Design and democracy
Gavin Stamp questions the reasoning behind the proposed Scottish Parliament building The buildings which constitute the glory of Edinburgh, and which entitle it to be called the modern Athens,' wrote the great Alexander Thomson of Glasgow, in discussing the Greek Revival, 'were the fruits of that movement and of the concen- trated intelligence of British society, which at that time had its seat in our northern capital.' It remains a city of ravishing physi- cal beauty, the perfect union of the Classi- cal and the Romantic, its monuments reflecting that glorious period when enjoying the boon of being without politi- cians — intellectual life flourished. After all, nobody now visits Edinburgh for new architecture: indeed, most of the work of recent decades is, at best, mediocre.
But now this is changing, and the prospect is that on the site of an old brew- ery close to Holyrood Palace an extraordi- nary new Parliament House will rise. The design was recently chosen in a limited competition organised by the Secretary of State and won by the Barcelona architect, Enric Miralles, who has said that 'our pro- posal is that Scotland is a land, not a series of cities; it demands construction that is not monumental in the Classical sense' thereby rejecting the dominant character of Edinburgh. Instead, the winning design consists of a disparate assembly of irregular forms which have been likened to upturned boats.
The principal architectural contribution to the current Festival is the exhibition mounted by the Royal Fine Art Commis- sion for Scotland about the Parliament competition. But visitors to the city might well be confused by the fact that one of the Festival venues is the 'New Parliament House' and there, in a fully equipped debating chamber, you can listen to Irish and Ukrainian traditional music, watch Croatian folk dancing or listen (most appropriately) to Roger Scruton's opera, The Minister. But what is this building that the Demarco European Art Foundation is using so creatively during the Festival? It is, of course, the old Royal High School, that magnificent Greek Doric pile by Thomas Hamilton sitting proudly on Cal- ton Hill, which Thomson considered to be one of 'unquestionably the two finest build- ings in the kingdom'. It is. And in the 1970s, at the time of the first Scottish refer- endum on devolution, it was converted for parliamentary use.
So why is this unused New Parliament House not to be the home of the future Scottish Parliament — if only as a tempo- rary measure? The excuse has been that it is too small, although it is hard to see why a nation of 5 million needs a big building and, besides, there is extra accommodation almost next door in Thomas Tait's magnifi- cent St Andrew's House built in the 1930s. But the real reason is that Mr Donald Dewar does not like the High School — he has dismissed it as a 'nationalist shibboleth' simply because the SNP mounted a perma- nent picket outside during the years when it was closed and inaccessible. Although it is visible from all over the city and, as architecture, represents all that was once noble and enlightened about Scotland, the High School is, of course, old and therefore incompatible with the image of New Labour. This might seem a rather superfi- cial way of approaching the problem; after all, the Dail in Dublin is still using a con- verted Victorian lecture hall while for 300 years the English, then British House of Commons (on the whole, quite a successful institution) was content to meet in a dis- used royal chapel. Instead, Mr Dewar chose a far less imposing site and deter- mined that Scotland should have an excit- ing new building on it, up and running before the next election to reflect 'the gov- ernment's stated aim of open government'.
But how does democracy express itself in architectural terms? From Bernini to Le Corbusier, architects have been happiest working for absolute monarchs and dicta- tors, but it would help if democracy at least had a hand in it. And why the hurry? When the old Palace of Westminster perished in that momentous conflagration of 1834, an open competition was held to a brief decid- `You go ahead — I'm running in a new pair of Nikes.' ed by Parliament while work on the win- ning design did not begin until 1840 and was not completed for 20 years. Good architecture requires time and thought, and the result was the finest Gothic Revival public building in the world and a symbol of parliamentary democracy which inspired the design of the others: in Budapest and Ottawa.
More to the point, good architecture requires a client. And the extraordinary thing about what has gone on in Edinburgh is that there is no real client — only the Secretary of State for Scotland. For how can there be a Scottish Parliament building until the Scottish Parliament knows what it wants, and that assembly has yet to be elected? The various short-listed designs on display at the Royal Fine Art Commis- sion show different shapes of debating chamber: some round, some semi-circular (none, of course, rectangular). But should it be up to a mere architect to decide on the plan form which will mould the future development of parliamentary democracy in Scotland? 'We shape our buildings and then they shape us,' as Churchill remarked during the wartime debate on the rebuild- ing of the House of Commons.
In fact, the discussion on the Scottish Parliament has been mostly conducted on a frivolous level. And for one man to push through his politically driven version for the building, at high speed, is really a scan- dal, although few seem to grasp the essen- tial absurdity of the process. It is certainly a first for Scotland. The Americans, after all, waited a few decades after writing the Con- stitution and electing Congress before starting to build the Capitol. And then there is Australia: the Commonwealth was created in 1901 but at first the Parliament borrowed a building in Melbourne, then a provisional Parliament House was built in Canberra in the 1920s and only in 1979 was a competition held for a permanent build- ing at the heart of the new planned city (won by the Americans, Mitchell/Giurgola & Thorp). That is the mature way of doing things.
Whether the historic environs of Holy- rood will be enlivened by upturned boats remains uncertain, for Mr Miralles is now revising his design. He is a serious architect who will respond to the constraints of site and brief — and he might well have won a truly open competition to choose the archi- tectural symbol of a re-emergent nation if the Scottish Parliament had decided it wanted one. But that is not the point. What matters is that whatever is built cannot pos- sibly express open government, for there has not been any; rather, it will represent the last gasp of the Westminster hegemony over Scottish affairs. Perhaps, when they are elected, the new Scottish MPs will decide they would really much rather be on Calton Hill and will rescue the 'New Parlia- ment House' from the temporary cultural use made of it by the admirable Ricky Demarco.
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