CONCERT HALL FOR THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION
Charles Rennie Mackintosh, 1898
A Hundred Years before the Millennium: A Great Dome for Glasgow
In the late 1890s, Glaswegians were excited to learn that their city was going to host a big international exhibition. Large exhibitions or ‘world’s fairs’ were major events, and a successful event could benefit a city hugely – in income, job creation and general prestige. Glasgow had staged an international exhibition in 1888, and one result of this was funds towards the building of the city’s municipal art gallery in Kelvingrove Park. Such spectacles were also good news for architects – there would be buildings to design – and although these were often temporary structures they would be large, high-profile projects. So when, in 1898, a competition was announced for designs for buildings for the coming exhibition, there was a great deal of interest, especially among architects in Glasgow.
One practice that was keen to enter was John Honeyman and Keppie, a successful firm of architects which had entered designs in the competition for the 1888 exhibition, but had not won. However, things had changed in the office since then. In 1889, they took on a new young draughtsman who turned out to be their most talented designer. His name was Charles Rennie Mackintosh.
Honeyman and Keppie was a good firm for a young architect to join. John Honeyman, who had been the creative force, was doing less work as he got older; John Keppie was the safe pair of hands who could manage projects and money, but was not a great designer. There was a gap to be filled, and, by the late 1890s, Mackintosh had risen from working as a humble draughtsman to being recognized as the most creative member of the team. He was embarking on his first commission for Kate Cranston, proprietor of a number of Glasgow tearooms that would eventually get famous Mackintosh interiors. Mackintosh had also begun work on some of his largest projects such as the Glasgow Herald Building and his masterpiece – the Glasgow School of Art. It was a good point in his career to take on the plans for a big exhibition site. The brief called for several designs: an Industrial Hall for the main exhibition displays; a linked Machine Hall for an engineering exhibition; cafés and refreshment rooms; and a large concert hall – the grand hall – seating up to 4000 people. It was Mackintosh’s design for the concert hall that showed his originality and flair.
The competition had a difficult start. Architects immediately noticed that the fee offered was below the usual percentage. The standard rate recommended by the Royal Institute of British Architects was 5 per cent of the costs; the Glasgow authorities were offering only 3 per cent. There were objections, but the organizers would not move. Even so, fourteen firms submitted plans.
For many of them, although the Industrial Hall was a major landmark, the concert hall was the key building. This was because the organizers asked for two alternative designs and also because there was a good chance it would be a permanent building, whereas the other structures would be taken down at the end of the exhibition. Mackintosh’s Industrial Hall follows the expected pattern: a glass-roofed structure with a central dome and some octagonal towers. He also took a fairly conventional approach for his first design for the concert hall, which was an oblong building with corner towers.
Mackintosh’s designs for other buildings for the exhibition were move conventional, with the rectangular plans, tall corner towers, and ornate facades that the event’s organisers would have expected. They also show the architect’s very individualistic style of decoration, featuring slender pinnacles and use of the stylised rose motif.
The stand-out design was his second concert hall – a circular building with a daringly thin roof. Mackintosh designed a very shallow dome resting on metal roof trusses supported by twelve massive buttresses around the perimeter wall. Between each pair of buttresses is a vestibule, with only the main entrance emphasized by a grand portal. There is just one break in the great sweep of portals and buttresses – a protruding section that accommodates the backstage area; otherwise, the building is a perfect circle.
We do not know a great deal about Mackintosh’s design. On the surviving drawing, the architect does not specify the materials, but the roof trusses are drawn with rivets, so must have been either iron or steel – the use of metal roof trusses was common by this time and Mackintosh used steel widely in his buildings. The roof shell is very thin and so may also have been metal, but Mackintosh indicated that the centre part was to be glazed. This shallow dome spans a large auditorium without needing internal columns that might have blocked the audience’s view. The architect noted the total seating capacity to be 4221, with 600 in a gallery, the rest on the ground floor.
What is clear from the drawing is how different Mackintosh’s design was from other buildings of the time. It is not the circular plan – two other competition entrants put in round or elliptical designs for the concert hall – but the fact that no one had ever built such a large, shallow dome. Its shape recalls that of the domes of Byzantine churches. The largest Byzantine church, the sixth-century Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, has a dome 102ft (31m) across; the inner diameter of the dome of London’s St Paul’s Cathedral is a similar size. Mackintosh’s dome is 180ft (55m) in diameter and shallower than its predecessors. It was a bold concept, and we have to look to much more recent buildings such as London’s Millennium Dome to find something of similar shape, though structurally very different.
By the closing date for the competition on 15 August 1898, fourteen sets of drawings had been received. The judges made their decision the following month. The first prize went to James Miller. Mackintosh’s designs did not even make third place. Mackintosh had to be content with designing some temporary exhibition pavilions for several companies, and for the Glasgow School of Art. The reason Mackintosh’s design did not even come in the top three is probably the daring nature of the dome and the rather plain facades of the other buildings. The organizers wanted something they felt safer with. Mackintosh always did well with clients with less conventional tastes – such as the Glasgow School of Art and ‘artistic’ patrons such as Kate Cranston and the owners of some of his houses. The organizers of Glasgow’s International Exhibition marched to a different drum.
