The fire which ripped through the Glasgow School of Art’s historic Mackintosh building was started when flammable gases from a foam canister used in a student project were ignited, according to a report by the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service.
The category-A listed building was engulfed in flames in May, as students were preparing for their final-year degree show. Much of their work was lost, and so was the building’s famous library, one of the world’s finest examples of art nouveau design, which housed many rare and archival materials as well as original furniture and fittings.
The report concludes that the blaze began when a projector ignited gases from the expanding foam, and took hold quickly as gaps in the walls and old ventilation ducts assisted its spread into neighbouring studios and upwards through the building.
The student work in question was made up of foam panels fastened to three walls, with one wall left blank to receive images from a projector mounted opposite. At the time of the incident, visible gaps between the panels were being filled in by applying expanding foam from a canister.
The report also notes that a fire suppression system, designed to enhance existing fire protection measures, was in the latter stages of installation at the time of the fire, but was not yet operational.
Professor Tom Inns, director of the GSA, said: “The fire was an accident and, like any accident, it’s caused by many different factors coming together and conspiring against us on the day. There are a huge number of lessons that can be learned and we’ve been working very hard over the last six months on our health and safety procedures, training and so on.”
Prof Inns added: “We’ve been doing many different things over the summer to learn from the experience and now we go into the process of dealing with the restoration of the building. The report is very detailed about how the fire spread round the building and that gives us a lot of new knowledge that we need to take on board.”
