Scotland’s magnificent Built Heritage is a key part of our shared wealth. But we have failed it, repeatedly, in wasteful demolition and an increasing number of disastrous fires, like at Union Corner in Glasgow, Princes Street in Edinburgh only this month and, outstandingly, the two catastrophes at the Glasgow School of Art - the Mack.

The Mack is - or was - by general agreement, our finest testament to our great tradition in building. - Our Notre Dame - utterly Scottish and utterly international, muckle and robust, crafted and delicate. The comparison with Notre Dame shames us, as France’s most cherished building burnt one year after our second fire, but is now gloriously rebuilt, while the Mack still stands as four gaunt walls round a sepulchral void. The success of the Notre Dame rebuild was underwritten by the French Government, so proceeded swiftly, while the debates on cause and responsibility still rage like an ongoing fire here.

The current impasse, for various reasons to do with legal and insurance disputes, adds huge insult to the vast injuries the two fires wrought. For in Scotland, we have a clear, systemic problem with how we treat our heritage and we must learn from these failures. We need to learn from our failures at GSA, to avoid more catastrophes.

But much more than this is the complete failure of care and imagination. The idea of the Mack “partially rebuilt” in some modern, shoddy way, is an obscenity. Would the French have accepted some half-arsed pre-fab solution at Notre Dame?! The Mack has remained, throughout its long life, a beautiful, vibrant, living and working resource, and it would constitute a massive act of cultural self-mutilation to turn away from the generational duty to ensure a full rebuild. To paraphrase the historian David Crowley on the rebuilding of Warsaw, after WWII – ‘ it must be rebuilt in order to forget what its absence means.’

Besides, there is no better recorded, debated and understood building in Scotland, and we know how to rebuild it – a company of joiners had already completed the rebuild and install of the beautiful library after the first, and before the second fire, and have let it be known that they could easily and quickly rebuild again. So, while there are the huge challenges of fundraising and who underwrites the project, we would like to start off with a simple first assertion, that we as a Nation must be clear about: the Mack must be rebuilt.

Please join us: our website is rebuildthemack.com and sign up as “Supporters” alongside us,

Malcolm Fraser, Architect; Professor Johnny Rodger