The triumphant reopening of Notre-Dame de Paris last month marked the culmination of an almighty effort to restore the medieval cathedral after a devastating fire destroyed its spire and roof and caused extensive damage to its interior in April 2019.
The spectacular ceremony, attended by no less than fifty world leaders and numerous dignitaries, demonstrated just how culturally and nationally significant Notre-Dame is to the French people, and it also served as an inspirational commitment to the preservation of their architectural heritage.
Watching the celebration of five years of French national effort, my thoughts were inevitably drawn to what could be achieved if Scotland united around the restoration of our country’s greatest ever architectural achievement, the Glasgow School of Art’s Mackintosh Building, which suffered a second devastating inferno the summer before Notre-Dame burned. Its gutted shell has loomed like a ruined castle over Sauchiehall Street ever since.
The Mack is a building of immense international significance to architecture and design, and it is crucial that we restore it, if we are to demonstrate any serious commitment to architectural heritage in this country anymore.
Immediately after the Notre-Dame fire in April 2019, the French President, Emmanuel Macron, pledged to rebuild the cathedral within five years – a target that many thought was foolhardy. The state played a leading role in convening and expediting the project. It was an all-hands-on-deck approach to fundraising, project management and craftmanship to preserve a nations’ cultural heritage that is to be applauded and it is an example that we must learn from.
The Glasgow School of Art fires of 2014 and 2018 were a national – and international – catastrophe for architectural heritage. The Charles Rennie Mackintosh masterpiece is one of the most famous examples of the art nouveau style in the world. The cruel devastation of the second fire, and the stalemate since, is a source of continuing trauma for Glasgow, only aggravated by the recent unnecessary demolition of the landmark entrance portico at the adjacent fire-damaged ABC cinema on Sauchiehall Street by its unscrupulous owner, appeased by Glasgow City Council Building Control.
We are now more than seven years on, and restoration of the Mack remains an all too distant prospect. Progress is stymied by an ongoing legal dispute with the building’s insurers. Architects, firefighters, and engineers worked incredibly hard to save the structure of the building but a restoration of this scale and importance requires a united approach with assistance from both the UK Government and the Scottish Government. It is simply too big and complex a job for it to be left to the Glasgow School of Art’s board and small estates team alone.
That is why yesterday in Parliament I asked the Culture Secretary, Angus Robertson MSP to convene a special summit later this year, once the Glasgow School of Art publishes its strategic outline business case, bringing together both governments and all the key players across the architectural heritage sector in Scotland to establish a Special Purpose Vehicle to take forward the Mack restoration programme without any further unnecessary delay caused by the insurance issues. As President Macron said at the reopening ceremony of Notre-Dame, “every bit of it was necessary” and “we have rediscovered what great nations could do: achieve the impossible.”
In Glasgow’s 850th year, we must be similarly resolute in our civic and national ambition to see Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s great icon of Glasgow rise again.
You can read my column on the Glasgow Times website here:
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