Plenum Places of Power

Parliaments are both representative assemblies of the people and monuments of political and national identity. This catalogue for the Austrian contribution to the 14th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice features 196 national parliaments of the world. It fans out a comparison of the various messages to be conveyed by the architecture of parliament buildings: perpetuity, conformity with historical precedents or the fervent manifestation of a new beginning. However, neatly ordered by name and presented in a homogeneous fashion, their monumentality is somewhat lessened. The cold light of analysis brings forward numerous formal similarities of buildings that serve completely different political regimes.