Far from the Westminster model: Holyrood is made up of a series of distinct buildings, each with its own peculiar personality
and noticing that there is a soft rain falling on the slate rool's outside your window. So the MSl’s' ollices have vaulted concrete ceilings that make them feel like monastic 3 cells. They have window ' seats that allow members to climb tip into a rounded wooden perch and read or think. Will they do it'.’ And what will those ol'lices look like. covered in the detritus ol. political lil'e'.’ \Vho knows‘.’ But the members and their stall have been offered personal. individual spaces. The l'acade on the west is like no other: it is a rock lace. pierced by a series of irregular cave- like openings that reflect the shape ol‘ the window seat inside the thickness of the wall.
It sits at right angles to Queensberry llouse. originally btrilt in l()()7. and rntrtilated over the years by successive occupiers. With nothing left ol‘ the interiors. Miralles‘ strategy in bringing it back into use was to create entirely new interiors within the shell of' what survives. At ground level. the block is linked to the MSPs' ol’l’ice and the debating chamber by way of a l'oyer. And that lover is roofed with a structure that is the physical realisation of Miralles’ presentation of the drawing and the leal’. (ilass' rool' lights create a sort of landscape. inside and out. The civil servants leading the project were asked to deliver a building that would accommodate a system of government based on collaboration and consensus. Above all there was a belief among those planning the project that it should not look anything like the Westminster parliamentary model. It it did. it would risk being understood as a del’erential ol‘l’shoot of a metropolitan original.
Scotland. or at least the political and administrative elite that claimed to speak for the country. wanted to show that it had lel’t Westminster politics behind. Scotland wanted a supposedly gentler. more constructive physical model for its parliament. After a protracted argument. .\liralles ended tip giving lidinbur‘gh a gently curved. crescent-shaped debating chamber. It takes more than an adjustment to the seating arrangements to
THE INSPIRATION
Bamboo
Not quite sure about this one. The bamboo detail is most in evidence as bars across the windows of the MSPs cells but it is picked up throughout - not least in a small garden of real bamboo beneath the windows themselves. The Parliament shouldn't feel bamboo-ed by Miralles: the facade of his design for the Venice Institute of Architecture is covered with a scribble of the stuff.
instill collaborative spirit into a bad tempered assembly. But it
Miralles could not make MSPs be nicer to each other. he could give them a ravishingly beautiful space to meet in. His subtlest move was to create a sense of" ambiguity about
the debating chamber. It is the heart ol‘ the building. btrt it does ‘ not instantly reveal itself as such. lt takes a careful look at the
building to understand where it is. for it is only one among a
whole series ol‘ sculptural elements that make tip the building.
But the business of this parliament will take place jtrst as
much in the six committee rooms. built in a cluster of towers.
.‘ at the back of the debating chamber. or in the television i studios in the press tower that sits over the Royal Mile. or the
corridors that link the chamber with the MSPs' ol‘lices.
This is haute couture architecture: every door. every
14 THE LIST 9—2;: Sep 200.:
THE INSPIRATION
Monastery
Each office is a monk's cell, a place where MSPs can contemplate in isolation before passing into the wider corridors. The parliament rs more like a collection of structures than a traditional parliamentary building. and the MSPs' offices are kept separate from communal areas. in much the same way that monks' cells are set apart from chapels in monasteries. By walking in groups from a solitary place, they can mentally prepare themselves for communal activities such as voting and shouting.
. z...“ .. Mi
,3..-
’q " 1'“ ;'Priif .. I . H "" ' v -335"? 3/71; I ’ fl - 5.723225%? fl] , . ‘,~‘I‘ f -I - 4552551fi£16;.3 r ‘.13UK 0"
'The building should arise from the sloping base of Arthur's Seat and arrive into the city almost surging out of the rock.’ said Enric Miralles. On the Canongate side. the smooth concrete is impregnated with roughly hewn granite. while the leaf-shaped debating chamber is orientated so the predominant view for our legislators is of Arthur‘s Seat. From which sight, no doubt. they are to conclude that they are puny mortals. engaged in little more than a game.