Parliament is a historic space for debate, collective decision-making and politics. The term can be understood as a symbolic notion where parliament is a political abstract place, or as a physical notion where parliament is an architectural and functional space. In the first case, parliament is a symbolic concept that represents the political power and system in place by being the guarantor of legislative power. In the second case, parliament is a defined and designed place where elected representatives sit and where debates take place. In the broadest sense, parliament is the space where politics take shape.
During the 2014 Venice Biennale of Architecture, the Dutch architecture agency XML presented its ongoing research on “theatres of democracy”. For two years they have visited, photographed, drawn and documented parliaments architecture around the world. In this way, they listed the places of political congregation in the 193 member states of the United Nations. During the exhibition they analysed how the representatives of today’s democracy mainly gathered in a semicircular typological space inherited from the architecture of the Greek theatre of Syracuse. Many parliaments built during the last two centuries are inspired by an ancient architectural structure, which remains a dominant model for contemporary political regimes. Both in the physical architectural sense and in the symbolic sense.