Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s Glasgow School of Art Building has been gutted for the second time in 4 years. The city celebrated the 150th anniversary of Mackintosh’s birth last week, when one of his other famous buildings, the Willow Tea Rooms nearby, reopened after a refurbishment.

The BBC reported that another huge blaze began at 23:00 BST (Friday, June 15th) and it has engulfed a large portion of the building, four years after part of the building was destroyed by fire in May 23rd, 2014.

Flames ripped through the celebrated Mackintosh building after it caught fire which began at about 11:15pm on Friday. Firefighters were unable to enter the building because of fears its walls might, collapse and the blaze  spread to a neighbouring music venue, the O2 ABC.

Its renovated Mackintosh library and the grade-A listed building should reopen next year. However this will be imposible.

More than 120 firefighters and 20 appliances participated to tackle the blaze, Residents said the heat was so intense it could be felt several streets away, with chunks of blazing timber and debris raining down on neighbouring streets.  

On a visit to the scene on Saturday, Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, said,
the “heartbreaking” fire had been “much, much worse than the one that took hold of the Mackintosh building four years ago – so the damage is severe and extensive. There are assessments and discussions ongoing with the fire service and building control about the structure of it and it’s structural safety. Obviously all of us hope the building can be saved but I think it’s too early to draw any conclusions from that"

The damage to the building’s stonework raises questions about whether the structure will survive this second round of intense heat. In the last fire, the stonework endured temperatures of up to 1,000C and was then cooled down very quickly by water, leaving some of the stone cracked and and too weak to reuse.

The building was designed by the art nouveau architect and designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh, whose designs extended to the smallest detail, including its furniture, lamps and glass inlays. Its most famous feature was its library, which housed many rare and archival materials as well as original furniture and fittings, and was gutted by the first fire.

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Charles Rennie Mackintosh was an architect, designer and Scottish watercolorist, which had fundamental importance in the Arts and Crafts movement and was also the leading exponent of Art Nouveau in Scotland. He was the father of Elizabeth Nicol Rennie also followed in his footsteps.

Protomodernist (forerunner of modernism). Tries to reform breaking with the above. He rose to fame after exposing your furniture in the Secession in Vienna in 1900 and was part of the group "The Four" of Glasgow, created in 1897, its main figure.

He took elements of Arts and Crafts, and was very well accepted by the Belgian Art Nouveau opposition (he was a hero to the Secession).

It was one of the most prominent architects of characters linked to Art Nouveau (including Victor Horta), but after 1913 did not receive more orders.

In 1884 he was apprenticed in the studio of architect John Hutchinson, where you would be forming for five years. At the same time, he attended night classes in drawing and painting at the Glasgow School of Art, acquiring great skill in drawing and design as well as a watercolorist. This was a period of hard work but at the same time, rewarded with several awards. It would be in the evening classes where he met the people who later formed The Four group (Four), the sisters Frances Macdonald and Margaret Macdonald, who would later marry, and Herbert MacNair, colleague working at studio Honeyman & Keppie, where come to work in 1889 and remained until 1913. in 1890, the granting of travel grant Alexander-Thomson, which won the design of a public building of classic Greek style allowed him to go in 1891 France, Italy and Belgium for three months. In 1896, his project won the competition for the Glasgow School of Art (1896-1909), his masterpiece.

In collaboration with his wife, he furnished from 1896 several tearooms in Glasgow; also he received orders from England and abroad for villas and homes; including one for a music room for Fritz Waerndorfer.

The Four group also participated in the VIII exhibition of the Viennese Secession 1900.

In 1915 the marriage Mackintosh moved to London, where he remained until the end of his life, except for the years 1923 to 1927, during which he lived in Port-Vendres (France), where he devoted himself to painting (watercolors).

Mackintosh in London devoted to graphic works and book arts.
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Published on: June 17, 2018
Cite: "Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s Glasgow School of Art burn again " METALOCUS. Accessed
<https://www.metalocus.es/en/news/charles-rennie-mackintoshs-glasgow-school-art-burn-again> ISSN 1139-6415
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