The 2014 fire at Glasgow School of Art

CRM Society Journal 103/104 | 2018–20
The 2014 fire at
Glasgow School of Art
A case of leadership failure and flawed process
Roger Billcliffe
In March 2019, the Scottish Parliament’s Culture, Tourism, Europe and External Affairs
Committee (CTEEAC) published a report on the fires of 2014 and 2018 at Glasgow School of
Art based on evidence taken from a series of hearings that had commenced in September
2018. The report made many recommendations; chief among these was that the Scottish
Government should commission a public inquiry into the causes of the fires and the ability of
custodians of listed buildings to manage their properties in terms of risk from fire.
A full public inquiry is essential to ensure a serious, objective consideration of the future
ownership and use of the Glasgow School of Art.
The CTEEAC report covered many
aspects of the two fires, but there are
areas which I believe further require
consideration:
• The exact circumstances leading to
the 2014 fire involving apparent
disregard for the School’s own safety
regulations and any evidence of
negligence arising from this.
• The School’s continuing refusal to
disclose the content of reports it
commissioned about the state of its
preparedness for a major fire and the
actions it took in the immediate
aftermath of the 2014 fire to prevent
or minimise a future occurrence.
• The inadequacies of and omissions
from the Conservation and Access
(C&A) project, in development from
about 2004 and under construction
between 2008 and 2012 at a cost of
£8.4 million, and its apparent failure to
consider fire risks within the building,
including a reactive system to control
any fires.
• Why the School embarked on a C&A
Project that did not consider
restoration of the building – bearing
in mind that it was much changed in
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appearance from Mackintosh’s original
concept in 1910 – and concentrated
instead on measures to increase
visitor satisfaction and income, a
decision characteristic of executive
actions from 2000.
• The future control, care and purpose
of the Mackintosh building after
rebuilding is complete.
The outcome of the pending investigation
by the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service
(SFRS) into the origins of the 2018 fire
may add further questions to this list.
Since publication of the CTEEAC
recommendations, press reports have
questioned the ability, or suitability, of
the executive at Glasgow School of Art to
continue in its role without further
investigation. I believe that this is also a
matter for a public inquiry, alongside an
investigation into the management of the
contract to restore the School awarded
to Kier Construction in 2016.
The 2014 fire –
institutional failings
The cause of the fire in April 2019 at
Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris was
immediately linked to building work
which had been taking place within and
around it for some years. This is not
surprising. Historic buildings, already
vulnerable because of their materials and
forms of construction, are always more
at risk of fire when being repaired or
restored, and there is a long list of such
disastrous fires – Windsor Castle,
Hampton Court and Uppark House,
among others. In June 2018, Glasgow
School of Art was added to this list,
destroyed towards the end of a four-year
restoration following a previous fire in
2014.
Glasgow School of Art has always
been a fire-risk, not simply because of its
structural materials but also as a result
of its use and the processes carried out
in it, the more so since current art
practice depends so heavily on electrical
and electronic apparatus. Since the 2014
fire, alumni of the School (over several
generations reaching back to the 1950s)
have told me how ‘there have always
been fires in the School, but we always
put them out ourselves…’. The 2014 fire
was rather bigger than those resulting
from a dropped cigarette end or match
and was also apparently the third fire
since 2000 that had required the
involvement of the fire service; it was
also the reason the School was (still) a
construction site in 2018 with all the
attendant risks.

CRM Society Journal 103/104 | 2018–20
The GSA
Mackintosh
building –
a visual timeline
and key events
2011 to 2019
The sequence of photographs
throughout this section offers a
chronological visual record of how
the two fires and post-fire
consolidation work have impacted on
the original built fabric exterior of
‘The Mack’.
Photographs by Stuart Robertson
(©SR) and Alison Brown (©AjcB).
Photo 1: ‘The Mack’ photographed
when construction began on the
Reid Building, 15 May 2012. ©SR
Photo 2: The first fire on the
afternoon of 23 May 2014. ©SR
Key events
June 2011
Work started to demolish the
GSA’s Newbery Tower and
Foulis Building in preparation
for construction of the new
school building designed by
Stephen Holl Architects,
New York. (It will later be
named the Reid Building after
the outgoing GSA Director
Seona Reid.)
3 May 2013
New Director, Professor Tom
Inns, is appointed. He takes up
the post in the autumn.
9 April 2014
Opening of the GSA’s new Reid
Building directly opposite
‘The Mack’.
23 May 2014
The first fire at the Mackintosh
GSA building starts around
lunchtime and quickly spreads
through the 1907–09 phase of
its design and construction.
The GSA commits to rebuilding
and restoring the School.
1
2
Whether the 2018 fire happened as a
consequence of arson, negligence,
materials or process failure, or simply
accident, is almost immaterial. The
questions which need to be addressed
and answered by the School stem not
necessarily from the 2018 fire but from
the decisions, events and nature of the
School’s administration and governance
during the period 2000–14 prior to the
first fire. In particular, the School’s
expertise in looking after the world-class
work of art that is (or rather was) the
Mackintosh building must be examined.
The School has been described as the
most important work of art in Scotland;
if this is so, it clearly follows that its care
should lie in the hands of an institution
well-versed in the handling and
protection of architecturally significant
buildings and their contents.
Avoiding scrutiny, deflecting criticism
The publication of the 2019 report by the
Scottish Parliament’s Culture, Tourism,
Europe and External Affairs Committee
on the two most recent fires and its
recommendations triggered an
immediate response from the Glasgow
School of Art. The School particularly
questioned the absence of involvement
of Kier Construction – the main
contractor of the rebuild – in the
preparation of the Committee’s report or
in its recommendations. Certainly, the
failure, or refusal, of Kier to co-operate
fully with the Committee leaves many
questions unanswered; it may take a
public inquiry to extract answers from
the company. But Kier’s non-participation
and the GSA’s inability or refusal to
answer on their behalf have also had the
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CRM Society Journal 103/104 | 2018–20
effect of allowing the School both to
avoid further examination of the 2014
fire and its consequences and to deflect
criticism of the events overseen and
decisions made by the institution itself
over the previous decade.
Undoubtedly, however, Kier must be
made to account more fully for the
period during which they were in control
of the building before the June 2018 fire,
just as the School must account for its
supervision of the contractor, or lack
thereof, in accordance with statutory
building regulations applicable to
principal and contractor. The most recent
rebuttal issued by the School on 17 May
2019 understandably builds on Kier’s lack
of interaction with the Culture
Committee, but, disappointingly,
proceeds to attack the CTEEAC, its
witnesses, and their evidence without
making any attempt to examine or
acknowledge whether its own actions
and policies may have been at fault.
The School maintains that the 2014
fire was ‘an accident’ minimising any
responsibility for what occurred. In its
evidence to CTEEAC, the School implies
that, in its report, the Scottish Fire and
Rescue Service (SFRS), having ruled out
‘deliberate act’ and ‘equipment failure’,
accepted that the fire was an ‘accident’.
In fact, the word ‘accident’ is used neither
in the conclusions of the SFRS report of
2014 nor in its account of the events that
led to the ignition of the fire. Indeed the
report goes to some lengths to avoid
using the word ‘accident’. The authors
clearly recognised that the fire occurred
3
as the result of entirely foreseeable
events following the use of highly
flammable materials and practices
constituting a fire risk in a student work
being prepared for the annual degree
show, and this in a building that was
inherently vulnerable due to its lack of
compartmentation, a situation of which
the School was fully aware.
