On Landscape Leaders: Charles Rennie-Mackintosh

We asked leading figures of landscape to recall the people who have had a significant influence on their life, work or practice.

Jo Watkins on Charles Rennie-Mackintosh and Will Alsop

There was never any single influence on my professional life. Magpie-like I hoarded information for reuse at some later undetermined time. There were tutors who taught me the elegance of a beautifully drawn line or who expressed delight in cultural references as diverse as the development of cities, or the first source of Bluebeat records in Britain (it was in Brixton). I discovered Hoskins.

I was urged to learn my craft and to write with brevity. As students we were rapacious, exploring all things landscape and many things that were not. As young professionals we began to formulate our own tentative philosophies and learnt how to apply all this stuff.

Through his work and that of his contemporaries who were working in metal, printing and ceramics I found I was able to make sense of this cultural soup which I had been force-fed and began to understand the relationship between time, art and the built form. Mackintosh is not to everyone’s taste and these days is perhaps a little passé, but I was gob smacked. I loved his drawings, his use of colour, the fact that he painted, and above all that he paid great attention to detail. It all made sense. The way he designed everything for his clients, right down to the cutlery. His paintings of the south of France are worthy additions to any gallery.

His motto (actually J D Sedding’s) “There is hope in honest error, none in the icy perfection of the mere stylist” has followed me wherever I have worked or taught. I have tried my best to pass it on to anyone who was polite enough to listen.

I also liked the fact that because The Glasgow Style wasn’t fashionable in 1983, you could find second hand books with covers designed by Talwyn Morris for about two quid.

And then years later, as something of an antidote to the Glaswegians, I stumbled across the work of Will Alsop. I was at a lecture at The Bartlett where Alsop chain-smoked throughout while discussing what, at the time, was probably his highest profile building, the Cardiff Bay Visitor Centre. He described this lovely spaceship-like structure in great detail until finally, towards the end of his talk, he lit one last cigarette and offered up as his main point of influence for Cardiff– a classic elliptical Bic lighter. Simple, elegant, adaptable and probably cheap– a quantity surveyor’s dream.

The lesson of course was that the richness of fine art is one thing and the beauty of simplicity another. Both invaluable. Like Mackintosh, Alsop painted – there may be a connection.

By the way, if ever you want to see an early Alsop, pop in to the Eagle in Farringdon Road where you will find a metal staircase he designed.

Jo Watkins is a chartered landscape architect and Past President of the Landscape Institute. He is a member of the LI Awards committee and Editorial Advisory Panel. He has taught at the University of Greenwich, London Metropolitan University and at the Bartlett School of Architecture. Jo sits on the Advisory Board to the Dean of the school of Architecture, Design and Construction at the University of Greenwich.