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RMJM is delighted to announce that the Scottish Parliament has made it onto the shortlist for The Scotstyle Top Ten Scottish buildings of the past 100 years. The shortlist was announced following a public vote which included 100 buildings and three RMJM projects. A further round of voting will now take place to determine the winner who will be announced at the Festival of Architecture Finale on 18 November 2016.
Scotstyle said of the building: “The Parliament takes root at the base of Salisbury Crags and flows towards the city like bulging veins beneath a turf skin with a series of tense contour tracks, creating an open, public amphitheatre. This gathering space then predicates the geometry of the debating chamber, establishing it as the heart of the complex. This is highly charged architecture of allegories, signs and symbols.”
Scotstyle is a headline event at The Festival of Architecture and key part of the Year of Innovation, Architecture and Design. Neil Baxter, RIAS Secretary and co-editor of Scotstyle, said: “This brilliant list testifies to the extraordinary quality of Scotland’s buildings. The fact that so many are relatively recent demonstrates that our national architecture is in very good health. We have much to celebrate.”
RMJM, in a unique partnership with Enric Miralles Benedetta Tagliabue, was selected to design the new Scottish Parliament which broke ground in 1999. Recognised as the single most dramatic and outstanding idea in the winning competition was that “The Parliament sits in the land.” The intellectual vision was for a unique institution – open, anti-classical and non-hierarchical. The architecture that expressed this was to be de-institutionalised, aggregated, and organic – embracing the landscape and defying all the canonical rules of architectural composition.
The Scottish Parliament has won widespread acclaim as well as a host of awards since its unveiling. To date it has won the Stirling Prize, the Edinburgh Architecture Association ‘Centenary Medal’, the Scottish Design Awards ‘Best Publicly Funded Building’ and the ‘Architecture Grand Prix’.