The Senate in the Sun's Embrace
Design Thesis
MArch Architecture, Year 2
The senate building acts as the facilitator of the World Historical Cycle through the linking of each epoch to a parliamentary typology (the dictatorial classroom, the confrontational opposing benches, the all-encompassing circle, and its decaying form, the horseshoe). The engagement of light and kinetic elements spatially embody the fluctuations in solar energy and political engagement to generate an experimental architecture. This signifies the cycle of potential change within political culture; the steady humdrum of the known, its disruption with the engagement of the masses, and the subsequent return to sameness as the people become disengaged with politics once again. Thus we encounter an architecture constituted of a 19th century building exploring a 20th century theory in architectural means, to produce an upper house better suited to a 21st century democracy.
