And finally - just emerging now - is the MSP's concourse, linking the three main elements of the complex beneath a sequence of boat-shaped rooflights, opening out onto a garden foyer. This was a late entry into the scheme as the brief expanded, and was the last part to be directly designed by Miralles, shortly before his death.

What this is emphatically not is a one-liner building. It is far too poetic, far too subtle, for that. In a way this is a criticism. Where is that Big Ben moment, that White House, that Kremlin moment? Can any building as diffuse as this act as a visual symbol for its nation?

I don't think that it can work in that way. It is not really a building at all, in the accepted sense of an easily reproducible image. If tourists start photographing themselves in front of it, I wonder which part they are going to choose.

What it is, is an immersive experience. It is almost insanely bespoke. No two parts are exactly the same. At times (actually most of the time) it is positively wilful. It is a kind of magic kingdom, the oak panelling almost the only component part which relates it to the traditional British parliamentary building.

Just how true is it to Miralles? How much of what we see is by him, and how much by the Edinburgh-based executive architects, RMJM? It doesn't matter, though my feeling is that it is imbued with the spirit of Miralles. Will it come to be seen as great? Yes, I think it will. Also greatly, lovably, eccentric. And will there be more problems and scandals to come? But of course.

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