De(mock)ratizing the Nova Scotia Legislature: A Socio/Architectural Deconstruction

Abstract

This thesis explores architecture as a mode of criticism. The project interrogates the western neoliberal status quo through an architectural deconstruction of the Nova Scotia Legislature in the heart of downtown Halifax. The legislature represents a stage upon which socio/economic and political hierarchies play out. This project’s critical statement is executed through an adaptive reuse of the existing neoclassical legislature building. The resulting architectural proposal examines how the different social subjects (building users) interact and how existing hierarchies can be made explicit and questioned. The project’s narrative examines the interrelation of its subject through the decentralization and manipulation of the existing legislature’s programmed spaces. The architectural folies that result from the legislature’s deconstruction are then articulated in ways that interrupt their associated hierarchies.