Four towers fan out from behind the Debating Chamber forming the Tower Buildings. Towers 1 and 2 house the Scottish Parliament committee rooms and provide office space for committee clerks. Towers 3 and 4 provide office accommodation for Scottish Ministers, their staff and Scottish Parliament staff. The towers are often referred to as the Committee Towers.
All Committee business is webcast live from Parliament TV and details of current and forthcoming business can be found in the Committee section. You can watch a committee meeting from the public seats.
Design Features
Roofs
The roofs of the Tower Building are shaped like upturned boats and are covered in stainless steel.
External panels
The Towers are clad in granite, and feature the same distinctive panels as the Media Tower, some granite and some oak.
Committee Rooms
There are 6 committee rooms, 2 large and 4 small. They seat between 30 and 60 members of the public and media. Each room is fitted with TV cameras to film proceedings as well as an induction loop.
Each committee room features a complex vaulted ceiling and stem-shaped wood panels on the walls. These are part of the acoustic design as well as the aesthetic vision.
Committee Desks
The committee room tables were designed by the architects, EMBT/RMJM, and manufactured by Mivan Ltd. The tables are made of oak and sycamore and all, with the exception of the table in the James Clerk Maxwell Committee Room, are fixed in place. In the centre of the tables there are oak floors raised on steel frames. Below these floors is cabling which support the microphones and voting systems. The table in the James Clerk Maxwell Committee Room is made of a number of small individual units which allow large tables to be formed in different ways, so that the room can be used for a variety of purposes.