Entries: Parliament Squared

ENTRANT
Adam Holland and James Palmer

EXPLANATION OF IDEA
Our Proposal for a residential complex for Westminster MP's is sited in Parliament Square outside the Houses of Parliament. Once of the reasons the expenses scandal angered the public so much was the lack of transparency in the way MP's spent tax payer's money. The public had no idea what MP's were doing with our money. It appears that MP's know an awful lot about our lives - CCTV, ID Cards, tax information, spying on our every move. Our proposal aims to reverse this situation and create an architecture that allows the public intimate access to the lives of MP's through the design of the residential complex.

Parliament Square is turned into a new public space, where it is envisaged that the public will carry out demonstration and protests. The residential complex is directly beneath this square and as such, becomes the roof of the new building. Roles are reversed - MP's, traditionally seen in society as above the public now live beneath them with the public walking over their heads in protest. Cuts are made in the surface of the newly formed Parliament Square that gives views down into the living quarters of the MP's. The public are able to see exactly what MP's get up to after hours. Further more, acoustic pipes, embedded in the structure bring sound up from below the building and allow the public to eavesdrop on conversation happening below.

The structure is seen as a large 10 storey cube housing 646 individual rooms for all the MP's. The nature of the structure is a honeycomb maze of internal and external spaces, interlocking throughout the building's 10 stores. The public are allowed access to the all the external spaces while the MP's space, with neither group allowed to cross into the others territory.

Each political party is allocated a region of the building and a number of rooms, which is dependant on the number of seats they hold in parliament. It has been said that politics is like a game of chess, with each party competing for position. As politics is not static and every five years a general election changes their number of seats a party holds, so this changes the number of rooms and amount of spaces each party holds in the residential complex. Due to the grid like plan of the building, every 5 years the building can be reconfigured to reflect these changes in the parties. Like in chess when a piece is taken, so a room can be taken from one party by another. Each party is fighting for dominance over the over the building.