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

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.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.