Areas of Flexibility

The areas of flexibility that I am proposing to focus on in my design are that of stucture and space.

The Structure
As my addition to parliament house will not always be in use I am planning it to be able to function differently when it is not needed for public forums. I also plan that the core stucture of the spaces will be permanent, and the disscussion areas (the majority of the space) be semi permanent, retractable stuctures, so that when they are not needed they are not there.

Retractable Roof

Sliding Roof

Vertical Pool

The Spaces
As there will be varrying numbers of people interested in different issues the size and number of spaces for discussion will be different each time. I propose that the spaces are flexible so they can create the required space for each meeting. To do this I plan on making the walls non permanent. External walls of glass that can be floded down from the roof when required, internal walls of water to make private and semi private spaces.

The overriding concept for the design is presence only when in use, this means that the entity will be minimally visible when not in use. The roof structure over the meeting areas will retract and the core room will remain.

 As these core rooms can not be physically removed the structure cannot disappear  completely however there is open spaces between these rooms that can be removed.

The core rooms will act like a jigsaw puzzle.

Different shapes interlock in different ways and can be moved out in many different ways.

The ways in which the rooms move create the spaces in between.

As the rooms in the core will be over two levels, level on being the publicly accessible areas and storage, level two the private offices and administration, the way in which the shapes interlock becomes a lot more three dimensional as rooms on each floor require different amounts of space.