Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s drawing for his Scotland Street School in Glasgow (1904).CreditThe Hunterian, University of Glasgow 2014;

Scholars are completing an online database of buildings by the Scottish architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh, just as restorers are puzzling over how to rebuild his 1909 wing at the Glasgow School of Art, now in charred ruins.

On May 23 fire devastated the building, which is nicknamed the Mac and had just been thoroughly restored. On July 18 the new website, Mackintosh Architecture: Context, Making and Meaning, will have its debut, and exhibitions of Mackintosh’s drawings, paintings and building models will open at the Hunterian museum at the University of Glasgow.

Pamela Robertson, the principal investigator for the website, said that the fire felt like a “body blow.” The database’s descriptions of the Glasgow School of Art are being updated to indicate the damage.

The website will help restorers work on the school: “It must be one of the best documented interiors of the early 20th century,” she said. (Fans of the building are posting vintage and recent images at another new site, the Mac Photo Archive.).....Continue Reading

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