Holyrood’s £48,000 per year awards tsar claims second success in concerted effort to rebrand parliament

Scratch the surface of the Scottish Parliament’s Stirling Prize win and it is clear that Saturday night was not just a victory for a barnstorming piece of architecture.

When John Gibbons strode to the stage in the Edinburgh Museum to pick up the gong and £20,000 cheque with Enric Miralles’ widow, Benedetta Tagliabue, the latest stage in a carefully planned and well-funded campaign by the parliament to rehabilitate the image of its scandal-ridden home was complete. Gibbons had been paid good money to secure the award for the politicians and he had succeeded.

Six month’s before the announcement of the prize, the parliament took on its retired chief architect, working part-time for £48,000 a year. A large part of Gibbons’ job was to win awards as well as to provide technical advice. Only the week before the building had won the £25,000 Andrew Doolan Award for the best building in Scotland.

Gibbons had been criticised in the independent Fraser inquiry into the procurement for both leading the project team and being on the body that oversaw it. Despite this, he was given the stage ahead of the hands-on designers, including former RMJM managing director Brian Stewart, who led the design team with the late Miralles.

Stewart looked on from his seat, but was not mentioned on the night or in the citation. The citation lauded Gibbons’ “vision and dogged determination” and said that the building was his as much as late Scottish first minister Donald Dewar’s.

The promotional effort behind Holyrood has also extended to sponsoring an official history by acclaimed architecture critic Charles Jencks, contributing financially to a TV programme by production company Wark Clements, and commissioning filming by Murray Grigor. Further filming by Grigor could now be used for a DVD on the building, which would be released to complement the Wark Clements production, The Gathering Place, which will be shown at next year’s Edinburgh Festival.

Gibbons is open about his motivations and there is no suggestion of any inappropriate lobbying of the Stirling judges.

“We have very much targeted getting the project better known through the awards system,” Gibbons said. “The Stirling was the most important international and the Doolan the most important locally, so to get them both was terrific.”

Gibbons admits that the controversy surrounding the building’s past is one of the reasons it has been pushed so hard into the public eye, and that he and the rest of the team feel “vindicated” by Saturday night’s award.

“If the world around you is constantly seeking answers to questions, just in responding to them, you tend to put a lot of information into the public domain,” he said. “That’s what generated the level of activity.”

RIBA president Jack Pringle, who was on the judging panel, said: “I was aware that it would be a controversial decision and of the controversial background to the project but it seemed to me that there were political issues and intrigues that we as architects could not get into, and that we should not base our judgement of the building on the controversy surrounding an original budget that was deeply flawed.”

Scottish architectural journalist and commentator Peter Wilson said: “They got it because there was no other client or no other set of architects that wanted or needed it as much. The best validation has always been the Stirling Prize and there was no way they weren’t going to bust a gut to make sure they got it.”

Wilson added that the executive has been careful to present the building as the work of the late Enric Miralles, whose outstanding talent is widely acknowledged. But it remains unclear how much of the design Miralles developed before his death. The role of the joint architect, RMJM, has been played down significantly.

The £20,000 prize cheque was presented to Miralles’ widow on Saturday. Tagliabue was joined on the stage by Gibbons but no-one from RMJM.

Stewart, RMJM managing-director during the project, left the practice earlier this year. At the time of his departure, RMJM managers suggested he had taken indefinite leave suffering stress caused by the seven-year project and the resulting public inquiry.

It has since been claimed that he was forced out by senior figures at the practice as the scandal associated with the parliament was brushed under the carpet. Six other senior RMJM staff have resigned since Stewart’s departure.

Stewart said: “I’m relaxed about [not accepting the award]. I know what I did. I’m just pleased to have been involved with it and have been right from the outset.”

Its victory was greeted with jubilation by some on Saturday night, but with anger and even boos from others. Some claimed it would damage the reputation of the profession and pointed to O’Donnell & Tuomey’s Lewis Glucksman Gallery as the rightful winner.

The professional view

Gordon Murray, former President of RIAS
“I was surprised but pleased. It’s extremely important for British architecture and advances architectural language in the same the Pompidou Centre did in the 1970s. I wouldn’t like this to be seen as a victory for Scotland. It’s a victory for international architecture of international stature.

Peter Rogers, director, Stanhope
“It is wrong to praise profligacy and that is what they have done. I think it shows a degree of arrogance in ignoring the broader issues. The building has won the award for meeting a very limited number of people’s perception of what is good design.

Gordon Masterton, president of the Institute of Civil Engineers
“The Stirling Prize clearly has now set itself as an arbiter of excellence in architectural design, whatever the cost. Fair enough as long as the public recognise that, which they will do now.”

Rab Bennetts of Bennetts Associates, also shortlisted for the Stirling Prize
“We never expected to win, but I struggle with [the Scottish Parliament winning]. Most people on our table were stunned. Some architects think it’s great, but it’s the others — the contractors and clients and consultants — who were completely stunned.”

Francis Ives, chairman of quantity surveyor Cyril Sweett
“It’s outrageous. It’s ‘sod off’ architecture that says costs don’t matter, I will design what I want to design and ignore the budget and the programme. Any project that goes so over budget shouldn’t be considered [for a prize] at all. Good architecture isn’t expensive.”

The view at Tate Modern

Marc Wilson, 36, photographer
“In general I think it’s a good thing. The Scottish Parliament is the start of something really significant, so it’s important that it gets to make its mark. What will happen inside is as important as the physical structure.”

Jez Clark, 40, landscape architect
“When things go over budget there’s a knee-jerk reaction against them, but it does look a very interesting building, one I would definitely go to see if I were up there. Good architecture can cost money.”

Karen Lamb, 31, logistics manager
“It wasn’t the most inspirational building on the list for me. I preferred the BMW factory. It was so innovative to generate a working environment like that. Holyrood was just the most public building and the best known, so perhaps it won by default.”

Jane Johnson, 32, design student
“I think it’s a beautiful building. It looks like a great place for politicians to go to work: really light and airy and comfortable. You hope that it might change the way they work. It’s a very busy design with lots going on, like the little contemplation spaces. I love the height of it too.”

Richard Trupp, 32, sculptor
“It went over budget, but that’s no reflection on the architect. I don’t think it should be judged on the budget, it should be judged on the architecture.”

BD’s view

The building is an amazing piece of architecture. We tipped it to win and we think it’s the best on the shortlist. But it should not have won. The decision, however pure in its intent, plays disastrously into the hands of a public which considers architects aloof and superior. Worse, an industry that already lacks trust in architects’ ability to lead is given more reason to reduce their role.

Because a building that is over budget and over schedule is considered a bad building, Holyrood’s victory sells architects short for years to come. There will be more than one project whose quality is compromised because the architect is marginalised by a client with Holyrood further forward in their mind than before Saturday night.

There were other incredible contenders on the shortlist. This time, the jury chose wrongly.