Scottish Parliament - Building

Building

Since September 2004, the official home of the Scottish Parliament has been a new Scottish Parliament Building, in the Holyrood area of Edinburgh. Designed by Catalan architect Enric Miralles, some of the principal features of the complex include leaf-shaped buildings, a grass-roofed branch merging into adjacent parkland and gabion walls formed from the stones of previous buildings. Throughout the building there are many repeated motifs, such as shapes based on Raeburn's Skating Minister. Crow-stepped gables and the upturned boat skylights of the Garden Lobby, complete the unique architecture. Queen Elizabeth II opened the new building on 9 October 2004.

In March 2006, one of the Holyrood building's roof beams slipped out of its support and was left dangling above the back benches during a debate. The debating chamber was subsequently closed, and MSPs moved to The Hub for one week, whilst inspections were carried out. During repairs, all chamber business was conducted in the Parliament's committee room two.

Read more about this topic:  Scottish Parliament

Famous quotes containing the word building:

    It would be naive to think that peace and justice can be achieved easily. No set of rules or study of history will automatically resolve the problems.... However, with faith and perseverance,... complex problems in the past have been resolved in our search for justice and peace. They can be resolved in the future, provided, of course, that we can think of five new ways to measure the height of a tall building by using a barometer.
    Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)

    Culture is a sham if it is only a sort of Gothic front put on an iron building—like Tower Bridge—or a classical front put on a steel frame—like the Daily Telegraph building in Fleet Street. Culture, if it is to be a real thing and a holy thing, must be the product of what we actually do for a living—not something added, like sugar on a pill.
    Eric Gill (1882–1940)

    The rage for road building is beneficent for America, where vast distance is so main a consideration in our domestic politics and trade, inasmuch as the great political promise of the invention is to hold the Union staunch, whose days already seem numbered by the mere inconvenience of transporting representatives, judges and officers across such tedious distances of land and water.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)