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The Senate in the Sun’s Embrace

Part 2 Project 2023
Stuart Napier
Nottingham Trent University | UK
The creation of a new upper chamber acts as an opportunity to further decentralise the government of the United Kingdom, improving democratic function to be more representative of the entire nation. Within Manchester (as the capital of the Northern Powerhouse), Lower Campfield Market was previously part of the birthplace of the Northern Powerhouse concept, the adjacent Museum of Science and Industry. It is thus symbolic of the ascension of the North, and the changing focal point of UK parliamentary politics.

The senate building is the facilitator of Chizhevsky’s World Historical Cycle through the linking of epochs to parliamentary typologies (the dictatorial classroom, confrontational opposing benches, all-encompassing circle, and its decaying form, the horseshoe). Light and kinetic elements spatially embody 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 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.


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2023
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