Window on the Mack

After six months the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS) have finally issued a redacted report into the fire that destroyed so much of the Mackintosh Building at the Glasgow School of Art.

The report states that the fire was started by flammable gases from a canister of expanding foam ignited as they came into contact with the hot surface of a projector in Studio 19.

Final-year students were setting up their degree show projects in the basement and holes in some pre-built foam panels were being filled with the spray foam.

Flammable gas used as a propellant in the canister was sucked into the projector’s cooling fan, setting it alight. A foam panel right behind the projector then caught light.

The flames quickly spread to timber panelling and through voids around the basement studio and then into the Mackintosh Library two floors above and up through the rest of Mackintosh’s masterpiece building. A vast amount of archives were lost in the fire and worst of all we lost more than 150 pieces of original Mackintosh furniture and his only oil paintings.