The Glasgow School of Art is expected to replace Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s fire-damaged masterpiece with a contemporary building behind retained sections of its historic façade.

The Glasgow School of Art photographed in July 2009. (Credit: Jörg Bittner Unna via Wikimedia Commons)

The Glasgow School of Art (GSA) has reportedly abandoned plans to faithfully reinstate the Mackintosh Building, eight years after the landmark was gutted by a second fire.

According to the Sunday Post, staff will be informed of the decision on Wednesday, with the school now expected to pursue a partial reconstruction incorporating a contemporary interior. Sections of Mackintosh’s Category A-listed façade are likely to be retained, but significant internal spaces, including the celebrated double-height library and timber-framed ‘hen run’ corridor, may not be recreated.

GSA has not yet publicly confirmed the reported change of direction.

Completed in two phases between 1899 and 1909, the building was conceived by Mackintosh as an integrated work of architecture in which studios, circulation spaces, furnishings and the manipulation of natural light formed a carefully orchestrated whole.

The building was badly damaged by fire in 2014 before being gutted by a second blaze in June 2018, as a £35m restoration led by Page\Park Architects approached completion. The cause of the second fire was not established following a three-year investigation by the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service.

In 2021, GSA director Penny Macbeth announced that the school intended to undertake a “faithful reinstatement” of the building. A procurement process for the next stage of restoration was subsequently abandoned in 2023, after an estimated £62m contract was withdrawn. GSA later appointed two architectural practices to test the rebuilding proposals.

The reported decision follows a prolonged dispute between the school and its insurers. An arbitration hearing was held in March, but its outcome remains confidential. Stabilisation and clearance works have reportedly cost approximately £18m, while architect and former GSA lecturer Gordon Gibb has estimated that a full reconstruction could cost as much as £350m.

Glasgow School of Art on a postcard from 1910. (Credit: Mark Crombie via Wikimedia Commons)

Gibb described the apparent change of approach as a “betrayal” of Mackintosh’s building and called for responsibility for its future to be removed from GSA’s board and management.

“The Mack was designed to act inside and out as a functioning art school, a showcase of art and a place of inspiration,” he said. “It is the intensity of Mackintosh’s design of the internal spaces and their relationships, the main fine art studios, the studios for other fields of artistic endeavour, the library and the circulation spaces, that all contribute to its wonder.”

“If you do not rebuild it as it was imagined, you lose all of its integrity,” he added. “If we lose this building now, we will lose a large part of what represents Glasgow’s civic footprint and Scotland’s national identity.”

A Scottish Parliament committee concluded in 2019 that GSA’s board had not given sufficient priority to safeguarding the building. Campaigners have subsequently called for a judge-led public inquiry into the fires, as well as for the building to be transferred to another public body.

Gibb said campaigners intend to oppose the reported proposals, with an online petition expected to follow.