HillHouse

June 20, 2018 by Alexander Meldrum

Photo 1222 of 6615
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Mackintosh's Hill House in Helensburgh, Scotland, Hill House in Helensburgh, Scotland, is one of Charles and Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh's most famous works, probably second only to the Glasgow School of Art. It was designed and built for the publisher Walter Blackie in 1902 – 1904. In addition to the house, Mackintosh designed most of the interior, furniture and fittings. Mackintosh's attention to detail extended to prescribing the colour of cut flowers that the Blackies might place on a table in the living room. In 1982 the house was donated to the National Trust for Scotland which maintains it and opens it to visitors. The top floor (formerly the family nursery and servants' bedrooms) was leased to the Landmark Trust in 1978 for use as holiday accommodation but since 2011 has been operated as a holiday rental by the National Trust for Scotland. It accommodates six people. The exterior The uniform and grayish exterior treatment of the building blends in with the cold cloudy sky of Scotland. The completely asymmetrical construction forms different roof levels and shapes, and also records Mackintosh’s appreciation for A. W. N. Pugin’s picturesque utility where the exterior contour evolves from the interior planning. The minimum decoration, heavy walls, and rectangular and square windows express a strong, sober construction. The exterior qualities of the building are nearly the opposite of the warm, exotic, carefully decorated and smooth interior. Again, Mackintosh relates to Pugin’s theory by minimizing exterior decoration to emphasize the interior design: the transition from the outside world into a safe, fantastic inside space. Paint analysis of the harling on the exterior shows that it might have been left as an unpainted pale grey initially. Mackintosh selected portland cement harl, then a newly introduced product, for the surface finish but this was found to be less durable than traditional lime harl and by 2017 it was discovered to be in a precarious condition, putting the integrity of the whole building at risk. As a temporary solution NTS proposes to enclose Hill House in a transparent porous "box", allowing some movement of air, so that the structure dries out gradually. The interior The mansion combined the Edwardian period’s traditional ‘femininity’ of an intimate, inside space, with the ‘masculinity’ of the exterior public world, both uncommonly used throughout the interior of the building. To Mackintosh, bringing the masculine aspects to the inside would break away from the over decorated, entirely feminine conventional interiors. This allowed him to convey different feelings and experiences depending on the purpose of each space. Mackintosh used different materials, colours and lighting, when necessary to perform a full experiential transition from one point to another. All in such an elegant and well planned manner, that with the absence of one the other would mar.

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