Firefighters battle a fire blazing at the Mackintosh Building, housing the Glasgow School of Art, in Glasgow, Scotland, Britain, in 2018. The school announced Wednesday that the cost of rebuilding it to the architecht's specifications would cost too much. File Photo by Stringer/EPA
July 22 (UPI) -- The Glasgow School of Art Mackintosh building, damaged twice by fire, would cost too much for the school to fully rebuild on its own, the school's board of governors said Wednesday.
Rebuilding the school in line with artist and architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh's original design would cost about $355 million, the school said in a press release Wednesday.
That amount is "equivalent to five times the GSA's annual turnover [revenue], an amount that is not affordable and which would compromise the financial sustainability of the institution."
The Art Nouveau building, completed in 1909, was damaged by fire twice. Much of the building was destroyed in 2014 after a student's art project was ignited by an overhead projector. In June 2018, when the rebuilding was nearly complete, another fire destroyed it. There was no cause found for the second fire, which ignited a dispute between the school and its insurance company that ended in arbitration that wrapped up this spring.
