Archinect - News

New video tells the story of a dissolving house saved by a record-breaking metal box

2022-02-10T11:47:00-05:00

In a rainy region of western Scotland, an architectural masterpiece has been given a new lease of life. Built in 1904, the Hill House is regarded as one of the most iconic residential homes to be designed by the famous architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh. After over a century, however, the masterpiece mansion is feeling its age.

The Hill House Box, designed by Carmody Groarke, was completed in 2019. Now, a new video by British YouTuber Tom Scott offers new insights into the original building, the issue with its façade, and the architectural intervention undertaken to save it, including interviews with the building's managers.

Due to the wet, windy climate common to Scotland’s west coast, many buildings in the region are clad in a lime coating infused with small stones and pebbles. Once dried, the mixture forms a weatherproof layer to protect the building’s external walls from the elements. However, for the Hill House, Mackintosh departed from convention and replaced the lime coati...

Carmody Groarke preserves Charles Rennie Mackintosh's Hill House with an encasement

2019-06-11T13:19:00-04:00

The work of Scottish architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh belongs to the early modernist period, along with that of Austria's Adolf Loos and California's Irving Gill. Though Mackintosh built very few projects during his career, the few that have survived have continued to be of great importance for modern architectural history.

Hill House, by Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh.

Hill House, built in 1904 in the hills of Helensburgh, Scotland, is among the most significant. Designed by Mackintosh and his wife Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh, the home rises from the landscape like a castle stripped of all ornament, a novel mix of the old and new worlds. The 115 year old home has been a popular tourist destination for years, though it had long been in serious need of preservation. The wet weather of Northern Scotland has been increasingly challenging for the Portland cement exterior, and calls for preservation proposals were made in 2017.

Hill House Box, by Carmody...