Buildings as powerful and individual as the new Museum of Scotland happen very rarely indeed. This is a monumental, and monumentally rich, piece of architecture. To encounter it suddenly in the Eidinburgh streetscape is to be brought up short. Its impact is visceral. The essence of the city and of Scottish history has been distilled and concentrated into one supremely symbolic, semi-abstract, object. The collection it houses seems a bit thin, but that hardly matters any more - new museums attract people through their architecture, not their contents. But how on earth, in our herbivorous times, was meaty, gamy, architecture as good as this allowed to happen?
At one point, it seemed as if it wouldn't be. Back in 1991, when the Anglo-Scottish architects Benson and Forsyth won the competition for Scotland's first national museum, there was huffing and puffing from the Prince of Wales, who sulked that he hadn't been consulted. But Wales is another country, Charles's influence on matters architectural was already in steep decline, and the Scots were none too bothered. After a momentary pause, they got on with the business of fund-raising and stuck with their winning architects.
The design looked intriguing back then. Now, after years of refinement, a quite astonishing amount of detailed work by Gordon Benson and Alan Forsyth, and an all-in cost of around £50 million (£32m of that being the building, the rest being devoted to assembling and conserving the displays), it has fulfilled its promise. Too many contemporary buildings could have been designed by any one of a number of architects, or by a committee of them: not this one. Too many buildings are merely shells fitted out inside by others: not this one, which is as strongly tectonic inside as it is out. In an age of standardised buildings made of globally-sourced components that clip together like Airfix kits, this is a glorious, hand-crafted, one-off.
It looks like a fortress and to an extent it is. It has a perimeter wall protecting a higher central "keep" - a device to relate both to the high existing Royal Museum to one side on Chambers Street, and the lower buildings of Greyfriars on the other. It is clad in thick, beautifully-dressed blocks of glowing Scottish sandstone. Its great fat walls are punched with apertures ranging from huge windows with heavy stone mullions to tiny arrow-slits and pinprick holes. It sits on the line of the old city wall. And it has a cylindrical, freestanding bastion, set right on an important street intersection, that acts as the main entrance. But the ensemble effect is anything but rough-hewn. On the contrary, this is as high-precision and sharp-edged as masonry can get. Nothing is left to chance. As Gordon Benson stands outside in the late afternoon sunshine and we admire the crisp stonework, he reveals that he drew the individual size and position of each stone in the facade. Just as he and Forsyth drew each individual item in the collection, in its correct place. This is attention to detail bordering on obsession.
All the windows have a specific function - usually to frame a particular view of the city outside as you travel round the interior. As Benson puts it, "If a window seems to ask a question, it always provides an answer". One of the main views thus framed in different ways from a number of points is Edinburgh Castle - in particular its semicircular bastion known as the "Half Moon Battery" which is echoed by the Museum's own tower. But the internal views are just as important. This is not a "black box" museum.
