Scottish Parliament Building
The Scottish Parliament Building is the home of the Scottish Parliament at Holyrood in central Edinburgh. Construction of the building commenced in June 1999 and the Members of the Scottish Parliament held their first debate in the new building on 7 September 2004. The formal opening by Queen Elizabeth II took place on 9 October 2004. Enric Miralles, the Spanish architect who designed the building, died before its completion.
From 1999 until the opening of the new building in 2004, committee rooms and the debating chamber of the Scottish Parliament were housed in the General Assembly Hall of the Church of Scotland located on The Mound in Edinburgh. Office and administrative accommodation in support of the Parliament were provided in buildings leased from the City of Edinburgh Council. The new Scottish Parliament Building brought together these different elements into one purpose-built parliamentary complex, housing 129 MSPs and more than 1,000 staff and civil servants.
From the outset, the building and its construction have been controversial. The choices of location, architect, design and construction company were all criticised by politicians, the media and the Scottish public. Scheduled to open in 2001, it did so in 2004, more than three years late with an estimated final cost of £414 million, many times higher than initial estimates of between £10m and £40m. A major public inquiry into the handling of the construction, chaired by the former Lord Advocate, Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, was established in 2003. The inquiry concluded in September 2004, and criticised the management of the whole project from the realisation of cost increases, down to the way in which major design changes were implemented. The original lintel from Parliament House which housed the Parliament of Scotland until 1707 was installed above the debating chamber in the new parliament building.
Despite these criticisms and a mixed public reaction, the building was welcomed by architectural academics and critics. The building aimed to achieve a poetic union between the Scottish landscape, its people, its culture and the city of Edinburgh. The Parliament Building won numerous awards including the 2005 Stirling Prize and has been described by landscape architect Charles Jencks as "a tour de force of arts and crafts and quality without parallel in the last 100 years of British architecture".
History
Pre–1707
From to 1707, the Parliament of Scotland served as the national legislature of the Kingdom of Scotland, except for a period during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. For most of its existence, Scotland's Parliament did not have a regular meeting place; between 1438 and 1561, it usually met at the Old Tolbooth, Edinburgh and from 1538 onwards in St Giles' Cathedral. By the 1630's, the Cathedral was becoming inadequate due to the increasing number of Scottish MPs, resulting in the construction of the Parliament House, Edinburgh, which served as Parliament's meeting place until the Acts of Union 1707. The act unified the kingdoms of Scotland and England into the Kingdom of Great Britain, dissolving the Scottish and English parliaments and established the Parliament of Great Britain, which was based in London like its English predecessor. As per the terms of the treaty, Scotland sent 16 Scottish representative peers to the House of Lords and 45 MPs to the House of Commons.Scottish devolution
On 11 September 1997, amidst an increase in Scottish nationalism, a devolution referendum was held in Scotland which approved the establishment of a directly elected Scottish Parliament to legislate on most domestic affairs. Following this, the Scottish Office, led by the then Secretary of State for Scotland, Donald Dewar, decided that a new purpose-built facility would be constructed in Edinburgh, to house the Scottish Parliament. Dewar was appointed as the inaugural first minister of the country, serving in the position until his death in October 2000, and subsequently began being referred to as the "Father of the Nation" for his work in achieving Scottish devolution.Design
Following on from the site selection, the Scottish Office announced that an international competition would be held to find a designer for a new building to house the Parliament. A design committee was appointed under the chairmanship of Dewar, and was tasked with choosing from a shortlist of designs. Proposals were submitted from internationally renowned architects such as Rafael Viñoly, Michael Wilford and Richard Meier. Twelve designs were selected in March 1998, which were whittled down to five by the following May. The five final designs were put on public display throughout Scotland in June 1998. Feedback from the public displays showed that the designs of the Spanish architect Enric Miralles were amongst the most popular. The design team took account of public opinion on the designs and invited all five shortlisted entrants to make presentations on their proposed designs before announcing a winner.On 6 July 1998, it was declared that the design of Enric Miralles was chosen, with work being awarded to EMBT/RMJM Ltd, a Spanish-Scottish joint venture design company created for the project. Construction, which was undertaken by Bovis Lend Lease, commenced in June 1999, with the demolition of the Scottish and Newcastle brewery and the beginning of foundation work to support the structure of the building. Miralles sought to design a parliament building that could represent and present a national identity. This intractably difficult question was tackled by displacing the question of identity onto the landscape of Scotland. In a characteristically poetic approach, he talked about slotting the building into the land "in the form of a gathering situation: an amphitheatre, coming out from Arthur's Seat", where the building would reflect a dialogue between the landscape and the act of people sitting. An early goal of the design was to open the building and its public spaces, not just to Edinburgh but to a more general concept of the Scottish landscape. Miralles intended to use the parliament to help build the end of Canongate—"not just another building on the street...it should reinforce the existing qualities of the site and its surroundings. In a subtle game of cross views and political implications."
