Some Views on the Scottish Parliament

[rhythmaning]

I have mixed views about the Scottish Parliament building, which I have criticised before.

But last weekend, I found myself admiring the architecture. I was there almost by accident – I was off chasing the cowparade, and we walked down the Royal Mile to Holyrood. This wasn’t the way I would usually walk there: the most direct way – if I were walking up Arthur’s Seat, say, or going to a show at the Queen’s Gallery – is over Calton Hill and along Calton Road. Whilst I have been around Holtrood several times since the Parliament opened, I have never been inside, and I can’t have paid too much attention to the detail of the building.

Walking to Holyrood down the Mile gave me a different perspective: I saw the side of the building – more a conglomeration of buildings with a cohesive view than a single building; I was met with poetry from Scottish poets and pictures from local schools.


(Edwin Morgan is the poet laureate for Scotland – I am not sure if that is an official or unofficial title, but he serves that purpose; poems of his were read at the opening of the building.)

Odd views of the famous window-pods – where members of the Scottish Parliament – MSPs, our representatives – can sit and think (if they are lucky enough to get one of those rooms, of course) – caught the angle of the sun, shining. It is aid that the pods were designed to follow shapes from a famous painting – the Reverend X skating on Duddingston Loch - and I am not quite sure I got that; but they were beautiful.





The curved roofs, designed by Enrico Morales to resemble to hulls of upturned boats, were silhouetted against the stark volcanic crags flanking the mountain. The cladding – steel, perhaps – was wonderfully pitted and bent (deliberately, I hope), sh that it caught shadows and courted light, shining with contours.





The main entrance still made me think of a bus shelter – or the entrance to an airport (Stansted, perhaps), but even there the detail of the struts was rather beautiful.



We walked all the way around the building, and in each view the level of detail was exquisite: the railings on the north side mirroring the bas-relief on the south – and I’m probably wrong, but I felt echoes of Rennie MacKintosh in those designs.





Looking at the building that way – from a different direction, and with a view of art (I was there for the cows, a public art display; I wasn’t after function) – made it a thing of beauty. Expensive, perhaps – though barely more than the office complex I work in, and far more rich in exterior design.

I still haven’t been into the Parliament, but I must; it’ll be interesting to see if I am disappointed or not.