Nationalism and urban design: the parliament houses of Canberra and Bangkok

Abstract

ABSTRACT Both Canberra and Bangkok have in recent times invoked design competitions to initiate new Parliament buildings. The Canberra case was in a tradition of open international competition, that of Bangkok limited to Thai architects, with both bringing ‘the nation’ into deliberation. In each, the design needed to negotiate an established urban landscape: in Canberra an urban design of axial set-pieces, formal and geometric, of largely US derivation; in Bangkok, a less ordered urban landscape, organically evolved over centuries. The resulting urban design complexes raise questions of how the idea of the nation is to be represented in urban space.