Wardog gave me the inspiration for this post because, as I said earlier, he believes the Scottish Parliament building is architecturally remarkable.
I don't think the above photograph is particularly flattering but it is what you see from that angle. The one I posted earlier today is much more flattering (if you can flattering a building).
Many times I've considered trying to set up a poll on this blog and this subject seems a perfect opportunity. The poll concerns the exterior of the Parliament. In the right hand side column you will see my effort so please vote. I will leave the poll open for 7 days.
Comments are open as usual on this post so feel free to express your thoughts!
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53 comments:
First time for you Eh Subrosa?
what was it like not disappointing i hope....
now just lean back have a lovely ciggy and relax
London's little joke. Paint it black and colour one in the Scottish flag colours.
Sends a message to Westminster that they mean business, despite the vilification and hand washing over Gaddafi.
Good poll. I love the Parliament building as whole, but as far as the outside's concerned, I like that it's different from every angle you view it. You get a different impression from Arthur's Seat to the Cannongate. The lane at the back gives you another perspective, and the view from one tower to another is different again. I can never tire of it.
It always looks to me as if a wind got up and blew a lot of junk around, and lots of it got stuck to the outside of the building. Maybe if all the crap was scraped off it would look ok.
subrosa,
What a fiddle! (or should that be cello?) I voted that it was okay and I'm registered as 0%.
Actually, it's a lot more impressive on the inside than the outside.
SR - without denigrating what is an important building to all who believe in Scottish nationalism - what did it cost? £40+million? SR, you wuz robbed! It is hideous!
Sorry and trust we don't 'fall out'!
As startling looking as it is, it remains the most impractical building in Scotland.
The legacy of Mirales and his wife means that the car park - concrete interior can never have a painting hung on it.
The exorbitant costs of the fake bamboo poles made out of oak, whilst wonderful in balmy Barcelona are plain dumb in dreich Reekie.
The bomb proof windows added how much to the cost??
The leaks, the crap food in the canteen, the twisted necks in the chamber, and the seagull shit splattered beams between the chamber and the ministerial tower are noxious!
There, I feel better now.
I think it is fine, and an awful lot better than not having it at all.
SR,
I think it's as challenging as the Guggenheim, certainly as asthetically pleasing. I personally love the inscriptions on the outside wall, I think there's some Runrig there too!
For me inside, I love the upside down imprint of a yawl, for that alone it draws me to it and grounds me, like rubbing earth from home between your hands, it smells and feels familiar.
Whether is stands the test of time, who knows or cares, the fact is it's our despite costing a ridiculous amount of coinage.
However one should enquire what did Westmidden cost to build and then rebuild post the fire? It's still fucking useless as a debating chamber and full of incompetent and perhaps the illiterati of modern life as we know it!
It's dark here, at least Coast was interesting!
Crazy D
For anyone that hasn't visited it two tips.
1. Climb Arthur's seat and look down on it.
2. See those funny stainless steel squiggles on the square outside the parliament, walk around them until they all align and tell me what you see.
PS Some other images here of the exterior and interior
http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/nmCentre/images/latest/index.htm
I preferred it when it was a brewery adjoining a geriatric hospital. Maybe it still smells like both.
I have passed it many times without the slightest curiosity about it or what goes on in it and it did not impress me as a building, with its jokey facade and rather sterile grounds. However, it is there, and its symbolic relations to the nation are undeniable.
I walked through Edinburgh again today and got mild heat stroke, which is a bit like spontaneusly catching fire in the North Sea, but what impressed me, yet again, was that this is one of the best cities in the world.
Oh Niko, your memory is so much better than mine!
I think Westminster know the present government mean business VotR, even though they are a minority.
Auch thanks Belle. I've only seen if a few times but it doesn't convey a 'whole' building to me. It looks as if it's been built piece by piece instead of as a whole.
Vronksy, have to admit the 'bits' stuck on the exterior look cheap to me and completely unnecessary. It could well be that it looks far more streamlined without them.
What do they mean anyway?
John, maybe you need to do a refresh or whatever. I'm not clued up to this poll thing but this site did the tidiest and seemingly foolproof of them all.
Maybe if you try again.
Quite a few folk would agree with you WfW. I've heard 'we wiz robbed' many times.
It's the fake bamboo which looks cheap though Monty and the constantly filthy windows.
Better than nothing then Cruchan, I agree.
Ah CD you're inspired by it and that's good to hear.
Speaking of Runrig, they've a concert on at Scone Palace this Saturday. I've got my ticket sitting on the mantlepiece. Lucky woman I am!