To quote the conclusion of the SFRS
investigators: ‘… this fire originated within
the projector and was caused by
flammable gases used as a propellant in
the expanding-foam canister being
drawn into the projector and igniting,
most probably by energised electrical
components.’ The implication of the SFRS
report is of an institutional failure for
which the School, its staff and its
students were responsible in allowing
inherently unsafe materials and
processes in the preparation of a
student project.
Safe practice v artistic freedom
In the weeks in May 2014 preceding the
first fire, a student had built their degree
show exhibit within a basement studio,
an enclosure (6 x 2.5 x 2.4m) designed so
that images could be projected onto one
wall. Constructed of chipboard and
wooden studs and with a ceiling of
stretched polythene, the enclosure was
lined with panels of high expansion foam
approximately 50–75mm thick fastened
to three of the walls; the fourth wall was
blank to receive the projected image
from a shelf-mounted projector on the
opposite wall. The foam panels had been
fabricated with an expanding foam to
create a textured surface; these panels
were created off-site and brought in by
the student. Any gaps between the
panels in the display space were filled
with a similar foam. The expanding foam
used is believed to be on a Glasgow
School of Art list of prohibited materials
– see extract from SFRS report below.
The student was in possession of 50 cans
of this material.
The student created a darkened room
with little light entering from the
surrounding studio the better to show
the projected images. The SFRS report
states: ‘[The foam used] is classed as a
hazardous product. It is extremely
flammable and harmful to health. The
foam is in a liquid form within the can
and is known as polymethylene
polyphenyl isocyanate. When expelled
from the can and allowed to dry it is
extremely flammable … The foam is
expelled by a propellant which is a
mixture of three highly flammable gases.
They are propane, isobutene and
dimethyl ether. They all form an
explosive and flammable mixture with air
even at low concentrations. All three
gases are extremely flammable and
should not come into contact with naked
flames or hot surfaces.’
If the projector in this display space
had been running for some time
(allegedly, it had been running for two to
three hours before the fire) it would have
achieved a high internal temperature,
especially around its lamp and circuitry.
SFRS believed the projector to be in good
working order; no faults were found in
the later examination of its remains.
According to reliable sources within
the School with knowledge of the events
of 23 May 2014 and the days preceding
them, the student responsible for the
display had been warned previously by
members of the School’s janitorial or
technical staff that what they were doing
was unsafe, dangerous and in
contravention of the School’s own
regulations, and they were asked to stop
work on the construction. Allegedly, the
student then approached their academic
supervisor, claiming that their ‘artistic
freedom’ was being challenged and
curtailed. It is not clear whether the
Photos 3 to 5: Views of building
condition and consolidation work
after the first fire, 27 May 2014,
7 September 2014, 7 October 2014.
All ©SR
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CRM Society Journal 103/104 | 2018–20
30 May 2014
Work begins to stabilise the
western gable of ‘The Mack’.
4
18 June 2014
The Mackintosh [fundraising]
Appeal is launched to support
the School following the fire.
26 November 2014
After six months’ investigation,
the Scottish Fire and Rescue
Service (SFRS) publishes its
report into the first fire.
31 March 2015
The GSA Restoration
Committee appoints Page\Park
Architects to restore and
rebuild the Mackintosh
building.
28 June 2016
Kier Construction Limited is
appointed the main contractor
to deliver full construction
management services for the
rebuilding and restoration of
the school. Many subcontractors
and specialist
craftspeople will work on the
complex restoration project.
5
20 December 2017
After the GSA’s lengthy
opposition and an appeal,
planning permission is refused
for a new students’ residential
block proposed for the plot
immediately behind the
Mackintosh building on
Sauchiehall Street.
student then received permission to
carry on. These alleged events have
never been confirmed, denied or
commented upon by the School.
Gases from the aerosol cans the
student continued to use were eventually
drawn by the projector’s cooling fan into
its hot interior and ignited. The ensuing
flames and combustion gases entered
the system of voids, risers and ducts
providing the School’s ventilation system.
The projector was positioned
immediately in front of one of the
system’s vents, allowing the fire to
spread to the floors above. Shortly after
the arrival of the first crews from SFRS,
this basement fire was extinguished, but
the upper floors were already alight in
several places.
The fire may have been ‘unintentional’,
but it cannot be considered an accident
as reported by the School. The
consequences of the use of expanding
plastic foam in the vicinity of a heat
source are not unexpected; on the
contrary they are well documented and
had been previously recognised by the
School. Further, the specific materials
used here were allegedly banned from
use in student work, and there seems to
be no record of a COSHH (Control of
Substances Hazardous to Health) report
covering the materials and the
installation processes. And yet the School
persists in stating that this fire was an
unpredictable and unavoidable accident.
It is highly unfortunate that a small
fire in the basement should have been
able to spread through the Mackintosh
building’s original ventilation system to
an unprotected vertical riser (essentially
an empty shaft) and cause such
devastation on the upper floors. It is a
matter of record that the School had
been warned by fire specialists in 2006
of the possibility of such a sequence of
events; in addition, the administration is
believed to have been alerted by
members of its own estates staff, on
several occasions prior to 2014, of the
risks of leaving the original ventilation
system unprotected.
On the date of the fire, not only did
the ventilation system have no internal
fire-stopping of any kind but the covers
to an access hatch in the basement
studio – connecting to the vertical riser
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or shaft through which the fire first
moved – had been removed and were
lying on the floor in the studio, leaving an
opening roughly 75 x 30 cm. This
unprotected hole created an upward
draught in the shaft, in effect making it a
chimney, which sucked in flames and
gases from the burning projector and
student exhibit immediately adjacent.
6
Acknowledging responsibility
The School has chosen to draw a line
under the 2014 SFRS report. However, it
is essential that the report be regarded
as the beginning of an investigation and
not as a self-contained and separate
report. It does not, for example, detail
the dialogue between the School staff
member and the student, and the School
has chosen not to identify either party:
their names have been redacted from the
report (the School maintains that these
are the only redactions). The GSA,
however, remains responsible for the
actions of these two individuals. It
behoves the school to publicly accept this
responsibility and acknowledge its own
corporate failings.
The School is known to have
conducted its own internal investigation,
the report of which is believed to have
contained criticism of its own procedures
and actions both before and after the
fire. So, too, did an external report
commissioned by the GSA, referred to in
the minutes of Governors’ meetings in
October and December 2014. Neither
report has been published and, to the
best of my knowledge, the School has
never publicly mentioned the existence
of its own report; it is also not referred to
in published minutes of meetings of the
Board of Governors. Several of the staff
involved in the report’s production have
since left the School’s employment. At a
meeting with officers of the CRM Society
in January 2015, the GSA’s director Tom
Inns said that an internal report had been
commissioned and would be shared with
the Society when completed. No such
report has ever been shown to the
Society.
I have been told of the existence of a
draft SFRS report which was circulated
to various agencies assisting the GSA
with its recovery in the months after the
May 2014 fire. This draft is said to have
been severely critical of the School, but
all copies were withdrawn and the later,
anodyne report was subsequently
issued. It seems unusual that the SFRS,
after carefully analysing the causes and
progress of the fire, should have failed to
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7
make any comment about either the lack
of compartmentation of the building nor
the supervision of hazardous practices
within the School. Surely, the SFRS must
have passed on some assessment of the
School’s failures or provided
recommendations for the future? But no
such evidence or advice has been noted
or published. All relevant minutes of the
meetings of the Board of Governors have
been heavily redacted – or mention of
the fire totally omitted – making it
impossible to assess the School’s
response to the events of 2014 or to
understand what lessons may have
been learned.
