Glasgow Neighbors: Mackintosh versus Steven Holl

摘要

In december 2009, the Glasgow School of Art celebrated its centenary. At a symposium on Charles Rennie Mackintosh's venerated masterpiece, I delivered the keynote address, "Materials of the Imagination," a close reading of the building, its many levels of meaning, its diverse sources, and its continuing influence. The Glasgow School of Art has never fitted the crude stylistic categories imposed upon it by historians, whether Modernist or Scottish nationalist in persuasion. It is one of those rare buildings to transcend time, resolving diverse agendas to do with modernity and tradition, industrialism and nature, in a synthesis of a high order.