Charles Rennie Mackintosh, a Scottish

Charles Rennie Mackintosh, a Scottish architect was born on 7th June 1868 in Glasgow and died 10th December 1928 in London (Davidson, 2010). He was interior, furniture and textile designer, artist and a watercolourist. He entered the Glasgow school of art and design gained recognition by the school director because of his great work of art. He became part of the Art and Craft movement as a designer and the main representative of the Art Noouveau in the United Kingdom. He was of great influence to the European designs till his death.

One of his philosophies was the creation of functional and practical designs. The main concept that he had was to develop innovative ideas. He wanted designs that were concerned with the present and the future and not history and tradition as the previous works of other architects. His ideas were based on building around an individuals needs and he viewed art work as a need for life but not machines. He believed that an architect was responsible for every aspect of the commissioned work.

He was a visionary designer through his urge to make designs that would be relevant in the modern movement. His designs were greatly influenced by industrial revolution, Asian style and the modernist ideas that were emerging. His commissions include; in 1895 he entered a competition where he submitted his designs. He registered success and became the winning entrant after announcement of the results he then began the construction work of the new the Glasgow school of Art that took place in stages between1896 and 1909 (Davidson, 2010).

This new school had a demonstration of his freshness of style and is a representation of a fascinating into the turn of modernism of the century. The designed it in such a way that the west wing and the right wing of the school were situated on a steep hill running down toward the Sauchiehall street and sloping away from the main north. This was indeed a splendid job presented by him.

This was his first major building commission whose design was quite revolutionary and was unlike anything that had been put up in Europe before. This building gave hi exposure as a radical architect who had the urge to come up with designs that would be appropriate for the century to come. He designed the Hill House in 1903; this was among his most famous works which was his domestic architecture style. It can be considered as second after the school of Art he had previously worked on (McKean & Mackintosh 2001).

He had designed it specifically for a publisher Walter Blackie. In addition to the whole house design he also designed most of the interior rooms, its furniture and other fixings. The attention to detail he had in his work was extended by how he prescribed the color of flowers that Walter would put on the table in his living room so that it would blend in perfectly with the rest of the interior decor. He also designed a writing cabinet which was unique in all aspects.

His greatest public exposure was through the creation of restaurants. In 1903 at the Willow Tea Room he made a conversion of an interior that existed into a dramatic and elegant series of interior furniture, carpet, wall decor, lighting menu, flower vases, cutlery and even waitresses McKean & Mackintosh, (1998). All this were in contrasting themes.