And here, at the foot of the Royal Mile, close to the Palace of Holyrood, overlooked by Salisbury Crags, does the Miralles notion of a building that is knotted into the landscape, that is truly of Scotland rather than merely being in Scotland, convince?

I alighted from the night sleeper into a sunlit Scottish morning. Time enough to prowl round before the official tour. I took the path up to Salisbury Crags, and looked down. Despite all the mess of builders with their cranes and dump trucks and site huts and hoardings, the design is indeed emerging as Miralles intended. With this tightly-packed parliamentary enclave, the edge of the city is assuming organic form and sending shoots off into the surrounding landscape, just as the man envisaged. Since the landscaping will be the last part of the project to be completed, it's impossible to give a definitive judgment now, but it is looking very promising.

Given the big, mysterious motifs with which Miralles decorates his buildings, defining windows and walls alike, it is at first surprising that the place does not dominate this end of town and act as a boorish companion to the Palace. But it does not, and this is down to the fact that Miralles broke down his design into so many comonent parts, including the revived Queensberry House. This - though the cost of saving it was immense, and probably unjustifiable financially - acts as a serene backdrop to the architectural gymnastics taking place in front of it. The old and the new play off each other. There's an energy generated by the contrast.

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