SHAKEN AND STIRRED
The Scottish Parliament building, designed by Enrique Miralles and completed by Benedetta Tagliabue of EMBT after a controversial international competition, is famously eccentric. After walking through I couldn't believe that Scotland chose a design so unorthodox to represent their state. Its geometries, inspired by leaves fallen on a lawn, are purposefully atomized and inconsistent. It presents an image to the city that is agitated, fractured, somewhat unstable, and radically unauthoritative. It doesn't look like a building, certainly not a government building.
After herding us inside a small meeting chamber, our tour guide explained flatly that the Scots possessed "devolved" rights. It was the first time I'd heard this world, which describes a system of partial self-government. The Scots control some branches of their government (including education, health care, housing, and courts), while Great Britain reserve rights over others (including defense, currency, immigration, and diplomacy). As an American, the language made my blood boil. I was standing inside the Scottish Parliament, being told that Scotland wasn't its own country.
And yet the architecture is entirely liberated; audacious in its form-making. Like many buildings with a aggressively sculpted exterior, it interiors are smaller and irregularly shaped, with diminished usable space. Every floor tile, wall panel, ceiling strut, and door frame is uniquely configured; every corner is unique. Miralles died, tragically, during construction, and it's hard to imagine how the building was completed without him. It's as if he had vividly imagined and carried within him each detail of the building. There's no way a set of conventional construction drawings could have described them simply. The structure feels remarkably personal, in both vision and scale.
The building has no discernable center, no simple symmetries, and no governing parti. To get to the heart of it, the Debating Chamber, one moves past other structures, all shaped like leaves in plan. Much of the enclosed space lies between these figures, in open, unprogrammed, in-between zones. The Chamber itself, on the second floor, is shaped like a very large leaf, pinched at its sides, from where one enters. Its clamshell roof is suspended by a cloud of heavy timbers, that peak dramatically to let in light behind the speaker's podium. The scene is visually confusing and architecturally thrilling.
After my tour ended I crossed the street to visit The Palace of Holyrood House, the active home of the British monarchy in Scotland. This big, bombastic sixteenth-century pile of stone saddened me. What do members think as they enter the Parliament for sessions, within eyeshot of the Palace entrance?
And what role does architecture play in crafting statehood? Mirelles' Parliament Building might be the most idiosyncratic, sumptuous, sui generis, institutional building I've ever seen. Its identity remains intriguingly unfixed. It's been left for Scotland to seize, as they like.
Photograph by Andrew Holt.
