Photo: Old College sky

Threatening sky over the Old College of the University of Edinburgh.

While it is well known that the building is by Robert Adam, the dome is not and is a much later addition: the observant will notice that it is a rather disparate addition and not in harmony with the rest of the building.

Photo: The power of Scotland

Designed by Catalan architect Enric Miralles, the Scottish Parliament has won a number of architectural awards, including the 2005 Stirling Prize.

The Scottish Parliament is (by some degree) the most incoherent building I have ever seen. Renowned postmodernist Charles Jencks described it as “quite a meal” – faint praise indeed. A very strange mix of post-modernism, brutalism and vernacular architecture, individual bits of the building are spectacular, but the whole is little more than a regurgitated mass of juxtapositions and alien iconographies.