Nominated by Scott Liddell, David Baird and about half the Scottish Nation

Photos by Scott Liddell and Charlotte Glascock.

The best thing about the Scottish Parliament is the bike racks, which are really quite natty. Individually, they’re organic, fluid shapes of metal but lined up at the right angle (just as you turn the corner from Holyrood Palace) they form the shapes of bicycles. Very nice.

Not so the Parliament Building itself.

The basic design is a muddle. Edinburgh is full of Scottish Baronial architecture, so creating a building that echoed the past but was not enslaved by it was no easy task. But instead of marrying the traditional with the old, the designers have gone for a cross between underground bunker and modern social housing. It only needs a sprinkling of satellite dishes to complete the effect. The finishing touches – a "bamboo effect" screen on the windows – look like an attempt to improve the feng shui of the building.

Cheapskate

The look of the building might yet have been saved, had they used real stone and British oak. Everything about this building says cheapskate (Except the final construction cost, of course, which came in at a whopping £431 million). Whereas the National Museum of Scotland, a fabulous modern building if ever there was one, is built out of gorgeous, polished, honey-coloured sandstone, the Parliament Building is in grey concrete.

Do the circuit

For the visitor, your first challenge is to find the entrance. The area around the Parliament is usually filled with bewildered tourists doing the full circuit of the building once or even twice trying to work out how to get in. Think The Houses of Parliament; think Edinburgh Castle; quite frankly, think even Marks & Spencer’s. Buildings dedicated to government, power or even selling good quality knickers and bras generally have a clear, even imposing, Way In. The entrance to the Scottish Parliament skulks behind some anti ram raid concrete bollards.

Get one in IKEA

Enter the cramped and dimly-lit foyer and pass through the airport security to an equally dimly-lit hall with low barrel ceilings, reminiscent of a basement wine bar. Except that basement wine bars are usually white-washed. The concrete ceiling, already sweating and stained with damp, bears down on you, bringing to mind the lower reaches of a multi storey car park. Ascend the stairs, the wooden treads already shabby and scratched, to the debating chamber and perch on seats made from moulded plywood veneer - they stock something very similar in IKEA.

This is the seat of government of the Ancient Scottish Nation.

That sinking feeling

As an afterword, there is a tale circulating in Edinburgh (urban myth or fact, who knows?) that the Queen is a tad unamused with the Scottish Parliament, the weight of which has altered the water table at near-by Holyrood Palace, causing problems with the foundations.

This is a sister column to Must See Buildings of Britain. Beastly Buildings is dedicated to Architects and Planners everywhere who put up the tasteless edifices The Rest of Us have to put up with.

If you know a building which has elbowed its way onto the Nation’s hate list, email the editor, charlotte@donowdo.com