Achi news desk-
Glasgow City Council, on behalf of a partnership that also included Argyll & Bute Council, submitted an application to the UK Government for the Mackintosh buildings of Glasgow School of Art and The Hill House (as a serial site) to be included on the new site. The UK’s Tentative List of potential sites to be nominated to UNESCO for World Heritage Site status “in recognition of the evolving global importance of Mackintosh’s masterpiece”.
After considering Mackintosh’s works and their potential for World Heritage Status, consultants appointed by Glasgow City Council recommended that the application focus on his two ‘masterpieces’, The Hill House in Helensburgh and the Glasgow School of Art, relying on the rest his work. output ‘to help set the cultural context’.
The UK government intended to submit a ‘tentative list’ of sites to UNESCO in 2011 with the intention of making nominations in 2012.
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Anticipating the listing, Glasgow City Council confirmed that, should World Heritage Site status be awarded, the Mackintosh Building at the Glasgow School of Art “would be protected by a visual setting / surrounding buffer, with all potential new development. impact on the building which needs to be sensitively designed to have a positive impact, to enhance its setting within the Conservation Area and to protect its outstanding overall value”.
The application was submitted to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport by Steve Inch, then Executive Director of Development and Regeneration Services at Glasgow City Council, who was responsible for a range of functions, including City Planning, Development and Property Management , Economic and Management. Social Enterprises and Transport Policy.
Mr Inch’s description of the Mackintosh Building at the Glasgow School of Art in the application form stated that “every space within the building is unique and memorable, including the cubic cage of the staircase, the high south gallery, the tiles and the leaded glass panels in the doors”.
Mr Inch also wrote that the Art School has “a large percentage of all original Mackintosh documentation and the largest collection of Mackintosh furniture in the world”.
Responding to a question in the application about what distinguished the serial site from other similar sites, Mr Inch wrote that “no other site exhibits the recognized genius of Mackintosh, his unique ability to combine the Scottish vernacular with Japanese Architecture and Free Style and the celtic, poetic and aesthetic Glasgow variant of Art Nouveau, the “Glasgow Style”, based on geometry and a straight line instead of a curve.”
In March 2011, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport confirmed a total of 11 sites across the UK and its overseas territories would form the UK’s new tentative list for possible nominations for world heritage status.
The three Scottish sites chosen for the list were The Flow Country, The Forth Bridge and Mousa, Old Scatness and Jarlshof: The Crucible of Iron Age Shetland.
A panel of experts concluded that the ‘Charles Rennie Mackintosh Buildings’ did not have the potential to demonstrate ‘Outstanding Universal Value’ (OUV), defined by UNESCO as one of “so exceptional cultural and/or natural significance. to transcend national boundaries and to be of common importance to present and future generations of all humanity”.
In their report to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, the independent panel of experts, explaining their decision, wrote: “Two of the surviving Mackintosh buildings had been proposed. The Panel was of the view that the case had not been made at this stage for a possible OUV. Mackintosh was influential within Europe but often through designs that were not implemented. There was uncertainty about the general significance of his work and the work of contemporary architects. Any future proposal based on his work would need to be supported by a thorough and comprehensive study of the work of architects in this period. This could be an area of research.”
“Discussing the Charles Rennie Mackintosh Buildings, the Panel was of the opinion that it would have been useful to have guidance on the relative significance of architects on the world stage in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and also a more considered general judgment on which one. are their truly outstanding buildings,” the panel added.
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Speaking in 2022, Glasgow MSP Paul Sweeney, board member of the Glasgow City Heritage Trust, criticized the “woefully inadequate” project to rebuild the Mack following the devastating fire in 2018 and suggested the program “would have been considered is a national mission. ” if the Grade A listed building was “an architectural asset of similar significance in Edinburgh”.
The capital’s Old and New Towns, which cover an area of approximately 4.5km2 and contain nearly 4,500 individual buildings as well as monuments, designed landscapes and conservation areas, were inscribed by UNESCO as a Site World Heritage in 1995.
Mr Sweeney also contrasted the Mack rebuilding project with the program to rebuild and restore Notre-Dame Cathedral following the catastrophic fire that engulfed the iconic landmark in Paris in 2019.
The ASA said: “When you compare it to the restoration of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris which was damaged by fire a year after the Glasgow School of Art but is on track for completion by 2024, it becomes increasingly clear that this is not one. a national priority.”
Notre-Dame Cathedral is expected to reopen for religious services and to the public on December 8, 2024, five and a half years after the fire that destroyed the most visited monument in Paris.
Restoration work at Notre-Dame, a UNESCO World Heritage site since 1991, is expected to continue until 2028. The estimated budget for restoring the 861-year-old landmark is around €846 million (£723 million).
