Designs on Democracy by MacDonald Stuart

Author:MacDonald, Stuart
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781780996394
Publisher: John Hunt Publishing
Published: 2012-12-13T16:00:00+00:00

16

NO PLACE FOR A PUBLIC HANGING

The reviews of the new Scottish parliament building in the professional architecture press have – with minor qualifications – been overwhelmingly positive. None, however, has seen fit to mention the art bedecking the interior walls of the building.

Indeed, what is uniformly remarkable about those reviews is their focus on the artistry of the architecture itself. Never has the word ‘poetry’ been used so much in the analysis of a building. Ellis Woodman, writing in Building Design, summed up Miralles’s designs as ‘uncommon poetry’. For Neil Gillespie in the Architect’s Journal, the building represents an act of imagination bringing together ‘politics and poetry’. For Deyan Sudjic in Architecture in Scotland, it is a ‘delicately wrought romantic poem’. And the Guardian’s Jonathan Glancey was moved to describe the structure as ‘magical’.

What is art for? The question has been asked down the ages. Certainly art is more fashionable and popular than ever, and debates rage about its accessibility or otherwise. But what art is good for in the context of the parliament building is an entirely different matter. It seems to have stirred little debate, as if it were a fait accompli when, in fact, it could be seen not only as a violation of the design aesthetic of the building but an obstacle to a wider and much-needed discussion about design in Scotland.

Miralles’s big poetic idea was to create not a building but a landscape into which he could embody the complexity and romanticism of the Scots identity, and which would simultaneously reflect the growth of the democratic ideal. It is a building, therefore, that overflows with imagery, iconography, symbolism and metaphor.

From Le Corbusier in Chandagar to Norman Foster in Berlin, it is something that every architect in the last century charged with the gargantuan task of designing a parliament building has sought to achieve. Whether, according to your view, Miralles was a romantic maverick, hedonist or visionary, all of the professional critics are agreed that he was undoubtedly the architectural artist of his generation.

What is also certain is that the parliament building is full of art – sculpture, drawing, design – all of it Miralles’. It is the only building in Scotland for years, maybe since Mackintosh’s School of Art, that might justifiably be called a Gesamtkunstwerk, a total work of art. So why is it necessary to fill it with quite alien wall-hangings, photographs, sculptures and paintings, setting up in the process a totally unnecessary contest between art and architecture?

That there have been more column inches in the Scottish press about the parliament’s art than its architecture is down to the fact that no Scottish newspaper employs a professional architecture critic. Therefore, by default, there is a totally one-sided conversation. It has even been suggested that the fact that the artworks are difficult to place in the parliament was the fault of the architect for not creating sufficient space for art. Thus, there is a double failure – an inability to recognise and celebrate architectural

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