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Charles Rennie Mackintosh 

Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868 - 1928) is the main representative of Art Nouveau Scottish architect, designer and artist in the United Kingdom. He has spent most of his life in the city of Glasgow where this city had one of the greatest production centers of engineering during Industrial Revolution. As the city became bigger, high demand for mass production was necessary. Also, along with the Industrial Revolution, Asian styles gained much attention and Mackintosh was very inspired by Japanese art. It is very evident that the location and consumer trends that Mackintosh had dealt with have influenced his art career. He was a famous architect using “Glasgow” style. Glasgow word derives from Glasgow school which is a group of influential modern artists in Glasgow, Scotland and Mackintosh was a prominent member within the group. His famous piece of architecture design easily can be found in Glasgow School. In most of his artworks, Charles Rennie Mackintosh used geometric lines for architecture that consists of organic-inspired symbolic decoration. 

 

Figure 1

Charles Rennie Mackintosh, the library of Glasgow school of Art 1909

http://www.victorianweb.org/art/design/mackintosh/4.jpg

(accessed October 01, 2014)

 

 

 The best known for his architect design is the library of Glasgow school of Art (Figure 1). Inspired from Japanese styles, he utilized much of the wood within the library. The library seems very greater than it actually is and its square room makes it look taller than its two storeys. Supported by vertical timers which divided the space and the window, the gallery of the library allowed darkness fade away and instead installed with sunlight. Mackintosh applied his inspiration of Japanese forest into the library by using dark timbers as dark woods, small lights hanging in the styple of Japanese lanterns and small beams of light as small cracks in the trees. Mackintosh’s manipulation of space and light was effectively attributed in this library. In addition to his famous architecture, Mackintosh designed Scotland Street school in 1904 (Figure 2). The school building is built with its cylindrical stair towers and glass design that catches people’s attention. In contrast with other horizontal buildings, these twin stairwell towers make the building vertically. Mackintosh integrated modern and traditional values within the building. The use of strictly square window and glass in these towers is very modern and conical shape of roofs were in styles of traditional Scottish staircase bays. He also utilized many and big windows in order to make sure natural light come in. Renowned for his design of a chair, he brought a very modern chair manufactured from most natural woods. Ebonised sycamore was often used in his chars as it can be shaped and worked to form various joints (Figure 3). Due to a strong durability and image of dark color, sycamore was the most ideal piece of furniture regardless of its costs. The chair is very stable as it contains four legs and high back of the chair supports the upper body. Even though there are numerous decorative designs in Art Nouveau, the chair is designed in a very minimalistic way yet contains enough features which makes it look very modern and popular.  

 

Artwork 

Figure 2

Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Scotland Street School 1904

http://www.bienvenueenecosse.com/img/138775/2d8a370e69d16fd450c7b2b8644b3d0c.jpg

(accessed October 01, 2014)

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