On December 11, 2020, the Swiss Parliament in Berne urgently accepted an initiative to allow congress members (Nationalrat/Conseil national) to vote remotely due to COVID-19, and a few days later, Sophie Michaud Gigon, the Green Party Representative from the Canton Vaud, became the first parliament member in Swiss history to cast a vote virtually, without being physically present in the parliament.
This significant break with a long tradition – the requirement of physical presence in the Swiss parliament dates back to the Landsgemeinde of the Middle ages where the physical assembly of citizens in one public space was of primordial importance for debates and voting – prompted the Swiss parliament to start a reflection on the possible consequences of the virtualization of parliament.
In this studio, we will help the Swiss parliament with this task. We will explore the opportunities and threats of virtualizing the parliament, and design a new type of political infrastructure for “res publica,” ie., for civic engagement, accountability, personhood and direct democracy, that integrates virtual and physical architectures. Our site will be a combination of virtual and physical interventions (acupunctural or pop-up architectures) in Switzerland.
The studio will be organized in three interconnected phases. Phase one will focus on the relationship between geometric form and political power and analyze parliament activities, such as voting, debating, informing, legislating, whistleblowing, lobbying, in detail.
Phase two will tackle the notion of virtualization, and examine the translation of political relations into cyberspace. Ordinarily this phase will be conducted entirely in virtual reality using VR headsets.
Phase three will involve the design of a political infrastructure as an interface for citizens in distributed communes to authenticate, access the virtual parliament and participate in the res publica.
The studio will culminate in a final project that combines results from the three phases to develop an updated, architectural expression for future democratic processes: a personal interpretation of the virtual parliament and the design of a political infrastructure on a precise site in the Zurich Vorstadt; a temporary social space to empower citizens at the periphery and enable political engagement, accountability and direct democracy.