Miralles's widow is ousted from Holyrood

Sunday Herald, The, Dec 9, 2001 by Douglas Fraser

Catalan and Italian creative spirit has mixed uneasily with Scottish thrift in the design and building of Scotland's new parliament. The untimely death of lead architect Enric Miralles left his widow carrying the creative torch for a building now costed at more than quarter of a billion pounds. The pressure is on to cut the bill and to finish it in time for the May 2003 election.

The widow of architect Enric Miralles has been edged out of crucial decisions on the building of the controversial Holyrood parliament, raising concerns among architects that it will lack the landmark Catalan imprint.

MSPs in charge of the project forced Benedetta Tagliabue, whose husband died of a brain disease in July last year, to agree that she will not be allowed to revise any of the plans unless her other partners on the project approach her and ask her.

The Sunday Herald has learned that the move is an attempt to control rising costs, as her ongoing involvement in the design was seen to be delaying final decisions. That has meant financial risk and therefore costs have been increased.

Tagliabue sought legal advice to seek ways in which she could ensure she would continue to have a direct role in finalising design with the Scottish engineers and the parliamentarians. But, having taken that advice, she opted to give way to the pressure to take a more limited, back-seat role.

As one of two partners of her husband's business, EMBT, she became the sole Barcelona-based representative in the three-member design team after Miralles's death. Other members are Brian Stewart and Mick Duncan of the Edinburgh-based RMJM construction engineering firm. Although not an architect, Stewart now takes the lead role in decisions about design and only refers to Tagliabue when he chooses to and when agreed with the parliamentary team.

Tagliabue, 37, a Catalonia-based Italian, was recently involved in designs for landscaping the parliament site in the area that extends from the building into Holyrood Park. Insiders say the designs kept changing, frustrating the rest of the project team.

The landscaping cost is one of the fastest-rising parts of the project. Director Sarah Davidson admitted last month that costs had gone up from the (pounds) 7.5 million she had previously reported to parliament to about (pounds) 14.2m. The initial figure only referred to construction costs, while the additional sum included landscaping, fees and VAT, she said.

News of Tagliabue's sidelining emerged in Building Design, an architects' newsletter, with confirmation from Linda Fabiani, the SNP's representative on the Holyrood Progress Group, who said it was because of growing concern about the building being completed on time.

Tagliabue, who was not available to speak this weekend, is reported to have expressed surprise that an architect has not been selected to act as the point of contact: "I really do want to carry on working [on the project] and my worries will come if I see that is not a possibility."

She recently said the stress involved with working on the parliament, with its political and design problems, might have contributed to Miralles's death by obscuring the symptoms of his brain tumour if not actually causing it. She was particularly critical of the "disastrous" decision to keep the 17th century Queensberry House as part of the Holyrood complex.

Those close to her have been quoted recently as being strongly critical of Scottish Executive civil servants in a row over who is responsible for the rising costs. A friend said there was "no clear vision" and that "the Scots fail to understand the reality of the project". Tagliabue has since distanced herself from these comments.

Margo MacDonald, the Lothians SNP MSP and a consistent critic of the handling of the Holyrood project, argues that the latest move to give the key decision-making role to Brian Stewart means that the building is no longer a Miralles project.

A spokesman for the Scottish parliament stressed that Tagliabue remained part of the design team and argued that her new role was part of the process of moving from design to delivery of the project. He said: "Fast-track construction is now our priority. To ensure that continues, the focus has to be on an accepted, single point of contact with the design team.

"The responsibility for delivery has been handed over to the Edinburgh office. We're down to the issues of how the roof will stay together, rather than the design of the roof. There's still design for Benedetta to be involved in, such as the constituency wall running around the outside."

The roof is one of the trickiest problems for the construction project, with expert engineers Ove Arup trying to invent a new way of tying together the hull-shaped ridges of the main part of the complex.