Doming down

As the wrangling begins over who should design the new Scottish parliament building, perhaps the Scottish Office should keep an eye on two lecturers in the Mackintosh School of Architecture, part of Glasgow School of Art.

Charlie Sutherland and Charlie Hussey now form a new architectural partnership that has designed a visual arts centre in Inverness, opening tomorrow. They also won the EMAP Construction Tower Competition at the Birmingham NEC, where they will build a 30-metre high glass tower to mark the millennium. The debate on what goes under the Millennium Dome could perhaps learn from the Inverness centre, whose shop will include beer mats printed with visual jokes and poems and miniature knitted Highland castles.