My friend and fellow architect Mick Duncan, who has died aged 86, imbued his architecture with human scale and proportion, whether for the extensive buildings for Stirling University, at Victoria Quay housing the Scottish Executive in Leith, or in the modest yet stately headquarters for United Distilleries in Edinburgh.
Working on the new Scottish parliament building was his most demanding task. The design was won in competition by the Spanish architect Enric Miralles, with Robert Matthew Johnson-Marshall (RMJM) as the local collaborators. Mick, as a director of RMJM, was named as associate architect. The project dominated his life from the mid-1990s until the building opened with much fanfare in 2004. The completed work is a dramatic presence facing Holyroodhouse in the medieval heart of Edinburgh.
