THE first recipient of the first Mackintosh/DSB travelling scholarship has been revaealed on the 154th anniversary of Mackintosh’s birth.
Aurora Takami-Siljedahl, a third-year Bachelor of Architecture (Hons) student in the Mackintosh School of Architecture, has been awarded a £2000 scholarship has been created to contribute towards travel costs for a student to undertake academic research related specifically to the work of Charles Rennie Mackintosh.
Read more: New Tolsta is revealed as Scotland's Home of the Year
Aurora won the award for a proposal that will see her offer a very personal response to the designs of two leading exponents of Art Nouveau style: Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Josef Hoffmann. The travel bursary will allow her to immerse herself in the designs of these two great 20th century architect/designers who were known particularly for the “gesamtkunstwerk” (total artwork) approach, which saw them design not only the buildings, but the interiors as well. Aurora will present the outcomes of her research at Mackintosh Queen’s Cross in January 2023.
She said: "I am particularly interested in architecture that employs a holistic design approach and has an emphasis on environmental and social sustainability,.
“Through this research fellowship, I am particularly looking forward to gaining a deeper understanding of the built environment’s impact on user experience.”
Read more: Trust should be appointed to help oversee art school rebuild
The award, which is open to all full-time and part-time architecture students enrolled at the Mackintosh School of Architecture, was established by the Charles Rennie Mackintosh Society, which has been promoting the works of Mackintosh round the globe for almost 50 years.
Stuart Robertson, Director of the Charles Rennie Mackintosh Society, said: "We are delighted to be able to support a new generation of architectural talent in this special award which will extend the research into Mackintosh’s work and the influences that it has had.
“Mackintosh was part of a ground-breaking movement that included architects and designers from across Europe. We are excited that Aurora will look at Mackintosh’s work within this international context.”
The DSB Award has been made possible with the support of the late Deirdre Bernard and her husband Stanley and is a fitting tribute to Deirdre who was a stalwart supporter of the Society.
Professor Sally Stewart, Head of Architecture at The Glasgow School of Art, said they were grateful to the Charles Rennie Mackintosh Society and the DSB Award for this new travelling scholarship.
She added: “Mackintosh himself benefitted hugely from the opportunity to undertake an architectural sketching tour of Italy which winning the Alexander Thomson Travelling Studentship afforded him. We are looking forward to seeing the outputs of Aurora’s research.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here