Cruachan has a very good point.
The High school would have been a Shibbeloth.Any Sean Connery who could not say SNP instead of esh en pee would have been executed.
Thank Yahweh for the Labour Party.
But don't eat Halibut yet.
Wardog I would never have enough time to do that when in Edinburgh. It takes over an hour to find somewhere to park apart from deciding what the blobs signify.
What's the point in having something special when it only be viewed from a distance? The frontage of anything is what catches the viewer's imagination.
Ah Jim it was so atmospheric as a brewery and with its uneven floors more so.
Happy days when I was employed by S & N back in the lighter ages.
Goodness me WW, all I got was soaked here. Downpour started without any warning and lasted at least 20 minutes.
It is a lovely city WW, pity it's been like a building site for well over a year. Very off-putting to visitors.
Wardog thanks for the link. See this one:
http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/nmCentre/images/latest/PreviewPages/PreviewPage17.htm
It's just a melee to me. Doesn't convey anything at all other verify the saying that less means more.
Perhaps you have a better interpretation.
Congrats SR on so many responses to what was a 'mistake' by your government.
If only our government's 'mistakes' illicited such a response!
Who funded it - and don't tell me it was the English?!
Subrosa, We weren't just robbed by the cost of this building we were positively fleeced, then, robbed again, then they realised it was a government job and robbed us blind before yet again fleecing us and that's putting mildly. It could look like the best building in the world and I would still see it as a blot on the landscape of Scotland. 414 million for this, we paid more in VAT on it than the initial estimates of the final cost. That's what happens when you use politicians to do a proper job.
Subrosa
Viewing it from Arthurs seat isn't compulsory but you should be aware that the 'winning concept' for the building is that it 'comes from the land', that's what makes it intrinsically Scottish and best appreciated from arthurs seat.
Personally I think that's a beautiful concept that I see all over the facade in it;s cragginess and geometric forms, the cantilevers and cliff like facades.
I'm not sure what you mean by 'it doesn't say anything to me', what does Westminister say to you as a building?
It's a complete gothic fraud to perpetuate the idea of centralised power.
(some might say that's apt given the current shower that reside there...)
Architecture doesn't have to 'say something' and it certainly doesn't need to be the imperial stamp that Westminster is.
Locating it on the Highstreet which has so many historical connotations to do with ceremony, the development of Edinburgh, flodden wall and the inescapable thing that makes edinburgh beautiful and unique, the topography, the land.
It certainly should never have been located on Calton hill in amongst the Georgian grandeur of the high school and neo-classical 'ruins' of the national monument as per the SNP's recommendations at the time.
I find it stunning, the fact that the public are even talking about architecture makes me happy.
Like all the best things, it divides opinion.
You worked at S&N Holyrood subrosa? so did Moridura;¬)
Best idea over though WfW, but wrong position.
As Kirsty says ' location is everything'.
Twas a few barrel of oil WfW, didn't you know.
Yes FL it was extremely badly managed from the very start. That's why so many people I know just refuse to comment upon it because they feel they're being disloyal to the country.
Wardog, I'm all for modern architecture, really I am, but the Parliament is just another building to me. If I didn't know it was there I would walk right past it.
It may 'come from the land' but it's also 'for the people' surely.
Perhaps it's the situation I don't know but I do know visitors who come from outside Edinburgh are seldom impressed by the actual architecture. They don't have time to wander all round and see it from so many aspects.
I saw it from Dynamic Earth and thought it looked dreadful. The stuck on pieces looked appalling to me and the building gave me no sense of grandeur which I expect from something so prestigious.
We'll have to agree to disagree Wardog but I'm pleased you're happy people are speaking about architecture.
The result of the poll will be interesting I think.
I did indeed Conan, way back in erm 1970/71. Was part of a small team in a small area of the business.
It's reported that one or two American commentators have suggested that it might be converted into a mosque.
Its a monstrosity..here is what a parliament building should look like...but that my view:
Canadian parliament in Ottawa
Once on the page scroll down to see it
It's natural for the human brain to seek pattern, order and symetry as comforts - seeing elephants in the clouds, arranging ornaments on the mantlepiece or decorating the Christmas Tree. Perhaps Holyrood challenges our aesthetic orderliness by being unique, higgilty-piggilty and asymetric.
I think it's weird almost like the crooked reflection of a 'normal' building seen by a distorting mirror. It doesn't help that Kirsty Wark was on the selection board.
Why the collage of handguns on the outside walls and Oor Wullies troosers dangling from the washing line on the front of the MSPs main debating chamber desks?
