On, then, to Holyrood, where the delicate tensile canopy of the somewhat under-rated Dynamic Earth centre by Sir Michael Hopkins teaches Calton Square a few lessons in how to cope with an important backdrop - in this case, Salisbury Crags. There’s not much else new round here that’s as good. The new “Scotsman” building and its planned neighbour, both by the drearily-named Comprehensive Design Architects, are exercises in hunkering down and trying to look inoffensively bland. Opposite those, it’s a relief to see Allan Murray’s “The Tun” (office and restaurant building, extending a converted brewery building behind). With its forward-leaning glass façade, V-shaped internal columns and patinated-copper sides, the Tun is a touch crude in places, but works well overall: a viable alternative to craven sandstone contextualism. Further up Holyrood Road from here is a new cheap-and-cheerful sports building, called St. Leonard’s Land, for Edinburgh University: one with a big problem. I don’t think I’ve ever previously criticized a building for the noise it makes rather than the way it looks, so this is a first - I heard it before I saw it. It emits a constant roar from its air-handling equipment. I wouldn’t care to live close to that.

Now then, the Parliament building. Well, it’s emerging, down there at Holyrood, but it’s anyone’s guess how true it will turn out to be to the concept of its late architect Enric Miralles. Thus far it looks OK, but God - and the Devil - are in the details. I’m pleased to see that the all-important linkage with the surrounding landscape - the key Miralles move - appears to be intact. Though quite how it costs as much as it does is a mystery. I meet Edinburgh architect Richard Murphy for lunch in his excellent new Oloroso Restaurant, up in the George Street rooftops, and he’s equally baffled. “I’ve tried to work it out, and I can’t understand where all the money goes to,” he says of the £275m project. “The cost of the landscaping contract alone is twice what it cost to build my arts centre in Dundee”.

Murphy is one of the cadre of “high-design” younger Edinburgh architects who is busy enough - his radical reworking of the Stirling Tollbooth as a new arts centre opens shortly, and he has a bulging portfolio of other projects in Scotland and overseas - but who do not normally find themselves considered for the commercial projects that are causing increasing concern. Housing, arts projects, restaurants, some bespoke offices - these things come the way of architects of Murphy’s reputation, but the commercial world tends to go elsewhere. Of the Financial Centre, he remarks: “What annoys me about it is that it’s actually quite expensive.” And he singles out the Scottish Widows HQ, by architects BDP, which some regard as a cut above. For Murphy, it is “A great big boomerang that obscures the castle, a lost opportunity.”

Murphy approves of the Design Czar idea - if it was the right person. “The city should employ, at a high salary, an elder-statesman architect, someone with a lot of talent and experience and contacts. Someone who knows what to do, and who to talk to.” Continental cities such as Hamburg have design-conscious mayors who fulfil this role, Murphy points out, but Edinburgh has no equivalent.