The Mackintosh House

The Mackintosh House has a complex history. In 1900 architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868–1928) and artist Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh (1864–1933) rented a flat in Mains Street in the centre of Glasgow, where they redesigned the interiors in their uniquely individual style. In 1906 they moved to 6 Florentine Terrace in the city's fashionable West End. In his radical remodelling of this mid-Victorian house, Mackintosh reused many of the furnishings and fittings created for Mains Street. When Florentine Terrace was demolished in 1963, the interiors were carefully preserved and eventually reassembled in a purpose-designed wing of Glasgow University's Hunterian Art Gallery. The three-storey configuration of the original house has been recreated exactly, and the new building is just 100m from the site of Florentine Terrace, so the Mackintoshes' rooms retain their original orientation, natural lighting and views.

The rooms embody the ideal of the interior as a complete work of art, in which the design and arrangement of every feature is controlled by the architect. Space and light, as well as furnishings and decoration, are manipulated to produce effects of extraordinary beauty and refinement. From the sombre ground-floor dining room with its dark, high-backed chairs, visitors ascend to the predominantly white studio-drawing room on the first floor, and from there to the light-filled bedroom with its white-painted furniture on the floor above. The House is an outstanding example of Mackintosh's work as architect and designer, and it offers a unique insight into the private world of the artist-couple.