Mackintosh and his wife Margaret MacDonald were heavily influenced by Japanese design, and that they carried the various themes into all the detailing for the building, including windows, furniture, lighting and place settings.
This also reflects the world-wide turn-of-the-century fascination with posters and graphics
Of course, now that we have passed the next turn-of-century, we have refined the art even farther.
Somehow I believe that Mackintosh and MacDonald would have taken this commission, but they would have brought a more sensitive touch to the final design. More on Mackintosh’s work to come.
Travel Design Impressions 