Mackintosh Architecture

Stylish exhibition at the Royal Institute of British Architects on the architectural career of Charles Rennie Mackintosh.

This was a well described and presented exhibition which aimed to put Mackintosh in his professional context and to look at the factors which influenced his practice such as function, budget, process and aesthetics. I loved the timelime at the beginning which included artefacts and photographs and two interweaving lines of his life and world events.

I loved the section on his early career and to see what his early style was like plus what projects he worked on which we no longer associate with him. I was interested to see that he had worked on most of the competition drawings for the firm he worked for, Honeyman and Kepple, including an unsuccessful submission for Liverpool Cathedral.

The section on houses he built was fascinating with nice short videos showing the buildings now. His architectural drawings are works of art in themselves. There were also house designs which were never built and as well as having the drawings the curators had had small models made of these. 

The exhibition did what it set out to do well and I realise the aim was only to look at the architectural projects but I would have liked more in the interior design ideas and something on Macintosh’s art work which I love however I know I am being greedy and that is something for another bigger show!

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