The failed bid to win World Heritage Site status for Mackintosh and the School of Art
IN July of 2010, six Scottish local authorities answered the UK Government’s call to bid for Unesco World Heritage Status, joining 32 others from across the UK, Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies in seeking recognition for historic sites.
The six Scottish sites were Arbroath Abbey; buildings of Charles Rennie Mackintosh in Glasgow; the Flow Country; the Forth Bridge; Mousa, Old Scatness and Jarlshof in Shetland; and St Andrews, medieval burgh and links.
Glasgow City Council, on behalf of a partnership that also included Argyll and Bute Council, submitted an application to the UK Government for the Mackintosh buildings of the Glasgow School of Art and The Hill House to be included on a “tentative” list of potential sites to be nominated to Unesco for World Heritage Site status “in recognition of the evolving worldwide importance of Mackintosh’s masterpiece”.
After considering the work of Mackintosh and its potential for World Heritage Status, consultants appointed by Glasgow City Council recommended that the bid focus on his two
“masterpieces”, The Hill House in Helensburgh and The Glasgow School of Art, relying on the rest of his output “to help set the cultural context”.
The UK Government planned to submit the “tentative list” to Unesco in 2011 to make nominations in 2012.
In anticipation of the list, Glasgow City Council confirmed that, if World Heritage Site status were to be awarded, the Mackintosh Building at Glasgow School of Art “would be protected by a surrounding visual setting/ buffer zone, with all new development with a potential impact on the building required to be sensitively designed to have a positive impact, to enhance its setting within the Conservation Area and to safeguard its outstanding universal value”.
The bid was submitted to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) by Steve Inch, then executive director for Development and Regeneration Services at Glasgow council, who had responsibility for a range of functions, including city planning, property development and management, economic and social initiatives and transport policy.
Mr Inch’s description of the Mackintosh Building at Glasgow School of Art in the application form noted that “every space within the building is unique and memorable, including the cubic cage of the staircase, the southern high gallery, tiling and the leaded glass panels in the doors”.
Mr Inch also wrote that the School of Art “has a large percentage of Mackintosh’s entire original documentation and the largest collection of Mackintosh furniture in the world”. Responding to a question in the application as to what distinguished the serial site from other similar sites, Mr Inch wrote that “no other site exhibits the acknowledged genius of Mackintosh, his unique ability to combine the Scottish vernacular with Japanese and Free Style architecture 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 DCMS confirmed a total of 11 sites across the UK and Overseas Territories would form the tentative list for potential nomination for world heritage status.
The three Scottish sites that were 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 buildings of Charles Rennie Mackintosh did not have the potential to demonstrate “Outstanding Universal Value” (OUV), which is defined by
Unesco as “cultural and/or natural significance which is so exceptional as to transcend national boundaries and to be of common importance for present and future generations of all humanity”.
In their report to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, the independent panel of experts wrote: “The Panel considered that at this stage the case had not been made for potential OUV. Mackintosh was influential within Europe but often through designs which were never executed. There was uncertainty about the overall significance of his work and that of contemporary architects.”
Speaking in 2022, Glasgow MSP Paul Sweeney, a board member of Glasgow City Heritage Trust, criticised the “pathetically inadequate” project to rebuild the Mackintosh Building following the devastating fire in 2018, in the wake of a fire in 2014, and suggested that the programme “would have been classed as 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 4.5 square kilometres and contain nearly 4,500 individual buildings as well as ancient monuments, designed landscapes and conservation areas, were inscribed by Unesco as a World Heritage Site in 1995.
Mr Sweeney also contrasted the rebuild project of the Mackintosh Building with the programme to rebuild and restore Notre-dame Cathedral following the catastrophic fire which engulfed the Paris landmark in 2019.
The MSP said: “When you compare it with the restoration of Notre-dame Cathedral in Paris which was ravaged 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 a national priority.”