Something MUST be done about the Mack!
The burnt out pile of Mackintosh's Glasgow School of Art has, says Clare Henry, "eaten the heart out of Glasgow." Is it now, she asks, time for the project to be taken out of the hands of those who have "failed and failed again"?
THE EXCUSES for delay with rebuilding Glasgow School of Art have been many. Is it they actually just don't want to rebuild, restore, replace? Really they want to sell the site for money? Sell to the highest bidder? Hotel probably. Make money from a tragedy? And If not - why is there NO progress??
Last year the Herald – belatedly – devoted two or more pages each day for a week to the sad and sorry saga of GLASGOW SCHOOL OF ART. The two fires. Delay in progress. Ineptitute. Mismanagement. Deceit. Lack of transparency. Lack of decisions. Bad decisions.
Eventually, more than ten years on, the GSA board prepared a 'Business Case' for the building to become a Graduate School, and sought an architect. Properly put out to tender, they chose the one that didn't win. When challenged, they cancelled the process.
By this time the price of materials had escalated. Worse was to follow. Finally GSA admitted it had been forced to go to arbitration with its own insurers. The insurers were not paying out because of basic GSA mistakes. (eg alarm not switched on!) As homeowners know if you leave the front door open and your television is stolen insurers will not pay up. So now there's no money, no prospect of reconstructing the building, it seems.
Realistically something like £250m is needed, and with each day that passes the price goes up. Yet the power of Mackintosh's building, its architectural fame and glory, prestige and Mackintosh tourism, has made millions for Glasgow – and will do so again.
We are told there's an architect and quantity surveyor working on a new 'Business Case', presumably looking at how things can be done for peanuts, limiting the scale so an affordable replica be made.
Fundraising will be hard. People who gave the first time and saw their money used for something else will never give to GSA again. And there is no design team on the horizon for an actual project. More fiddling after the Mack has burned?
I fear that as years pass, soon GSA will be forgotten. The younger generation have never been inside this world famous building, never even seen this wonderful world icon. Gordon Gibb has long been rattling the cage so that GSA is not a mere memory.
As he says "It's time for the project to be taken out of the hands of those who have failed and failed again, and who by their involvement may be actively preventing progress. I believe that is the only way we are going to see the Mack reconstructed and our heritage restored."
Meanwhile, what about the surrounding shops, businesses, people whose lives have been turned upside down, made homeless or bankrupt? The burnt out pile of GSA rubble sits in the centre of town and has eaten the heart out of Glasgow.
If you read this and care, please email us at artwork@famedram.com, comment on my Facebook, join Facebook's Glasgow School of Art's Mackintosh Building Must be Rebuilt. ASAP, write to your MP, write to Paul Sweeney paul.sweeney.msp@parliament.scot, write to culture minister Angus Robertson CabSecCEAC@gov.scot, the Herald letters, letters@theherald.co.uk, Scotsman, Guardian,anyone, everyone.
Do something please!!
CLARE HENRY
clrhenry@aol.com
