My beautiful workplace from the air

Thanks to my splendid colleague, Dr Robert Proctor, and a very kind Jesuit priest at St Aloysius Church, today we went up the bell tower to take some rare aerial views of The Glasgow School of Art, where we both work. Over the past couple of months, the School of Design, facing the famous Mackintosh Building across Renfrew Street, has been demolished and so presently there is a unique unobstructed view from the church tower. Already, however, pile-driving has commenced as the first stage of the construction of a new School of Design, scheduled for completion in 2013.

The Mackintosh Building, in which my office is located in the basement, facing the cleared site. This is a masterpiece of late-Victorian and Edwardian aestheticism, the masterwork of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, in case anyone didn't know:

 That rarest of views - a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, in fact.

 The view west, looking across the Garnethill district (above) and the view south, towards the City Centre (below):

 The view north-east towards the Cowcaddens flats

 Decomissioned bells:

 St Aloysius was designed by the Belgian architect Jean Ménart, a GSA graduate, and completed in 1910. Within, it contains the sort of detailing I really like about RC churches - garish colours and didactic decorative panelwork: