Following the "Yes" vote on establishing a Scottish Parliament after a referendum in 1997, the Scottish Office, led by the then Secretary of State for Scotland Donald Dewar decided that a new purpose built facility would be constructed in Edinburgh, to house the Scottish Parliament.

Initially, 3 sites in and around Edinburgh were considered as possible locations for the building, including St Andrews House then home of the Scottish Office - later the Scottish Executive; Victoria Quay at Leith docks and Haymarket in the west end of the city. The Holyrood site was not an early contender as it was deemed that it would not be ready in the required timescale. However negotiations with Scottish and Newcastle, who owned the site, resulted in the company indicating that they would be able to vacate the site in early 1999. As a consequence the Secretary of State for Scotland agreed that the Holyrood site merited inclusion on the shortlist of sites. The Scottish Office commissioned feasibility studies of the specified sites in late 1997 and in January 1998, the Holyrood site was selected from the shortlist.

Following on from the site selection, the Scottish Office announced that an international competition would be held to find a designer for a new building to house the parliament. A design team was appointed under the chairmanship of Dewar and was tasked with choosing from a shortlist of proposed designs. Designs were submitted from world famous architects such as Rafael Vinoly, Michael Wilford and Richard Meier. Twelve designs were selected in March 1998, which was whittled down to five by the following May, with the five final designs put on public display throughout Scotland in June 1998. Feedback from the public displays showed that the designs of the Catalan architect Enric Miralles were amongst the most popular. The design team took account of public opinion on the designs and invited all 5 shortlisted entrants to make presentations on their proposed designs before announcing a winner.

On 6 July 1998, it was declared that the design of Enric Miralles was chosen, with work being awarded to EMBT/RMJM (Scotland) Ltd, a Spanish-Scottish joint venture design company, specifically created for the project. Construction on the building commenced in June 1999, with the demolition of the Scottish and Newcastle brewery and the beginning of foundation work to support the structure. MSP's began to move into the building in the Summer of 2004, with the offical opening by the Queen taking place in October of the same year.

The Debating Chamber contains a shallow horseshoe of seating for the MSPs, with the governing party sitting in the middle of the semicircle and opposition parties on either side, similar to other European legislatures. Such an elliptical layout, blurring political divisions, principally reflects the desire to encourage consensus amongst elected members. This is contrasted with the "adverserial" layout, reminiscent of other Westminster style national legislatures including the British House of Commons, where government and opposition sit across from one another. There are 131 desks and chairs on the floor of the chamber for all the elected members of the Scottish Parliament and members of the Scottish Executive. The desks are constructed out of oak and sycamore and are fitted with a lectern, microphone and in-built speakers as well as the electronic voting equipment used by MSPs. Galleries above the main floor can also accommodate a total of 255 members of the public, 18 guests, and 34 members of the press. The roof structure, is supported by a structure of laminated oak beams joined at a total of 112 stainless steel connectors (each slightly different), which in turn are suspended on steel rods from the walls. Such a structure enables the debating chamber to span over 30m, without any supporting columns. In entering the chamber, MSPs pass under a stone lintel - the Arniston Stone - that was once part of the pre-1707 parliament building, Parliament Hall. The use of the Arniston Stone in the structure of the debating chamber symbolises the connection between the historical Parliament of Scotland and the present day Scottish Parliament. Cut into the western wall of the debating chamber are laminated glass panels, of different shapes, intended to give a human dimension to the chamber. At night, light is shone through the glass panels and is projected onto the MSPs desks to create the impression that the chamber is never unoccupied.

The MSP building is connected to the Tower Buildings by way of the "Garden Lobby" and contains offices for each MSP and two members of staff, fitted out with custom designed furniture. The building is between four and six storeys in height, and is clad in granite mosaic. MSPs occupy 108 of the total 114 rooms in the building. The most distinctive feature of the MSP block is its unusual windows which project out from the building onto the Reid's Close façade of the parliamentary complex, supposedly inspired by Henry Raeburn's painting "The Reverend Robert Walker Skating on Duddingston Loch". In each office, these bay windows have a window seat and shelving, which have been called "contemplation spaces" or "think pods". At its north end the building is six storeys high (ground floor plus five) stepping down to four storeys (ground floor plus three) at the south end. Each office is divided into two parts - one for the MSP, with a floor space of 15 square metres and another part for their staff, which has a floor space of 12 square metres.

On many of the buildings there are a series of 'trigger panels', constructed out of timber or granite. These have been variously said to represent anvils, hairdryers, guns, question marks or even the hammer and sickle, but shortly after the building's official opening Enric Miralles' widow, Benedetta Tagliabue, revealed that the design is simply that of a window curtain pulled back.•

The Main Hall of the parliament contains a number of distinctive features and sculptures, including the gold plated "Honours of Scotland" sculpture in the public area of the parliament. Presented by the Queen, upon the opening of the parliament building, the sculpture is based on the actual Honours of Scotland - the crown, sceptre and the sword of the state and combines these three separate elements into one composition.•

The construction of the Parliament Building proved controversial in a number of respects: the decision to construct a new building, the choice of site, the selection of a non-Scottish architect, the selection of Bovis as construction manager after having earlier been excluded from the shortlist, and serious cost and time overruns.

The then Secretary of State for Scotland Donald Dewar was adamant that a new building should be provided for the new Parliament. Work commenced in late 1997 with the demolition of a brewery on the chosen site. The alternative site of the Royal High School was rejected on grounds of size and location.

The project was also complicated by the deaths in 2000 of Miralles and Dewar, and existence of a multi-headed client (consisting of the Scottish Parliament Corporate Body, the Presiding Officer, and an architectural advisor), who took over the project from the Scottish Executive (formerly the Scottish Office) while it was already under construction.

By March 2004 the architects had issued around 18,000 orders for changes in the design, and the cost had reached the sum of 430 million pounds (compared to an original budget of 55 million in July 1998 when the architects were appointed). This equates to 85 pounds for each of the five million people in Scotland *. Final costs are expected to come in around £470 million once teething problems have been ironed out in the building's first year.