Scotsman.com

Everywherew around, in Scotland and across the world, huge new buildings are appearing - thrusting structures that seem unrelated to any kind of context or precedent. Some people attack them, branding them carbuncles and so forth, while many architectural critics gush with equally effusive praise. As a historian, it is my belief that we are on the crest of a wave, and that set-piece "signature" buildings like the new Scottish Parliament have had their day. It won't be the first time that a movement of swaggering architectural modernity has been left looking architecturally - and morally - bankrupt. In the late 1960s and 1970s, the victim of disillusionment was the so-called original Modern Movement, as it bulldozed its way through the remnants of the Victorian age.