Far from being an accident, the fire of
23 May 2014 can be seen, then, as an
incident that was waiting to happen.
The Conservation & Access
Project – limitations and
failures
From around 2000 the GSA and
architects Page\Park were engaged in
discussions regarding the condition and
usability of the Mackintosh building.
Work carried out following the
appointment of Page\Park in 1993 seems
to have put its fabric in good condition,
which was generally recognised in
various reports commissioned by the
School. What appears to have been at
the centre of discussions post-2000,
according to documents placed in
evidence by the School to the CTEEAC,
were changes in the building’s use.

CRM Society Journal 103/104 | 2018–20
8
Photos 6 to 9: The second fire in the
early hours of 16 June 2018.
All ©AjcB
9
By 2004 these discussions had led to
the compilation of a Heritage Lottery
Fund (HLF) first-phase funding
application for the Mackintosh
Conservation & Access Project. This
project aimed to provide: new secure and
fireproof spaces for the School’s archives
and collections of works of art on paper;
an assembly point for visitors taking
tours of the School; a new display area
for items of Mackintosh furniture in the
GSA’s collection that did not already
belong in a more specific location
elsewhere in the School; and the
transformation of the former animal
life-drawing classroom into a shop for
merchandising the Mackintosh collection
and selling publications, students’
designs and other items related to the
School. In addition, the project included
the upgrading of other facilities that
might be used by visitors, such as
lavatories, and the refurbishment or
creation of a number of office spaces.
Various services were to be upgraded or
extended utilising the existing internal
ventilation ductwork within the building,
with the relevant risers receiving some
form of fire protection on completion.
There appear to be no details as to how
many of these ducts were involved or
how they would be protected.
Successful applications to the Heritage
Lottery Fund (HLF) and other financial
sources allowed work to start in 2008 on
an £8.4 million programme of works. The
works were due to be completed in 2012.
Conservation, repair or maintenance of
15 June 2018
The second fire at the GSA
begins in the late evening and
the entire building is quickly
gutted. The buildings behind
‘The Mack’ on Sauchiehall
Street are also severely
damaged. Adjacent roads and
buildings are closed off whilst
the Mackintosh building, and
other affected buildings, are
made structurally safe.
Thereafter clearing of the
remains of the Mackintosh
building, and simultaneous
investigation by the SFRS into
the cause of the fire begins.
the building was not the principal focus
of this project, however; its primary aim
was plainly to resolve the problems of
access for visitors to the building and its
collections, thus increasing income from
visits and sales. In its evidence to the
CTEEAC in 2018, the School stated that it
had never attempted to monetise its
Mackintosh connections, but it is clear
that this was a primary purpose of the
2008 project. In evidence to the Culture
Committee, the School advised: ‘A key
objective was to improve public access to
the building and to its collections and
archives in line with huge public interest
in Charles Rennie Mackintosh.’ Much of
this access was to involve paid entrance.
There is nothing intrinsically wrong with
the GSA formalising and improving the
management of such access, nor in
making a charge for it.
In discussing and publicising this
project the School repeatedly
emphasised its ‘conservation’ aspects,
legitimising the project on art historical
grounds and enabling it to apply for HLF
funds. In fact, most of the ‘conservation’
related to routine maintenance and
replacement of worn-out facilities and
was certainly not aimed, for instance, at
restoring the School to its original
appearance, something which would
have enhanced the visitor experience as
well as extending knowledge of
Mackintosh’s achievements at the School.
Replacements were to be ‘as was’, which
meant that such necessary repairs as the
replacement of the windows in the
library did not reflect Mackintosh’s
original design but simply replicated a
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1940s replacement in a different style.
On the other hand, the project quite
rightly intended to remove several of the
unsympathetic accretions of the 1950s
and 1960s, such as the mezzanine
galleries in some of the studios.
Once the Conservation & Access
Project was costed, with grant
applications already underway, and in
what seems to have been almost as an
afterthought, the School turned its
attention to other matters – matters
which should certainly have been
considered much earlier. In 2006, but,
significantly, after the commitment to
the C&A Project, the GSA approached the
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10
11
Photo 10: After the second fire,
21 June 2018. ©AjcB
Photo 11: After the second fire,
17 June 2018. ©SR
international fire safety and engineering
consultants Buro Happold FEDRA for an
outline report on risks to the building and
the future management of these. The
ensuing report (July 2006) drew
attention to the very high degree of fire
risk present in the building. This was not
unusual in a building of its era which had
a high fire-loading due to a predominant
timber content. Importantly this risk was
exacerbated by its use as a school of art.
[See ‘Remarks on Fire Danger’ on pages
30 and 31 in this journal and Murray
Grigor’s contribution to ‘Architecture and
Emotion’ on page 34 for historic
examples of caution regarding the GSA’s
significant fire risk.]
In recent public statements, and
particularly that of 17 May 2019, the GSA
makes much of its compliance with the
various regulations concerning fire
precautions in public buildings. Such
compliance is today achieved through
self-certification and adherence to the
(almost universally acknowledged as
minimal) requirements of the relevant
Building Regulations. These are framed
primarily to prevent loss of life, while loss
of the building is a secondary, even
negligible, consideration. In terms of its
number of fire extinguishers, alarms and
detection systems the School may well
have been compliant, but it would also
have been aware that despite this
compliance it was occupying a building
that was very vulnerable – at risk of
burning down and at risk of killing or
maiming its occupants, passers-by,
neighbours or visitors.
Many buildings are compliant – but
they are not necessarily safe. Grenfell
Tower may have been certified
compliant, but events proved it not to be
safe. Regarding the 2014–18 rebuilding,
the School has taken issue with the
reference to PIR panels being used as
‘cladding’, stating that they were used
internally as insulation in accordance
with the manufacturer’s
recommendations and not as external
cladding as they were on the Grenfell
Tower. PIR panels were at the heart of
the Grenfell fire in 2017, and whether or
not they were installed in Glasgow as the
manufacturer recommended, once
breached they become a lethal
contributor to any fire. They appear to
have been installed in the Mackintosh
building after the tragedy of Grenfell, at
the same time as questions about their
safety were circulating in architectural
forums. The panels do not seem to have
survived the June 2018 fire.
Restoration of the
Mackintosh building – a
missed opportunity
The Mackintosh building at the School of
Art, along with the GSA’s collection of
works of art, furniture and archives
which was awarded registered museum
status in 2001, is the reason the GSA was
granted accredited official museum
status in 2008 making it eligible for
substantial grant aid – funding that was
supposedly ringfenced for museum
rather than teaching purposes. The
School’s museum status was not
acknowledged in its administrative
hierarchy, however. Its single curator of
collections was, although obviously
consulted on some matters, not a
member of the School’s executive body
or party to deliberations of policy with
regard to the School’s future

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12
15
13
16
14
Photos 12 to 16: Views of the School
from cordons installed after the
second fire before demolition work
began, photographed on the evening
of the summer solstice, 21 June 2018.
All ©AjcB
25 August 2018
The cordon is lifted on the
south side of Sauchiehall
Street allowing some residents
and businesses to access their
homes and properties for the
first time in ten weeks.
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17
Photos 17 to 19: Details showing
some of the structural impact of
the fire on the building’s stonework
and the arrival of the cranes for
disassembly, 30 June 2018. All ©AjcB
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developments. The then Director of the
School, Seona Reid, had no experience of
working in a museum or heritage site, nor
of museum practice and policy, her
background being wholly related to arts
administration or PR work. None of her
senior colleagues on the School’s
executive had any museum expertise or
qualifications, nor do their counterparts
today. Similarly, the current Board seems
innocent of any knowledge of modern
museum philosophy or practice.
