Progress on rebuilding the Glasgow School of Art (GSA) Mackintosh building could be decided by an insurance arbitration hearing next month.
The 1909 landmark, designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, has been a burnt-out shell since a major fire in 2018. Following the 2024 appointment of Reiach and Hall with Purcell to oversee the building’s restoration, a strategic outline business case (SOBC) was due to be published early last year.
However, this has proved more complicated than the school anticipated and is still being drawn up.
According to a GSA spokesperson, the business case depends on the outcome of an arbitration hearing with the A-listed school’s insurers, which will rule over who will fund the multimillion-pound rebuild. The AJ understands the hearing is due next month.Two years ago the school initiated arbitration proceedings over its claim with the building’s insurer. The outcome of this arbitration will spell out the amount of funding the school is likely to receive and, therefore, the form of the restoration.The GSA spokesperson commented: ‘As we have previously stated, the arbitration process is confidential and once any hearing is held and a decision issued, it will provide GSA with certainty on the level of the insurance claim and inform decisions on the next stages of the project.
‘The work by Reiach and Hall with Purcell is extensive and comprehensive, identifying a number of potential routes to faithful reinstatement which are being rigorously assessed and costed. These two aspects need to be concluded before the economic impact study can analyse core options and the overall SOBC Addendum concluded.
‘[We] continue to maintain the structure, ensuring continued stabilisation, conservation and advance works as appropriate.’In 2023, the AJ revealed that the school had been forced to scrap a procurement process for a £62 million restoration of the building after a bungled awarding of the job. Practices in contention for the major design job included Hawkins\Brown and John McAslan + Partners.
Instead of restarting the process, the school brought in Reiach and Hall and Purcell to look again at the strategic business case and to ‘identify the appropriate route to delivery of the faithful reinstatement’ of the much-loved landmark.
The two practices are understood to have gone back to an earlier brief, working to update the 2021 strategic outline business case for restoring the building.
At the time the GSA said the architects, working alongside cost and economic consultants, would be ‘robustly testing the GSA’s previous assumptions, costs and economic impact, timelines and approaches to delivery of this significant project’.
Following the conclusion of the SOBC work – now expected later this year – a new procurement process for detailed design work and delivery is expected to be launched.
However, any future restoration will likely be delivered in phases – and not by the original 2030 deadline for completion. The £62 million price tag is also expected to rise.
At the time of the 2018 fire, the building was nearing the end of a £35 million restoration following a previous fire in 2014.Last month, the GSA spelt out its opposition to a 365-student bed scheme on its doorstep, designed by HAUS Collective for developer Vita Group, at a hearing last month.
Glasgow City Council approved the scheme, on the site of a former ABC cinema, last June, but it has since been called in by the Scottish government.
The Mackintosh building will remain under wraps for two years before restoration work begins.
Representatives for the GSA told the independently appointed reporter that the student accommodation scheme would adversely impact the Mackintosh Building – a view backed by Historic Environment Scotland (HES).
The GSA’s submission to the hearing revealed that it remained committed to a faithful reinstatement of the Mackintosh Building and ‘making positive steps to bring it back as part of a functioning world-class art school’.
When the scheme was approved by Glasgow City Council, the GSA told the AJ that it would ‘fundamentally compromise the Mackintosh Building’s heritage significance as a purpose-designed art school and with it, the building’s future use’.
A spokesperson for the Scottish government told the AJ: ‘Following careful consideration, ministers called in the planning application for their own determination. An independent reporter has been appointed to examine the proposal and submit a report and recommendation to ministers, who will then make the final decision on this planning application.
‘As this is a live application, it would not be appropriate to comment further.’
In documents submitted to the hearing on behalf of Vita, the developer said ‘the proposal represents a development approach that considers the setting of the GSA within its urban context. Its design addresses planning policy requirements relating to heritage, urban design, and town centre uses, while seeking to mitigate risks associated with alternative approaches.
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