This week, columnist Ruth Wishart asks if the Glasgow School of Art should be restored?

**********

Helensburgh and Charles Rennie Mackintosh have a special relationship.

The National Trust owned Hill House is one of only two he designed for private ownership, and a treasure trove of art nouveau interior design in addition to its architectural charms.

It’s currently the subject of a major fundraising drive to built a protective shell around the exterior to prevent further dampness induced damage.

A second connection emerged when the architect Bruce Jamieson and his wife and business partner Nicola researched, bought, and are currently restoring part of a Sinclair Street building which seems to have been one of Mackintosh’s earliest commissions.

The iconography outside the top floor is certainly unmistakeable, as are many of the internal features. And it has been reborn as the Mackintosh Club, a setting for both private and public events.

These local CRM outposts have taken on even more significance after the disaster of the second Glasgow Art School fire, leaving barely a shell of his acknowledged masterpiece.

For anyone who has had the pleasure and privilege of working there or visiting – and for thousands worldwide who have not – “The Mack” as generations of students have known it, was the undisputed jewel in the Mackintosh crown.

Now the debate rages as fiercely as the blaze over whether it can be rebuilt, and whether it ought to be.

One of the few benefits of the earlier fire four years ago, was the decision to digitally remodel the building and its designs in order to bring it back to a life as nearly as possible to the original.

Arguably that could be attempted again using that template – albeit at eye watering cost – but the question is whether or not it should be.

There is a sort of precedent in the House For an Art Lover in Bellahouston Park on the south side of the city.

It was originally an entry to an international design competition in 1901, rather than a precise architectural specification. But thanks to the passion and enthusiasm of Graham Roxburgh, a design engineer, and latterly a team of enthusiasts from all disciplines led by Andy MacMillan, then head of the GSA’s school of architecture, the notion grew that it could be realised as a living building.

Opened in 1996, it functions as everything from a tourist magnet for Mackintosh groupies, to a wedding venue, gallery restaurant, and, more recently has an adjacent studio pavilion in which contemporary artists and designers can work.

You could argue that if you can build something as iconic from a series of drawings never intended for anything more challenging than whetting the appetite of architectural jurists, then re-building the GSA with a precise digital toolkit ought to be possible too.

My question is; can you ever re-store its soul? Could it ever again, as a shiny new build, be imbued with the atmosphere which produced so many diverse, inspirational talents across so many art forms?

Sadly, it will be very many months before that question can even be put.