It would be highly unusual for a
museum owning an item of the
importance of the Mackintosh building to
prioritise merchandising and visitor
facilities over the care and restoration of
its most valuable and popular asset. In
considering how to manage the
challenges posed by growing public
demand for access to the building and
the School’s collections, a trained
museum professional would certainly not
have given priority to meeting this aim
over research into the building that could
lead to a programme of sympathetic
restoration. The Mackintosh building is,
after all, the most important object in the
School’s collection and, given its
international recognition, perhaps the
most important museum object in
Scotland. Much could have been tackled:
the internal accretions in the building and
its totally unsympathetic decorative
order in 2006 can be likened to the
depredations suffered by a major oil
painting overlaid with decades of
discoloured varnish or disfigured by
clumsy repairs. But taking a curatorial
approach was not something that seems
to have occurred to the executive at
Glasgow School of Art or to its advisers.
The GSA dismisses as ‘hindsight’
questioning of the pattern and
scheduling of events of the kind that I am
about to propose. For the School, this
kind of thinking may be hindsight; for a
serious museum institution, however, the
obvious programme to be followed
would have been based on foresight and
responsibility for its collection, in terms
of restoration, preservation,
presentation, accessibility and income –
in that order. The GSA seems to have
been preoccupied only with the last two
considerations. If the care of the building
and its collection was not given at least
the importance of the School’s
educational aims, then the building
should have been handed to more
suitable custodians. I believe it still
should be.
At the time, the School was under
pressure to provide adequate space in
the Mackintosh building to fulfil its
education role, but the C&A Project
actually paid less attention to this than it
did to the commercial aspects of its
Mackintosh connections. Given the
warnings in the Buro Happold FEDRA
report it seems, at the very least, unwise
for the school to have continued to
allocate space within the building for
both displays of and repositories for its
irreplaceable archive and Mackintosh

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collections. Relocating them in a safe
place outside the Mackintosh building
would have provided extra space for
teaching purposes and security from fire,
at least for the collections; one does not
hear of many downsides to the post-
2014-fire relocation of the archives to an
external location.
As for the GSA’s collection of
Mackintosh furniture, Mackintosh
designed only a small number of these
pieces for use in the School, mainly for
the library, headmaster’s room and the
board room. Much of the furniture
collection does not relate to the
Mackintosh building at all; rather it was
acquired over the decades (largely
through donation) and included pieces
designed for some of his other building
commissions including the houses
Windyhill and Gladsmuir and the
Cranston tea rooms. To have exhibited
these items elsewhere would not have
been destroying a link (often crucial to
the understanding of Mackintosh’s
furniture) between the works and their
original location. More importantly,
external storage of the collection not on
regular display – in response to the Buro
Happold FEDRA report – would certainly
have prevented the loss in the 2014 fire
of over 150 pieces of furniture designed
by Mackintosh, many of them unique, in
addition to his only known oil paintings
for The Dug-Out at the Willow Tea Rooms
and dozens of paintings by other artists
which traced the history of the School
and its students.
In 1910 the school looked very
different from how it appeared in 2006.
Contemporary descriptions noted the
overall green finish on the panelling of
some the studios and main corridors, and
this is, in fact, indicated on Mackintosh’s
sectional drawings for the first phase of
the school. In reports to the School’s
Building Committee Mackintosh stressed
that such panelling, for reasons of
economy, was as ‘off the saw’. At some
point in the ensuing 30 years or so, all
this stained panelling was obliterated
with roughly applied paint, white in the
studios and dark stains or black paint in
the corridors. Repeated coats gave the
panelling a crude appearance which led
to the belief that Mackintosh’s ‘off the
saw’ description was indicative of a
robust finish, an economical and costcutting
gesture. This assumption was to
be proved incorrect.
The silver lining of the 2014 fire – if
such a thing is possible – is that in several
areas affected by the heat of the fire (but
not the flames), 70 years’ worth or more
20
of accumulated paint and stain melted
away to reveal panelling that in places
was indeed stained pale green but which
was also very smooth, an elegant finish
that was not at all the rough-and-ready
surface presented by the overpainting.
After the fire, other areas of panelling
were examined for traces of the original
finish: red, grey, ochre and green were
among the colours found in various areas
of the school, an example of fire-led
investigative research that should have
happened much earlier. Conclusions
drawn indicate Mackintosh reserved
white paint for unpanelled walls and
ceilings.
The stark black-and-white appearance
of much of the building interior was not,
therefore, what the architect had
intended: an elegant, sympathetic and
wholly appropriate Arts and Crafts finish
was obliterated on the altar of misguided
artistic ‘modernity’. This overpainting
was followed three decades or so later
by the constructed intrusion of
mezzanine floors in the main studios, as
well as other ad hoc changes and
additions. This was hardly the behaviour
of an administration that understood or
cared much for what Mackintosh had
achieved or for his aesthetic.
There may have been other reasons
for retaining the archive and art
collections within the Mackintosh
building, but it was also apparent –
following the introduction of guided
tours of the building after 2000 – that
the School had begun to consider them a
visitor attraction capable of generating
funds from entrance charges. There was
nothing wrong with this aspiration,
especially if it had led to enhanced
Photo 20: Glimpse of the condition
of the second finial above the main
entrance on Renfrew Street, 3 July
2018. ©AjcB
conditions of storage and display in line
with the museum practices that the
school claimed to support. But it is
doubtful that any museum worth the
name, in possession of a damning (and
apparently secret) report such as that
produced by Buro Happold FEDRA in
2006, would have continued to house its
treasures in a building so unsuited to that
purpose. After the 2014 fire the School
created a new Mackintosh furniture
gallery (previously designated as staff
catering on second floor) in the newly
opened building designed by Steven Holl,
without detriment to the sculptural
qualities of the pieces on show. In fact,
they made an elegant display.
By using the term ‘conservation’ to
describe the 2006 project, the School
masked the fact that the work excluded
much potentially valuable historic fabric
research and resultant conservation and
restoration work within the building.
Such work would have enormously
enhanced both the visitor and student
experience as well as the world’s
understanding of Mackintosh’s design.
The Misting System
One outcome of the 2006 report by Buro
Happold FEDRA was recognition of the
dangers presented by both known and
unknown voids in the Mackintosh
building (some of which were created by
various building works undertaken over
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21
Photos 21 and 22: Views of
consolidation and demolition
progress, 26 July 2018. All ©AjcB
22
the course of a century); these voids, the
report noted, would facilitate the spread
of fire from one compartment to another.
Buro Happold FEDRA recommended that
adequate compartmentation was as
important, if not more so, in preventing
the spread of fire and would provide
better fire control than the reactive
method of extinguishing flames, either
through automatic intervention such as a
sprinkler system or by reliance on the
attending fire service.
Unsurprisingly, this report, which
drew attention to the very high degree of
fire risk present in the building, seems to
have caused some alarm among the
School’s administration and its
architects. Whether the report was
shared with the Governors is unclear;
more than one Governor in office at the
time has no recollection of the report
being presented to the Board.
