Scottish Parliament Building
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The Scottish Parliament Building is the home of the Scottish Parliament at Holyrood, within the UNESCO World Heritage Site in Edinburgh. The Members of the Scottish Parliament held their first debate in the building on Tuesday, September 7, 2004. The formal opening by Queen Elizabeth II took place on October 9, 2004. It was designed by the Catalan architect Enric Miralles who died during the course of its construction.
The buildings
The Parliament Building is actually a complex of several buildings with a total floor area of around 29,000 m² (312,000 square feet), providing accommodation for the 129 MSPs and around 1,000 parliamentary staff and civil servants. The buildings include:
Debating Chamber
The Debating Chamber contains a shallow horseshoe of seating for the MSPs. Galleries above the main floor can also accommodate a total of 255 members of the public, 18 guests, and 34 members of the press. The roof, reminiscent of an upturned boat, is supported by a structure of laminated oak beams joined at a total of 112 stainless steel connectors (each slightly different), which in turn are suspended on steel rods from the walls. In entering the chamber, MSPs pass under a stone lintel that was once part of the pre-1707 parliament building, Parliament Hall.Tower Buildings
Tower Buildings contain six committee rooms with curving white plaster vaulted ceilings, and the offices of Ministers plus parliamentary and government support staff.
MSP building
The MSP building contains offices for each MSP and two members of staff, fitted out with custom designed furniture. The building is between four and six storeys in height, and is clad in granite mosaic. The famous 'Think Pods', which give each MSP a bay window projecting out of their office, are located on the Reid's Close façade of the building, supposedly inspired by Henry Raeburn's painting "The Reverend Robert Walker Skating on Duddingston Loch". At its north end the building is six storeys high (ground floor plus five) stepping down to four storeys (ground floor plus three) at the south end.Canongate Buildings
Constructed behind a retained facade, the Cannongate Buildings behind house IT, finance, procurement and information offices.Queensberry House
Originally dating from 1667, Queensberry House has been extensively refurbished to provide facilities for the Presiding Officer, Deputy Presiding Officers, the Chief Executive, and various parliamentary support staff.Media Tower
A separate Media Tower has been constructed adjacent to the Debating Chamber to provide media facilities.Public facilities
The facilities for the public include meeting rooms in Tower Buildings, and a restaurant, education centre, exhibition space, and a shop below the Debating Chamber.Other features
On many of the buildings there are a series of 'trigger panels', constructed out of timber or granite. These have been variously said to represent anvils, hairdryers, guns, question marks or even the hammer and sickle, but shortly after the building's official opening Enric Miralles' widow, Benedetta Tagliabue, revealed that the design is simply that of a window curtain pulled back. [link]Reaction
Public reaction to the design of the building has been mixed. In the first 6 months of the building being open to the public, 250,000 people visited the building, which Presiding Officer George Reid has said showed the public were "voting with their feet" [link]. Critics of the building, such as Margo MacDonald, have pointed at that the high number of visitors do not prove that all of them like the building.Architectural critics have generally given the building favourable reviews. Charles Jencks, Jonathan Glancey of The Guardian [link], and Hugh Pearman of The Sunday Times [link] are amongst those who have written favourably about it, though others, such as Giles Worsley of The Daily Telegraph, have been less kind [link].
The building has won a number of awards, including an award at the VIII Biennial of Spanish Architecture, RIAS Andrew Doolan Award for Architecture, and, most notably, the Stirling Prize, Britain's highest architecture award.
Construction
The construction of the Parliament Building proved controversial in a number of respects: the decision to construct a new building, the choice of site, the selection of a non-Scottish architect, the selection of Bovis as construction manager after having earlier been excluded from the shortlist, and serious cost and time overruns.
The then Secretary of State for Scotland Donald Dewar was adamant that a new building should be provided for the new Parliament. Work commenced in late 1997 with the demolition of a brewery on the chosen site. The alternative site of the Royal High School was rejected on grounds of size and location.
In January 1998 an international competition was announced by the Scottish Office to find an architect to build the Parliament, and in early 1999 the Catalan Enric Miralles was chosen, with the design work being awarded to EMBT/RMJM (Scotland) Ltd, a Spanish-Scottish joint venture design company created for the project.
Miralles' design was radical and highly complex, involving a series of towers and an open-plan debating chamber. The most distinctive external feature was a roof in the shape of upturned boats. After the Scottish Parliament came into existence in June 1999, the size of the building was increased by 47%. The September 11, 2001 attacks in New York meant that further costly security measures were added to the designs.
