Parliament for the Region North of Portugal, Braga

Representative architecture? What is a parliament supposed to be nowadays? A place for meeting of thoughts and proposals between citizens and representatives. The assumption of the Parliament understood as the monumental building, dreary and locked in itself. The natural enviroment is settled as the joint between the building and its public space.

The main aim of this proposal is to achieve a space, not only inside the Parliament itself but also linked to a rich, public space that attracts the citizen and that allows and encourages an inner dialogue, civic and common for both. This is, to my understanding, a Parliament. Therefore, the Parliament will be the core of confluence of the whole society needs and, as a consecuence, a main part in general and particular decision-making that daily affects all the citizens from North Region of Portugal. Inescapably with this pretext, the project will be a generator of a public space where multiple activities will take place, as assemblies, protest marches or cultural activities. The organism will be located on the central part of the patch, articulating its different accesses and relating this way with the green central spot linked by the river and its floodable area. The necessary steps of protection will be taken to prevent the flooding of the building, furthermore achieving a rich relation with the floodable area, contact or dilute limit that will vary in the different seasons of the year. In order to accomplish dialogue between extremities A and B, a canal-space of transmission C is needed, a spatial context that configures a common and determined atmosphere, it is the corridor space where the idea is to live the area feeling in the place. In the purpose, this relating value will be the natural environment, that not only surrounds the building, but also is a part of it. The intent is to achieve a space for dialogue supporting in the richness of the physical enviroment surrounding and configuring the building as the central piece of the park. The territory, balanced on scale and shape, will condition the disaggregation of volume projected onto a compact volume. A compact volumen of these dimensions will mean returning to the concept of monumentality. Formally, the building will allow visuals and the creation of courtyards by volumetric adaptation sensitive to the place, looking for transversal permeability of the building.