The result was a non-hierarchical, organic collection of low-lying buildings intended to allow views of, and blend in with, the surrounding rugged scenery, and symbolise the connection between nature and the Scottish people. As a consequence, the building has many features connected to nature and land, such as the leaf shaped motifs of the roof in the Garden Lobby of the building, and the large windows of the debating chamber, committee rooms and the Tower Buildings, which face the broad expanse of Holyrood Park, Arthur's Seat and Salisbury Crags. Inside the buildings, the connection to the land is reinforced by the use of Scottish rock, such as gneiss and granite in the flooring and walls, and the use of oak and sycamore in the construction of the furniture.
Construction
Initially, three sites in and around Edinburgh were considered as possible locations for the building, including St Andrew's House ; New Parliament House ; Victoria Quay at Leith docks and Haymarket on the vacant railway goods yard, in the west end of the city. The Holyrood site was not entered into the picture until after the official closure date of the competition between the three sites. The date for announcing the winner overran and on the date of the expected announcement instead it was announced that they were going to "rethink their decision" and add the Holyrood Brewery site into the running. However negotiations with the brewing company Scottish and Newcastle, who owned the land, resulted in the company indicating that they would be able to vacate the site in early 1999. As a consequence, the Secretary of State for Scotland agreed that the Holyrood site merited inclusion on the shortlist of proposed locations. The Scottish Office commissioned feasibility studies of the specified areas in late 1997 and in January 1998, the Holyrood site was selected from the shortlist.As part of the construction process, archaeologists conducted excavations of the site. These investigations found several phases of use of the site before it became the parliamentary complex including some evidence of prehistoric use of the area but not significant amounts, and evidence that a boundary ditch for Canongate was the first major structure in the area and then later plots were created by Holyrood Abbey to gather rents. In these plots various activities took place such as gardening and leather tanning. As royal patronage of Holyrood Abbey continued to rise the area saw more high-status properties with gardens appear in the area. Further evidence suggested activity during the post-medieval period. With the construction of Holyrood Palace, the area became very prestigious and many of the properties were brought up to form larger townhouses, one of which became Queensberry House. The archaeologists found evidence that Charles Maitland, Lord Hatton may have converted the kitchen of Queensberry House into a workshop to illegally skim money from the Royal mint, Lord Hatton was a Master of the Scottish Mint. During the early modern period, with the opening of the New Town, there was an exodus of the wealthy from the area and it went into decline. From 1825 until construction started on the new parliament building, the eastern half of the site became a brewery and Queensberry House was converted to a barracks and later to a House of Refuge.
MSPs began to move into the building complex in the summer of 2004, with the official opening by the Queen taking place in October of the same year.
Parliamentary complex
Location
Comprising an area of 1.6 ha, with a perimeter of 480 m, the Scottish Parliament Building is located 1 km east of Edinburgh city centre on the edge of the Old Town. The large site previously housed the headquarters of the Scottish and Newcastle brewery which were demolished to make way for the building. The boundary of the site is marked by the Canongate stretch of the Royal Mile on its northern side, Horse Wynd on its eastern side, where the public entrance to the building is, and Reid's Close on its western side. Reid's Close connects the Canongate and Holyrood Road on the southwestern side of the complex. The south eastern side of the complex is bounded by the Our Dynamic Earth visitor attraction which opened in July 1999, and Queen's Drive which fringes the slopes of Salisbury Crags.In the immediate vicinity of the building is the Palace of Holyroodhouse, which is bordered by the broad expanse of Holyrood Park. To the south of the parliamentary complex are the steep slopes of Salisbury Crags and Arthur's Seat. The Holyrood and Dumbiedykes areas, to the west of the site, have been extensively redeveloped since 1998, with new retail, hotel and office developments, including Barclay House, the new offices of The Scotsman Publications Ltd.