Inspired by a Clash of Cultures.
Inspired by the Medusa heads in the Basilica Cisterns underneath Hagia Sophia, this thesis explores the potential and implications of turning architecture on its head to address the rising political discomfort at the European Parliament. By deliberately misusing the existing parliament building, the project calls for and expresses the exigency for a different and more equitable future.
This project uses political forms and their functions embedded in one’s memory against themselves. By delocalizing the existing plenary hall and deliberately using it as an ornamental canopy that now acts as a public space of gathering, the misused architecture questions the validity and inevitability of function known political forms use to maintain their power. The methodology of interrogative design and resultant deliberate misuse of existing political architecture questions its initial identity and opens a space of possibility for people to uncover/discover a less habitual and routinized sense of their own agency.
