Scottish Parliament Building

This guide to the Scottish Parliament Building follows Catalan architect Enric Miralles, who studied upturned fishing-boat sheds on a beach at Lindisfarne and decided the new parliament should grow out of the Edinburgh landscape rather than sit on top of it. You'll hear how his hand-drawn collages of rock, water and leaves became the curved timber roofs, ponds standing in for Highland lochs, and leaf-shaped skylights honoring Charles Rennie Mackintosh, and how the project passed to his partner Benedetta Tagliabue after his death in two thousand. Look up at the towers around you and pick out the shapes he borrowed from the shore.