A meeting to discuss the warnings in
the report was arranged in 2008,
attended by several interested parties:
the School’s administration and
representatives from architects Page\
Park, Buro Happold and Historic Scotland
(HS, now Historic Environment Scotland,
HES). This meeting (or ‘workshop’ as it
was described by Page\Park) seems to
have decided that the prime
recommendation – implementation of full
compartmentation – would not be
permitted within a Category A listed
building. There is, however, no evidence
that the local authority, which would
have imposed such a condition, was
approached for a ruling or was party to
the discussions. HES have recently stated
in their evidence to the CTEEAC that they
have no authority to impose any such
conditions on building owners. If this is
correct and truly represents their
involvement in 2008, are they saying
that it was not at their suggestion or
insistence that the advice regarding
proper compartmentation was passed
over? Does this mean that the GSA and
its consultants, alone, took the decision
not to cost or implement a scheme for
full compartmentation without reference
to the planning authority or other
specialist advisers on historic building
conservation? Or was HES’s later
statement disingenuous?
Full compartmentation would have
required the GSA to close the Mackintosh
building while work progressed, and this
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may well have been the reason for its
rejection by the School’s administration.
Such a project would undeniably have
been a major and disruptive undertaking,
but equally the project would then have
become eligible for grant aid from the
Heritage Lottery Fund and other funders.
The truth is that if compartmentation
research had been carried out in tandem
with historic fabric research and
restoration – leading to fire-stopping
measures of the Mackintosh building,
including its original ventilation system
and the removal of overpainting from the
original timbers – it would have been a
far more valid and educational use of HLF
funds than the C&A Project that was
about to take place. Such work would not
have involved any serious loss of original
fabric or panelling (which could have
been treated and replaced) and would
have facilitated the discovery, sealing and
closing of the various fire-hazard voids
created by both the original ventilation
ducting and successive additions to the
original building over the last 60 years or
so. Such measures would have prevented
the disastrous spread of fire in 2014.
A museum- or heritage-led
administration would have seen the
double gain of both the eradication of the
weakest and most dangerous elements
of such an important building and the
opportunity to return it to its original
appearance: a restored masterpiece for a
visiting (and paying) public. Such work
might even have negated the need to
install a reactive engineered approach to
fire control such as sprinklers. Though
some of this work was undertaken
post-2014 as part of the first-fire
restoration, how much more satisfying
– and, crucially, more safe – it would
have been to have carried them out ten
years earlier as part of a coherent
restoration project.
Instead, the 2008 meeting convened
by the GSA continued to address the pros
and cons of various automatic reactive
fire-control schemes, eventually deciding
to install a fire-misting system, a
relatively untried method for a building
as complex as the Mackintosh School of
Art. Installation would have to be
preceded by a protracted design period,
then a costing exercise followed by
fund-raising. It was obvious that some
years would pass before this protection
would be operational, even if the design
and fund-raising chapters were to be
promptly carried out. In the event,
although installation of the fire-reactive
system began in 2012, it was not fully
installed when the 2014 fire broke out
23
– because of the discovery of asbestos
– leaving the building and its occupants
at serious risk for all of that period.
Sadly, despite a lucid and cogent
paper from Page\Park addressed to
Historic Scotland in July 2009, the latter
was unable to fund a fireproofing project
for the School. Yet, as Page\Park pointed
out, HS funds were available to overhaul
or replace a listed building’s heating
system in the apparent belief that such
a measure was to the benefit of listed
buildings at risk from rot and damp.
But not for those at risk from fire? The
architects finished their paper with a
request for such matters to be
reconsidered in future legislation. Has
HES funding for fire prevention been
reconsidered for other buildings in the
light of the two fires at GSA? If not yet,
it should be.
Misting may have been a very clever
answer for some areas of the building,
the archival stores, for instance; working
within small volumes, it seems to have
been an ideal solution. In the bigger
spaces of the studios it would not have
worked well, so there it was to be
supplemented by some other form of
localised drenching. Indeed, most of the
building consists of large volumes where
the misting would have required such
assistance.
Several objections seem to have been
put forward to the use of a ‘traditional’
sprinkler system on the grounds of
aesthetics – misting allows for smaller
gauge pipes and does not deliver such
large amounts of water, compared to a
sprinkler system. Also, it was believed
that water pressure in the vicinity of the
Photo 23: 11 August 2018. ©AjcB
school, storage for water tanks, largediameter
pipes, etc., were contras for the
use of sprinklers. But such problems of
pressure were apparently overcome in
the Holl building opposite. The disposal of
large volumes of water, associated with
the operation of sprinklers, and the
collateral damage from their use were
concerns voiced at the meeting. However,
the Buro Happold FEDRA report
provided reassuring context: ‘A fire
fighter’s hose will discharge 600 litres of
water per minute. This is a vast quantity
of water. In comparison a sprinkler head
will use six times less water and the vast
majority of sprinklered fires (85%) are
controlled by less than 4 heads
operating.’ Was adequate consideration
given to installing sprinklers in some, if
not all, areas of the school? A sprinkler in
the studio where the fire started might
have put out the fire before it had time to
spread through the ventilation system.
Certainly, the volume of water raining
down would have been somewhat less
than that delivered over eight hours by
fire-service hoses (though the 2006 Buro
Happold FEDRA report highlighted the
fact that water pressure was understood
to be poor in that area).
Admittedly, there are visual problems
with the installation of sprinklers –
larger-diameter delivery pipes and so on
– but the misting scheme itself was not
exactly inobtrusive. Arguably, however,
the building can cope with such
intrusions: many of its services were left
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Photos 24 to 26: Disassembling the
west and south façades adjacent
to the library, 30 August 2018.
All ©AjcB
24
20 September 2018
Commencement of hearings
into the fires by the Scottish
Parliament’s Culture, Tourism,
Europe and External Affairs
Committee (CTEEAC).
20 October 2018
More of the neighbouring
roads and properties around
the GSA and on Sauchiehall
Street, including The Centre for
Contemporary Arts (CCA),
reopen. (Access to Sauchiehall
Street was also impacted over
this time through the closure
of traffic lanes and the
destruction of part of a city
block following a fire at
Victoria’s Nightclub in March
2018. Road closures continued
around the area into 2020.)
25
2 November 2018
Professor Tom Inns resigns
from his role as Director of the
GSA. His five-year tenure
spanned a troubled period in
which the Mackintosh building
was twice ravaged by fire.
exposed by Mackintosh and his
successors as there is little provision for
hiding them. In the large studio spaces
such services need not have been
intrusive. Again, what was the role of
HES in these discussions? Did they check
for voids? Did they ‘suggest’ that
sprinklers were unsuitable? Did they
favour misting? Did they disapprove of
any proposals to remove the studio
panelling or discover the building’s
original colour scheme and finishes and
restore accordingly?
Leaving aside the ‘what ifs’ of any
reactive fire-fighting system, it is
apparent that one of the stated aims of
the, in my opinion, ill-conceived
Conservation & Access Project of
2008–12 was not achieved: the firestopping
of Mackintosh’s ventilation
ducts which were to be used for the
routing of new services within the
building. The installation of fire dampers
within these shafts was a clear aim,
stated by both the architects and the
School. Among the GSA’s bundle of
26 |
papers submitted to CTEEAC on 17 May
2019 there is a description of the
proposed fire-stopping or dampening.
This unequivocally states that such
treatment would not happen until the
C&A Project was completed, which was
why in 2014 none of the ventilation ducts
appeared to have been protected either
in the course of the building work or
during the initial stages of the installation
of the misting system from 2012.
