Glasgow School of Art has abandoned its eternally stalled plans for a full reinstatement of the fire-ravaged Mackintosh Building, opting instead for temporary stabilisation works. There’s outrage – after all, the school committed itself to a faithful rebuild from the start - but the obsession around reinstating exactly what once was is starting to feel like a desperate city out of ideas, clinging onto its past glories.

Harsh, but true. The instinct around the building has always been the same: rebuild, exactly as it was, back up to every detail intended by its architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh.

The problem is that the price tag for such a project has been revealed as £265 million, a figure the school can’t afford. Hoping for public funding to foot the bill in light of the Union Street fire rebuild and the immense pressure on public services? Good luck with that. Attempting to recreate a late Victorian-era building in the modern day with all our newfangled safety and accessibility regulations is an absolute minefield. Let’s also cross fingers that the stated cost does not balloon as reinstatement continues, as is typical of these large-scale construction projects. It seems to me to be quite the lost cause.

Glasgow School of Art cannot afford to rebuild world-renowned Mackintosh Building

The Mackintosh Building was a peculiar mix of Art Nouveau and proto-modernism, where everything down to........

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