Helensburgh’s Hill House has become the first Scottish dwelling to be listed on the influential International Iconic Houses website.
The website features nearly 200 twentieth-century modernist houses open to the public throughout the world, including properties and studios linked to many celebrated architects of the last century including Frank Lloyd Wright, Alvar Alto, Arne Jacobsen, Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe and Antoni Gaudí.
The Iconic Houses Network provides opportunities for members to directly contact their opposite numbers across international borders through online forums and workshops, as well as bi-annual conferences, to discuss and share experience and new learning.
Until the addition of the Hill House, only four UK buildings had been admitted into the network, three of which were in London and the fourth, at Derngate in Nottingham, was another Mackintosh design.
Designed in 1902 by Charles Rennie Mackintosh for publisher Walter Blackie, the Hill House is owned and cared for by the National Trust for Scotland.
Since 2018, the Trust has embarked on an ambitious conservation programme to arrest deterioration caused by decades of water penetration thanks to west coast wind and rain combined with problematic materials used by Mackintosh for external weather proofing.
The Hill House is currently shielded by a protective steel box structure, which is allowing its fabric to be dried out in controlled conditions prior to a long-term solution to moisture ingress being applied, with preparatory works for this already underway.
Liz Davidson, the charity’s Hill House project director, said: “We are thrilled to have the Hill House included within this prestigious group of buildings and to have the opportunity to link with their expert curators and researchers.
“We now have access to the very best of international thinking and discoveries in terms of how to maintain, repair, present and interpret modernist architecture at both a material science level and through the incorporation of new technology including digital access.
“As we are just the fifth member of the group from the UK, it also means that domestic dwellings designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh now make up 40% of the UK’s 20th century iconic buildings in the network.”
Natascha Drabbe, founder of the Iconic Houses Network, said: “Iconic Houses is proud that the Hill House, this masterpiece by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, one of the best-known representatives of the Arts and Crafts movement, can now be counted among its members.
“It is an extremely interesting addition, especially in the discussion of how to restore these monuments and preserve them for the future.
“It is the only house where you can temporarily walk along at gutter level and see in detail how it was built and we are eagerly looking forward to returning when the house has been restored to its former glory.”
Pictures by courtesy of the National Trust for Scotland.
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