Was it beyond the skills of the
architects, engineers, and contractors to
programme the installation so that
shafts could be closed immediately after
insertion of the new water pipes and
electrical cables? Both the designers and
installers of the misting system must
have known of the existence and
vulnerability of the internal shafts as
they were to be used to route the water
pipes for the misting system around
the building. And the regulations
covering construction sites state that
fireproofing – or the reinstatement of
compartmentation – should take place
on a daily basis as work progresses.
Photographs of the first fire taken on
23 May 2014 show that the internal
ventilation riser running from the
basement through to the top floor had
not been fireproofed: flames can be seen
shooting out of its terminal cap on the
roof above the professors’ studios. The
SFRS report shows a photograph of the
inside of that vent shaft after the fire: all
of the electrical cables which ran
alongside these pipes have been burned
away leaving only the water pipes,
undamaged (but with no sign of a misting
nozzle that might eventually have
controlled fire within the internal cavity).
So, two years after completion of the
C&A Project, that particular void had still
not had the preventative measures
undertaken to it. Had any of the other

CRM Society Journal 103/104 | 2018–20
26
ducts and risers around the School yet
been protected?
In their evidence to the CTEEAC in
November 2018, Page\Park confirmed
that the ventilation shafts throughout
the Mackintosh building – in both east
and west wings – would again be used to
carry services around the whole school,
that they would be fire-stopped on
completion of the building work. This
means that Mackintosh’s dozen or so
vertical ventilation risers and ducts
remained as dangerous and unprotected
chimneys throughout the rebuilding
contract. The wonder is that the School
had not caught fire long before the
contract drew towards its end.
An Alternative Future for
Mackintosh’s Masterpiece
What does the future hold for the
building? The CTEEAC report highlighted
many concerns and called for a public
inquiry into the fires of 2014 and 2018
and their underlying causes. I
wholeheartedly support this conclusion,
but much will depend on the findings of
the formal report of the police and SFRS
into the 2018 fire.
It is interesting to note that in reply to
this report the Scottish Government
highlighted the role played by local
authorities, through their planning
authorities and Building Control
departments, in assessing, authorising
and inspecting such work as has been
carried out at Glasgow School of Art
since 2000. Yet little has been heard
from these authorities in response to the
events of 2014, the subsequent rebuild
or the fire of 2018. Should the same
questions being asked of the School, its
consultants and HES not also be directed
towards Glasgow City Council and any
other relevant authorities? Or were
they all working to the implicit direction
of HES?
My own view is that Mackintosh’s
Glasgow School of Art should be rebuilt
using the vast amount of data generated
from the laser scans and the information
gathered since 2014. How such a project
should be managed poses crucial new
questions and dilemmas. Should it be
entrusted again to the same
professionals and consultants, who,
perhaps, have not covered themselves in
glory over the last two decades? What
role should HES play, in the light of it
having spent much of its time in front of
the CTEEAC washing its hands of any
supervisory role it might, or might not,
have had in the same period? Should the
Board of Governors be involved given the
questions that have arisen about their
performance since 2014?
The most important issues, to my
mind, relate to the future use and
guardianship of the building. The Scottish
Government has said that the GSA owns
the building; at least one former senior
executive of the School believes that the
then Scottish Education Department
claimed ownership prior to 1990. If true,
this change has given the Scottish
Government the opportunity, in its reply
to the CTEEAC report, to state that it had
no involvement in the decisions and
mistakes of the past two decades and
that the future of the building lay with
the School alone.
The question must now be posed as
to whether GSA is the appropriate
custodian of one of Scotland’s most
valuable and treasured architectural
assets. In any case, does this institution,
with its relatively small administrative
machine, have the time, resources and
knowledge to supervise the rebuild?
Certainly not, according to Tom Inns, the
GSA director who resigned four-and-ahalf
months after the second fire and
who had been in post for less than a year
before the 2014 fire, and according also
to Tony Jones, a director in the 1980s
who did much to restore the School’s
financial position and develop its
international reputation. Both have
expressed the desire to see the
establishment of a trust to oversee the
rebuild of the Mackintosh school and its
future administration. It seems clear that
the make-up of the Board and the
ownership and control of the building are
issues which should properly be
addressed by a public inquiry.
Which leaves the elephant in the
room: does the supposed benefit to
students of working in a Mackintosh
building outweigh the risks that their
activities present to its fabric? In the BBC
documentary, The Mack: A Tale of Two
Fires broadcast on BBC1 Scotland 5 May
2019, Tom Inns conceded that in 2014 the
work to remove asbestos (which had
halted installation of the misting system)
was itself delayed to accommodate the
student degree show, an egregious
example of the interests of students
coming before the preservation of the
building and the lives of everyone who
entered the School.
The adjacent McLellan Galleries were
commandeered to present a ‘memorial’
2014 degree show for the students
whose work had been destroyed in, or
affected, by the fire. Why wasn’t their
degree show held there in the first place?
It would have allowed timely completion
of the misting plant. This suggestion may
again be dismissed as hindsight, but
relocating the 2014 degree show would
have saved the Mackintosh building and
the likely £150,000,000 of costs to
rebuild. The move would also have
spared not only the School but also its
neighbours and the whole Sauchiehall
Street corridor much hardship. All
suffered severe disruption from June
2018 for many months whilst the
fire-affected buildings were made safe,
and they continue to be impacted today
and foreseeably will be so for years
ahead during any reconstruction of the
School and the buildings to its south. By
the time Mackintosh’s Glasgow School of
Art has been rebuilt, a full generation of
GSA students will not have set foot in his
building, let alone studied in it.
It should perhaps be noted that the
School’s student constituency has for
several years voted the GSA the most
unsatisfactory place to study in the UK.
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27
Before the 2014 fire only 20% of
students in Years 2 to 4 got the
opportunity to study in Mackintosh’s
building. Plans proposed after the 2014
fire to house all first-year students there
might have gone some way to satisfying
the demand from students who expect
to benefit from association with the
Mackintosh building, particularly those
from overseas who pay much higher
fees. But there was a considerable
struggle to fit in a complete first-year
intake. And would a full complement of
first years working in many disciplines
affect the safe use of the School? And
what will happen in ten years’ time as the
GSA inevitably builds its intake of
students? And could this reallocation of
use to first-year study enable a reintroduction
of all of the School’s various
disciplines, meaning that some dangerous
materials may be used and processes
allowed to take place in the building?
One of the students’ key complaints
has been that the GSA dangles in front of
them the prospect of working in the
hallowed spaces of the Mackintosh
masterpiece (a further aspect of the
monetisation of Mackintosh), but the
reality is that the vast majority never got
to spend more than a short period in it
throughout their years of study at the
School. Mackintosh is part of the
marketing power of Glasgow School of
Art, and despite the School’s denials the
brand gets more attention than the
building – at least, it did pre-2014.
28 |
In its May 2019 rebuttal, the School
stated: ‘The GSA does not understand
how the dual purpose of the Mackintosh
Building, as a functioning art school and a
museum, increases the risk of fire
occurring.’ Somebody is missing the
point. Nobody has ever suggested this.
For one thing, the building did not serve
the purpose of a true museum pre-2014.
Using the building for both functions
does not in itself increase the risk of fire
occurring; but removing the risky
processes and activities associated with
an art school from the building lessens
the likelihood of fire that would damage
the architectural work of art. So,
separate the two. Can we explore the
GSA statement for a moment? Would its
author genuinely not recognise the
danger of a student working with highly
flammable materials in a room housing a
display of old master paintings at a major
art gallery? Now substitute the
Mackintosh building for Kelvingrove or
the Burrell. If this is the honest belief of
the current Board, then the supposed
care for and appreciation of the unique
qualities of Mackintosh’s masterpiece
amounts to no more than lip service.
