Toronto Star

If a single structure could change a country, the most obvious candidate might be Scotland's new parliament building. Nothing like it has ever been seen here, and likely never will be again. Designed by Barcelona architect and visionary Enric Miralles, who died in 2000 while it was under construction, the Scottish Parliament proposes a grand post-imperial view of democracy as an enormously complex process not dominated by a few powerful individuals but by a cast of thousands. This is a building — actually a cluster of five buildings — that reverses the notion of the national legislature as a place that towers above the landscape, a beacon of state power. The Scottish Parliament reinvents the political system as a city within a city, a community set apart yet deeply connected to its surroundings.