Palace of Parliament
Anca Petrescu + design team · Bucharest, Romania · 1997
Bucharest’s Palace of Parliament is one of the largest administrative buildings ever constructed. Initiated under Nicolae Ceaușescu in 1984, the project displaced a vast area of the historic city and mobilized enormous quantities of Romanian stone, timber and decorative craft. Monumental halls, axial corridors and repetitive façades express state power through extreme scale rather than modern structural lightness. Much of the building was structurally complete by 1989, but construction and fit-out continued for years as it was adapted for democratic parliamentary use. Its architecture is inseparable from the political violence and urban restructuring that produced it.