'A CULTURAL TRAGEDY OF THE FIRST ORDER'

I have been struck by just how much the Glasgow School of Art disaster has affected us all.  My close friend and PhD supervisor Bruce Peter, whose office is in the basement of the building, summed it up on facebook: "it is a cultural tragedy of the first order".

I have been engaged with the Mackintosh building in two ways: as a lecturer in another university in architectural history it plays a pivotal role in my accounts of architecture in the first years of the twentieth century: - I mean that - it is a massively important document in that narrative, and all the more so since it is still used for its original purpose, and is easily accessible today.

I was also a user of the building during my PhD between 2006 and 2011, where I had my periodic supervision meetings with Bruce in the department of historical and critical studies, and gave my end-of-year presentations in the Mackintosh lecture theatre, and was able to look round the unbelievable architectural resource and treasure that was the library. 

During all this time I was struck by the patina in the building: the plaster-cast sculptures worn smooth by people passing; the shiny walls in the stairways; the original air pumping machine still preserved; the meeting rooms that had since been reconfigured, but you could still see the marks of the original layout; the later insertions and additions, including the arrangements for tourist visitors.  People just seem to congregate there: people from politics, broadcasting, fitba - it is more than just a building. 

To use it was for me to be sure that I was following in the footsteps of generations of artists, sculptors, theorists, historians, administrators and alumni.  You could touch the walls they had touched.  This is quite simply my favourite piece of architecture.

And now, much has been destroyed.  My heart goes out to the students who had just installed their end of year shows; to the other students and staff who are also victims of this.

Of one thing we can all be certain - the building will eventually be returned to use in its entirety - but with one exception: that patina, which can never be retrieved.