Weird, witty and wonderful in equal measures, the Scottish Parliament is surely among the most extraordinary works of contemporary architecture to be unveiled in recent times. It has even been hailed by some as a masterpiece that will be appreciated as such in the future, if not now.
More an architectural eruption than a building in the normal sense, it has the manic, unconventional quality of many of Antoni Gaudi's great works - which is perhaps not surprising because the parliament's conceptual designer, the late Enric Miralles, was also a wayward genius from Barcelona.
There is barely a straight line anywhere, inside or out. Everything apart from the doors and stairs is curved, twisted or warped. And parts of the complex, notably the garden foyer with its leaf-shaped rooflights running this way and that, seem to swirl in space - suspended there just to entertain us.
Miralles's concept was for a parliament that "sits in the land". Though located on Canongate at the end of the Royal Mile, next door to the Palace of Holyroodhouse, it opens out to green swards dominated by the sloping Salisbury Crags. And that Scottish landscape is brought right into the building.
Grass slopes become grass roofs and then turn into concrete beams, with projecting staves of oak that mimic bamboo over the public entrance to the building. These appear again, hung vertically (more or less) on the bizarre bay windows of the MSPs' offices, which also uncannily evoke the spirit of Gaudi.
Trigger-shaped panels of Kemnay granite, Caithness limestone or slatted oak partly occlude the windows, and all are laid in a completely random pattern.
There are wild flourishes, too, notably a 16-metre, gravity- challenging cantilever at the MSPs' entrance.
"The intellectual vision was for a unique institution - open, anti- classical and non-hierarchical", according to RMJM, the Edinburgh architects who collaborated with Miralles. So the architecture is "de-institutionalised, aggregated and organic . . . defying all the canonical rules of architectural composition".
The parliamentary chamber is elliptical rather than semi-circular or U-shaped. Its soaring glazed roof is held up by laminated oak trusses and stainless steel tensile rods, meeting in 114 junctions which are works of art in themselves. Through the huge windows there are panoramic views over the landscape.
There are more seats in the public gallery than in the chamber itself - 207 against 131 - and some of the timber panelling and glass screens on its walls have cutouts that look like outsize whiskey bottles. Miralles saw them as human shapes to remind MSPs that they are being watched even if no-one is there.
All of their laminated oak desks and seats, even the way each microphone becomes a decoration, are straight out of Barcelona. So are the warped vaulted ceilings of the committee rooms and the translucent screens of wafer-thin timber in the lobbies, pioneered by the Zsa Zsa bar in Carrer Rosello.
The complex is mainly naturally ventilated, with "comfort cooling" in the chamber and committee rooms. And though more than 1,000 people will work in the complex, only 65 parking spaces are provided, all at basement level - contrast that with Leinster House's black-topped lawn.
The barrel-vaulted concrete roof of the main entrance foyer, which supports the chamber, is incised with a free-hand version of the saltire motif in the Scottish flag. Outside, on Canongate, the curved blast wall is inset with different types of stone from all over Scotland, some inscribed with the words of famous Scots.
Such deferences apart, the new parliament is as far removed as possible from the dour grandeur of Edinburgh. Enric Miralles brought Barcelona with him and, though he died just as construction got under way, his wife and partner Benedetta Tagliabue saw to it that his unique vision would be realised.