It looks like a bario FFS. Comparing it to the Guggenheim is absurd. Do we want our parliament to look like a post modern museum? Utter crap architecture.
http://tiny.cc/nzpvs
Is that too harsh?
I remember voting on proposed designs in a a wee shop on the Canongate - they were all pish.
Is it Jim, I missed that. :)
Baron, good morning. Thanks for the super link. I do hope others have a look. Some lovely buildings you have there and other posters' parliaments.
Indeed it's challenging Clarinda but for me it has no 'flow' and the stone cladding, well ...
The Guggenheim is something else isn't it Scunnert and, if you approach it from the back, it even more interesting.
All I seem to remember was that the 'upturned boats' was the choice and little else spoken about.
It certainly doesn't take your breath away - the Guggenheim does.
Baron, I find it startling that amongst the parliaments of the world, scotland has the best contemporary building.
The rest are pseudo greek / gothic piles fitting for 19th century imperial government, a concept as a nationalist I've spent a lot of time attacking.
Why would Scotland want to rebuild westminister in Edinburgh?
Subrosa, your comments give the game away, your looking for something classic because you seem to equate power with those types of buildings.
To me, that seems a strangely centralist view of things, surely if it's 'about the people' then it shouldn't be a 'single statement', it should reflect the variety and difference in scotland's people.
The building can't just be 'one thing' 'one statement', to do so in a modern democracy would be a backward step, back to the 19th century.
R,
The picture on your previous post seems to show the place decorated with automatic pistols.
Sharpened screwdrivers would have been more apt.
Wardog, on that site wasn't the SP the only contemporary building?
Yes Wardog, I suppose I expected something in line with Scottish architecture. Solid, austere and perhaps slightly dreich.
May for you Wardog the sum of all the parts of the SP are remarkable and I can understand from a professional view that may well be, but for me it's messy. One example of messy is the 'bamboo' poles - what do they convey other than misplaced bamboo poles?
I did like the photograph taken in the evening though, let's be fair.
Jim I think the bamboo poles are screwed down well.
SR,
Enjoy Scone, I opted not to go having been soaked at Borlum and robbed courtesy of the local hotel.
I also thought last years gig in Edinburgh was a damp squib and the seating was pants - a waste of £400 for 1 night! Hence Mrs Crazy saying we were going on holiday this year instead....We did go and see Parliament though, she doesn't see what the hullaballoo is all about.
Malky is still poorly and they just couldn't cancel Scone, I've hundreds of chums going so you're in for a great night. As a band, I reckon they'll get to the 40 Year Anniversary and then take things easier.
No doubt we'll see you on the dvd next year - be sure and advertise your blog on your t-shirt.
My mate Wolfie is co-ordinating the selling of merchandise at Scone - he's a crazy Dane!
I hope the weather holds out, it'd be nice for a review of the gig on sunday if you're up to it!
Regards
Crazy Daisy
I'm hoping the weather is at least dry CD, today is anything but and the forecast isn't too good.
The reason I'm going is because it's really local - I wouldn't be going otherwise. Fair weather fan I am.:)
I'll look out for your pal but don't expect a review from me, I'm going there to sing along not take notes. ;)
Subrosa
On the bamboo poles at the entrance we can agree, they are unnecessary and clumsy.
I understand that RMJM the scottish practice detailed that part.
Surely Wardog, with having the likes of Jordanstone with a worldwide reputation for architecture, Scotland's architects could have come up with something.
Mind you, I know someone who achieved top marks in his degree and had to go to Germany to get any experience. He now works for a Scottish firm. Like you he prefers contemporary work but he's not overtly impressed with the 'scrappy' pavement view of the building.
The aerial views take his breath away but he agrees with me that not many people have the opportunity to see it from that aspect.
I made a point of asking his opinion earlier today and he was tactful wasn't he. :)
I like it.
I'm not mad about the design although it has beautiful parts. Like any building some of the elevations are less pleasing than others. I agree it looks amazing from above (and you can see some of that from the MSPs' offices too. you don't need a helecopter.(
Most of all though, I love it because it is ours. It's our parliament with our representatives, and even if some of them are pretty dismal and one or two are downright disgraces (if his lordship will excuse me singling hiom out for a mention)they are Scotland's, and that's something to be happy about. More power to their elbow until we have shaken off rule from London altogether as others have done before us.
If it was a tin shed, I'd still love it :-)
I'm pleased you like to Tris because it's important the younger generation have pride in it. My generation aren't important because we've done our bit and now can sit back and criticise. :)
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