With the Charles Rennie Mackintosh retrospective opening today at the Royal Institute of British Architects in London Rowan Moore, writing for The Guardian, asks "which architect could restore Mackintosh's masterpiece [in Glasgow]?" The Glasgow School of Art, parts of which were devastated by fire in May of last year, is in the process of selecting a restoration architect from a shortlist of five. Yet for Moore "there are examples of clumsiness and stodginess in some of the past projects of those included that should be allowed nowhere near the School of Art."
There have been calls to give up on it and commission something wholly new by a leading architect of today, as is often the case with losses such as this. I can’t see the point of this. It is impossible to think of a single living architect who would do as good a job of putting a library in a Mackintosh building as the ghost of Mackintosh himself, speaking through his original designs.
Read the article in full here.
Five Practices Shortlisted To Restore Mackintosh's Glasgow School Of Art
