Consider Enric Miralles - the man who has dared to come up with a satisfyingly non-corporate, geological outcrop of a building, complete with boat-shaped roofs, the whole design reeking of determinedly primitive symbolism. For Miralles, who is Spain's most interesting architect and a well-regarded international visiting professor, this would be the first big step onto a broader stage following a scattering of smaller projects across Europe.

Miralles and Scotland could both gain from their liaison: for it always reflects well on a city and a country to select rising talent rather than the usual established names. Miralles is completely open about what it would mean to him. As far as his professional practice is concerned, he told the jury: "We have the feeling that this project could be a crucial step in our professional career". As a Catalan - from that independently-minded, semi-autonomous Spanish province - he appears to understand something of the character of Scotland. His idea of relating the Parliament to the surrounding landscape rather than merely to the nearby buildings is a touch of brilliance. Whether he succeeds, depends on whether you choose to commit to his statement that "Scotland is a land?it is not a series of cities".

Miralles and his Edinburgh-based collaborators RMJM are, in global terms, small fry compared with the others on the list. Richard Meier, for instance, is one of the world's most successful architects, both critically and commercially. At times during the past decade, it sometimes seemed as if no international art gallery or museum or headquarters building shortlist was complete without Meier's name on it. His crisp white buildings are as instantly recognisable in their way as the melting, shimmering forms of his fellow American Frank Gehry. In 1997 Gehry produced the astonishing titanium-clad Guggenheim in Bilbao: Meier trumped it with the vast bony acropolis of the Getty Center in Los Angeles.

Now 64, Meier has shown signs of moving away slightly from the formal geometry of his best-known work. With Glasgow's Keppie Design, his entry for the Parliament building, with its offset bastion of a debating chamber, bears some similarities in this regard to his competition-winning new church in Rome to mark the year 2000. However, all architects like to plan their buildings on "grids", usually related to the surrounding streetscape and topography: this grid-planning can become obsessive and Meier is more prone to it than most. Meier has noted that there is a clash at the foot of the Royal Mile, where the grid of the Old Town - as represented by Queensberry House, which all the contenders are obliged to keep - suddenly skews into the grid of Holyrood Palace. He accordingly inserts a building like a wedge of cheese into his complex to swing it round abruptly to align with the Palace. This is crude.