The Scotsman

Charles Rennie Mackintosh

When does an icon become an icon? Some buildings, like the Bilbao Guggenheim, achieve iconic status from the moment they are built. Others, like the Glasgow School of Art, take years. Completed in 1909, it took half a century for it to attain iconic status. At a time when cities are in global competition, employing international architects to give them instantaneous iconic buildings, Charles Rennie Mackintosh's School of Art trumps all those two-minute wonders and wannabe icons. A real landmark, it shows how buildings don't have to be flashy to be noticed. In an age of architectural hyperinflation, when blobs, shards, gherkins and endless towers jostle for attention, the School of Art and its playfully inventive design stand out. It has been described as a "youthful" building. Mackintosh was a young man when he designed it, and it shows his many enthusiasms - architectural history, buildings he sketched on his travels, what was going on around him in the design powerhouse of Victorian Glasgow. The building's originality comes from the free-play of those different influences and interests - an inventiveness that has the worldwide, popular appeal essential for iconic status.