Separating the educational and
heritage roles of the GSA in the future
does not preclude artists benefiting from
the opportunity to work in a Mackintoshdesigned
environment. Many possibilities
and opportunities present themselves.
Under new management and with a
different brief the building could continue
Photo 27: ‘The Mack’ supported and
wrapped by scaffolding, 2 July 2019.
©AjcB
8 March 2019
The CTEEAC publish their
report detailing their findings
into the two fires at the
Glasgow School of Art.
17 May 2019
GSA responds to the CTEEAC’s
recommendations.
to provide opportunities for artists and
architects to work in its superb studios,
while ancillary spaces could be used to
present the story of Mackintosh in a
more coherent way, and on a larger scale,
than is possible elsewhere in the city.
Artists and architects from all over the
world could be invited to use its studios
– an elevated version of the current
WASPS scheme. Thus, a working ‘exhibit’
situated in a museum environment could
be created. Those who had benefited
from such a placement could, for
example, repay the privilege by working
with future generations of students
through attachments to the staff as
visiting lecturers.
Alternatively, the building could focus
on its museum status, perhaps entering
the custodianship of an existing

CRM Society Journal 103/104 | 2018–20
institution. It seems unlikely that Glasgow
Life (the arms-length charitable
organisation, responsible for the city’s
culture, sport, libraries and museums)
would be interested in such a role.
Moreover, given Glasgow’s unsatisfactory
track record in looking after the
Mackintosh buildings that it owns it is
perhaps not an ideal candidate.
The University of Glasgow, custodian
of Mackintosh’s estate and the recreated
Mackintosh House, might be preferable.
But a combination of the use of the
studios by established artists alongside a
more museum-oriented approach might
be best administered under the umbrella
of the National Galleries of Scotland
(NGS). Perhaps the d’Offay Artist Rooms
touring collection – jointly owned by the
NGS and Tate – could take on some of
the studio spaces, offering a more
permanent setting than is afforded by
its current peripatetic existence, and an
increased interaction with living,
international artists working in the
studios might bring further payback for
the collections.
Mackintosh may be thought of as
belonging to Glasgow and of huge
importance in Scottish art, but he is also
regarded as a major, even pre-eminent,
figure worldwide. While the NGS has
made several important acquisitions
of Mackintosh’s work over the last
40 years it will never have a Mackintosh
architectural masterpiece in Edinburgh.
The long-hoped-for association of the
NGS with Glasgow could only be
beneficial. Surely, the great and the good
of Edinburgh, who effectively blocked
the idea of an NGS gallery in Glasgow in
the 1990s, should have no objection to
the establishment in Glasgow of a new
outpost of the NGS and national art
collections devoted to one of
Glasgow’s own?
On a different front, the fact that the
Mackintosh building was destroyed by
the 2018 fire almost in its entirety has
presented new opportunities in that the
area to the south of it may in the coming
years become available for
redevelopment. The Garnethill
community, battered by two fires and
with an unsympathetic neighbour and
council, should be allowed to play a role
in the development of the fire-damaged
block to the south of the School. It
presents an opportunity for inspired
investment in the area, offering
something to the community and
complementing the work on the
Sauchiehall Avenue project that might
lead to the renaissance of one of
Glasgow’s best-known streets. A project
overseen by, and part of, the National
Galleries of Scotland would further
enrich the relationship between the city
and this major national institution.
To allow the street to descend to the
common denominator of a student-led
economy is to nobody’s ultimate benefit.
Mackintosh is now an internationally
recognised innovator whose work should
be available to all. His School of Art
building is considered his masterwork,
and much of what has happened to it
since 2000 can be attributed to poorly
conceived schemes largely devoted to
accommodating the growing numbers of
people who wish to see it. It was not a
monastery, closed to all but its members,
it was and is a publicly owned building,
funded mainly by the taxpayer. After its
future rebuild it must not be shut away
to be enjoyed only by a chosen few. It
needs strong, insightful and ambitious
custodians and a cohesive plan.
Radical changes on many fronts are
needed to lay the foundations for the
rebuilding of Mackintosh’s masterpiece.
Opportunities must not be allowed to
slip away; they should be investigated
and underpinned by a wide-ranging
public inquiry that learns from and lays
to rest the ghosts of the past and
explores all viable options for the
building’s future roles and custodianship.
It is time for a change.
Further Reading: weblinks to all the key reports and debates published online
up to April 2021
All submission documents, minutes and reports relating to the Culture, Tourism,
Europe and External Affairs Committee of the Scottish Parliament hearings into the
GSA fires, 2018–2019, can be found here: https://archive2021.parliament.scot/
parliamentarybusiness/currentcommittees/109732.aspx
Report of the Scottish Parliament, Culture, Tourism, Europe and External Affairs
Committee, March 2019:
https://sp-bpr-en-prod-cdnep.azureedge.net/published/CTEEA/2019/3/8/The-
Glasgow-School-of-Art-Mackintosh-Building--The-loss-of-a-national-treasure/
CTEEAS052019R2.pdf
Scottish Parliament debate on the anniversary of the 2018 fire, 20 June 2019:
https://www.theyworkforyou.com/sp/?id=2019-06-20.27.0
Scottish Parliament debate on the Glasgow School of Art fire, 30 October 2019:
https://www.scottishparliament.tv/meeting/
debate-glasgow-school-of-art-fire-october-30-2019
Page\Park architects online project overview for the GSA Mackintosh Building
Restoration work: http://pagepark.co.uk/project/architecture/glasgow-school-art/
The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service report into the 2014 fire:
https://www.firescotland.gov.uk/media/708503/redacted_version_fi_wh_
gc_006_14___21735141___mackintosh_building_167_renfrew_street_glasgow__
redacted_.pdf
Details of the Glasgow School of Art. ©SR
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CRM Society Journal 103/104 | 2018–20
‘Remarks on
Fire Danger’
Inspectors’
reports on
the Glasgow
School of Art
in 1913 and
1914
Alison Brown
Some years ago, research for the
2018 exhibition Charles Rennie
Mackintosh, Making the Glasgow
Style, took me down to London
to investigate the links between
Glasgow and the South Kensington
Museum. Founded in 1852, this
institution was more than simply a
museum; it oversaw art education
and instruction throughout
Britain. (In 1899 it was renamed
the Victoria & Albert Museum: the
V&A.) As the South Kensington
Museum it had oversight of all
the art schools in the country,
adjudicated the national awards
for student work and played a
pivotal role advising Britain’s
museums on collecting to support
educational purpose. Glasgow’s
civic museums’ collection (now
known as Glasgow Museums),
after its constitutional formation
in 1870, sought and received such
advice from the London institution
and later benefited from monetary
grants towards new acquisitions.
South Kensington also played another
vital role in the regions. It lent objects
from its immense ‘Circulation Collections’
to art schools, museums and temporary
exhibitions for display and study across
Britain. The students, tradespeople and
young professionals attending day and
evening classes at the Glasgow School of
Art, and all visitors to Glasgow’s civic
collection over the decades, benefitted
immensely from being able to see at
close hand examples from Britain’s
national collection of historic decorative
arts and design. Such a nationwide role
naturally placed an immense
administrative burden upon South
Kensington: a well-oiled system was
required to process, approve and
implement the enormous volume of loan
requests coming in every year from
around the country. To operate this
system inspectors were employed to
check the suitability of the requesting
institution’s premises and needs. These
advisors would assess the merits of the
proposed educational application and the
specific needs of the loaned objects for
storage, handling and display beyond the
museum’s walls.