The project was also complicated by the deaths in 2000 of Miralles and Dewar, and existence of a multi-headed client (consisting of the Scottish Parliament Corporate Body, the Presiding Officer, and an architectural advisor), who took over the project from the Scottish Executive (formerly the Scottish Office) while it was already under construction.
By March 2004 the architects had issued around 18,000 orders for changes in the design, and the cost had reached the sum of 430 million pounds (compared to an original budget of 55 million in July 1998 when the architects were appointed). This equates to 85 pounds for each of the five million people in Scotland [link]. Final costs are expected to come in around £470 million once teething problems have been ironed out in the building's first year.
Fraser Inquiry
In May 2003 First Minister Jack McConnell announced a major public inquiry into the handling of the building project, headed by Lord Fraser of Carmyllie. The inquiry was held at the Land Court in Edinburgh and took evidence from architects, civil servants, politicians and the building companies.In presenting his report in September 2004, Lord Fraser stated that he was astonished that year after year the ministers who were in charge were kept so much in the dark over the increases in cost estimates. He also stated that the building could never have been built for 50 million pounds, and that he was amazed that the belief that it could be was perpetuated for so long. He believed that from at least April 2000, when MSPs commissioned the Spencely Report to decide whether the building should continue, it should have been realised that the building was bound to cost in excess of 200 million pounds. Furthermore, approximately 150 million pounds of the final cost was wasted as a result of design delays, over-optimistic programming and uncertain authority.
Among the criticisms were:
- Despite having only an outline design, the designers RMJM/EMBT (Scotland) Ltd stated without foundation that the building could be completed within a 50 million pound budget. Despite that, they were apparently believed by officials. The two architectural practices in the RMJM and EMBT joint venture operated dysfunctionally, and failed to communicate effectively with each other and the project manager. The death of Miralles also gave rise to a substantial period of disharmony.
- The Brief emphasised the importance of design and quality over quality and programme, and was not updated despite considerable evolution of the design.
- Ministers were not informed of grave concerns within the Scottish Office over the cost of the project, and officials failed to take the advice of the cost consultants.
- The Scottish Office decided to let the construction work as a "construction management contract", rather than under the Private Finance Initiative in order to speed construction, but without properly evaluating the financial risks of doing so, and - in a decision that Fraser stated "beggers belief" - without asking Ministers to approve it. This was one of the two most flawed decisions.
- The second most flawed decision was the insistence on a rigid programme. Officials decided that rapid delivery of the new building was to be the priority, but that quality should be maintained. It was therefore inevitable that the cost would suffer. The client was obsessed with early completion and failed to understand the impact on cost and completion date if high-quality work and a complex building were required. In attempting to achieve early completion, the management contractor produced optimistic programmes, to which the architects were unwise to commit. The main causes of the slippage were delays in designing a challenging project that was to be delivered against a tight timetable using an unusual procurement route.
Reaction to the report
Following the report Jack McConnell stated that the Fraser recommendations would be fully implemented, and that fundamental reform of the Civil Service was already underway, with trained professionals being recruited to handle such projects in future. John Elvidge, the top civil servant in Scotland, admitted that best practice had not been followed and apologised for the way the project had been handled. He did not rule out the possibility of taking disciplinary action against civil service staff.Fraser recommendations
In his report, Lord Fraser set out a number of recommendations stemming from his inquiry. The recommendations cover the:
- Selection of designers, consultants or contractors
- Use of international architects
- Use of "construction management" contracts
- Importance of following European Union procurement rules
- Use of independent professional advisers
- Project governance
- Amendments to Scottish legislation
- Security measures
- Amendment of the procedures of the Scottish Parliament
- Importance of contracts, bonds and guarantees.
Further Problems
On 2 March 2006, a beam in the roof of the Scottish Parliament collapsed during a debate, causing the evacuation of the debating chamber and the suspension of business.[link]Parliament moved to other premises while the whole roof structure was inspected. and remedial works were carrried out. The structural engineers, Arup, stated that the problem with the collapsed beam was entirely due to the failure of one bolt and the absence of another. There was no design fault.
For two weeks following the collapse, full sessions of parliament moved to The Hub, a converted church near Edinburgh Castle. Subsequently, business shifted to two Holyrood committee rooms that were converted into a makeshift chamber for two weeks before the Easter recess. Business returned to the debating chamber on 12 May.
The final snag list for Scottish Parliament building, made before responsibility for repairs passed from the building contractors to the parliament, identified 890 outstanding snags.
See also
External links
- Parliament
- [Lord Fraser's report]
- [Reaction of the political parties on Scotland Today]
- [Interview with John Elvidge (.ram file)]
- [Review of the building in The Guardian newspaper]
- [Photos of the building complex]
- [RMJM Architects website on the project]
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