The archives of the V&A still hold
institutional files on the art schools and
museums it advised, though
unfortunately for researchers today
these were significantly ‘weeded’ in the
1930s. Much that was purged by the
pre-World War II archivists was the
day-to-day administrative detail
including notes on specific objects lent.
The surviving documents are those that
were viewed then as the most salient to
keep regarding historic loans and the
educational advice provided to each
organisation.
The Glasgow School of Art, like
Glasgow Museums, was a regular
borrower from the London museum. In
its institutional file, three documents
written by the V&A’s inspectors – one at
the end of April 1913, another in early
September that same year, and the third
responding to a letter of January 1914
– are of specific interest here. The first
inspector’s report is written three years
and four months after the second phase
of Mackintosh’s Glasgow School of Art
building formally opened. It is in response
to a request the GSA made for a loan of
objects from the South Kensington
museum for teaching purposes. The
correspondence reveals the inspectors’
opinions of the fully completed new
School building and gives some indication
as to its operation. The documents also
reveal the advisor’s opinion on the
inherent risks the School of Art’s
construction and design posed to their
collections on loan.
Written on the 30 April 1913 the first
report runs thus: ‘A loan of a case of
objects has again been lent to this School
after a lapse of 3 years … Since I was last
in the School, extensive additions have
been made to the premises, by the same
architect who adopts a pseudo-Glaseo-
Egypto-Roman style – it must be seen to
be appreciated. The chief fault is that far
too much wood is used for internal
decoration, that many of the rooms are
too dark. The rate of insurance for our
objects in this School is I believe 10 per
cent.’ 1
The second, ‘Remarks on Fire Danger’
is written as a physical review of the
status of the objects loaned that was
conducted on the 4 September 1913
1 V&A Archives: MA/1/9793; RP/1913/1154 CIRC. V&A Museum Minute Paper, Glasgow School of Art. Written
30 April 1913, received / stamped 1st May 1913, Summary notation inscribed by the Secretary to the V&A in
red ink: ‘Report on visit to by Mr Martin, who remarks on extensive addition to premises.’
30 |

CRM Society Journal 103/104 | 2018–20
Opposite and above: Details of the Glasgow
School of Art taken during the excavation
period after the first fire of 2014. Photos:
©Stuart Robertson
when the V&A’s inspector was shown
around the building by the GSA’s
Secretary: ‘The building is commodious
and includes ample provision for teaching
and other craft work. It contains
refectories, common rooms, etc. Much
wood however [their strikethrough] is
used internally, both in the main staircase
[sic] and in the corridors and rooms
which are panelled. Wood is also used in
the School library. The building is heated
on the Plenum system. There are
hydrants on all floors, and a resident
engineer takes charge of the heating. I
am however of opinion that if a fire once
started the premises would rapidly be
gutted.’ 2
The report goes on to note: ‘The
artificial lighting is by electricity. Craft
work of all kinds is provided for, and the
School is attended by 1300 students. The
School Museum is on the upper landing,
(facing south) of the main staircase and is
subject to a very strong top light. The
School textiles exhibited on this landing
are evidently much faded, and it is not a
suitable place for any exhibits from the
Board which are liable to deterioration
from excessive light.’
A further advisory recommendation
made the following January – written in
response to the GSA seeking permission
from the V&A to sub-lend objects they
have borrowed from the national
collection out to local schools – provides
financial insight into London’s decisionmaking
in relation to the hazards
presented by Mackintosh’s design: ‘Much
wood has been used in their School
building internally and though all
reasonable precautions against fire are
taken it is understood that double the
usual insurance is paid upon the Board’s
examples lent to this institution.’ 3
On the one hand it’s delightful to read
how the V&A’s inspectors describe and
praise Mackintosh’s aesthetics, ‘it must
be seen to be appreciated’. And it is
illuminating to see their thoughts on
overall light quality provided within the
building — both daylight and electric
— given how we now judge the
architect’s expertise in this field. (Maybe
their inspection visit fell on a typically
grey overcast Glasgow day, when low
levels of daylight would have been
exacerbated by the industrial city’s
smoke pollution and little compensation
gained through the dim, yellower glow
from contemporary electric lamp bulbs.)
We, of course, can appreciate the
practical reasons why the School’s
museum on the upper floor was given so
much natural daylight, even if it was
detrimental to some of the more
vulnerable objects the students studied
there.
On the other hand, given the events of
2014 and 2018, it is chilling to read the
inspector’s conclusion that ‘if a fire once
started the premises would rapidly be
gutted’, particularly as these words were
written so soon after the construction of
phase two of the School. Our emotional
response is amplified when we realise
that their concern was so severe that the
V&A doubled the insurance premium
payable by the GSA to cover the loss of
loaned objects.
The letters reflect the contemporary
understanding of fire risk arising from
building design, construction and use, the
study of which had gained much ground
through the latter half of the nineteenth
century. Fireplace and fire-surround
design, the deploying of wood panelling
within rooms, the use of timber in
construction, poor construction methods
and the perils of boarding up unused
fireplaces whilst their chimney cavities
remained unblocked were all diagnosed
as causes of fire hazards in reports over
that time. 4 More stringent
recommendations for improvements in
design and construction to mitigate
against fire resulted in specific measures
being included in The Glasgow Buildings
Acts of 1892 and 1900. The latter
prescribed the ‘installation of “fireresisting
divisions” in large mixed-use
buildings’. 5
Other papers from South Kensington’s
advisors in the late 1800s and early
1900s held at the V&A make it clear that
their inspectors understood the fire risks
posed by contemporary building design
and construction. Despite the inspectors’
letters stating that ‘all reasonable’ fire
prevention had been provided on site by
the GSA through the placing of hydrants
on all floors, they judged and tailored
their lending recommendations and
stipulations based on the inherent risks
presented, in their opinion, by
Mackintosh’s building design.
The Glasgow Building Acts of 1892 and
1900 would have brought new legislation
into play at exactly the time when
Mackintosh was setting out on his own
architectural path. Perhaps an
interesting angle for future research into
Mackintosh’s built legacy would be to
look at how closely he adhered to the
regulations set out in the Acts of 1892
and 1900. How far did Mackintosh pay
attention to fire risk?
2 V&A Archives: MA/1/9793; RP/1914/196 CIRC. V&A Museum Minute Paper, Glasgow: School of Art. Typed 23 September 1913, received 25 September 1913, Summary
notation inscribed by the Secretary to the V&A in red ink: ‘Visited 4th September. Remarks on Fire Danger’.
3 V&A Archives: MA/1/9793; RP/1914/196 CIRC. V&A Museum untitled two-page typed report, Minute Paper 14/196 Circ. Relating to the Glasgow School of Art in
response to their letter with enclosures written 28 January; received by the V&A 29 January 1914. Advisor’s report written 4 February 1914, with subsequent V&A
Board actions noted and completed by 10 February 1914.
4 Shane Ewen, ‘The Problem of Fire in Nineteenth Century British Cities: the Case of Glasgow’, 2006, published in the Proceedings of the Second International Congress
on Construction History (Volume 1), pp.1061–74. This conference paper provides a historical overview of the fire issues in nineteenth-century Glasgow that led to the
building acts of 1892 and 1900 and can be found online: https://www.arct.cam.ac.uk/Downloads/ichs/vol-1-1061-1074-ewen.pdf
5 Ibid, p.1071
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