Email: cdoumpioti@gmail.com
Instagram cdmpcdmp
Publications : researchgate
DOC 234—34/2
EPFL
MxD lab
Studio Team:
Jef HUANG (professor)
Doumpioti C
Johanes M.
Kim F.
Ledermann G.
Jef HUANG (professor)
Doumpioti C
Johanes M.
Kim F.
Ledermann G.
Invited Speakers:
Space Popular: Civic Architecture
You+Pea : VideoGame Urbanism
Bryan Ford: AI +Politics
Virtual Parliament studio, examined the integration of virtual and physical architectures in political infrastructure. This involved exploring virtualization in politics and its impact on civic engagement, accountability, and direct democracy.
The studio was structured in three phases. The first phase analyzed global parliament typologies, focusing on the interplay between geometric form and different forms of politics and communication. In the second phase, we delved into virtualization, investigating political relations in virtual reality.
The final phase involved designing a political infrastructure, serving as an interface for citizens in distributed communes to engage with the virtual parliament. The culmination of the studio was a comprehensive project that synthesized insights from all phases, presenting a novel interpretation of the virtual parliament.
The studio was structured in three phases. The first phase analyzed global parliament typologies, focusing on the interplay between geometric form and different forms of politics and communication. In the second phase, we delved into virtualization, investigating political relations in virtual reality.
The final phase involved designing a political infrastructure, serving as an interface for citizens in distributed communes to engage with the virtual parliament. The culmination of the studio was a comprehensive project that synthesized insights from all phases, presenting a novel interpretation of the virtual parliament.
Héloïse Lauret & Carolin Hinnekeuser
The project addresses the growing disconnect between citizens and the political process, a context marked by outdated top-down governance models that fail to reflect the diverse needs of modern societies. In response, the project proposes a dual approach to enhance citizen-centric participation in politics.
Firstly, it introduces a comprehensive community engagement network, leveraging both physical spaces and virtual platforms. This network is designed to facilitate direct citizen involvement in policymaking, ensuring policies are reflective of actual community needs. It harnesses digital technology for real-time data sharing and transparency, making the decision-making process more inclusive and informed.
Secondly, the project suggests reimagining the role of the parliament to include real-time citizen participation in discussions. This approach aims to rebuild trust in political institutions by making them more responsive and accountable. The strategy includes using vacant urban spaces in Bern for political engagement, creating informal meeting places for public discourse on current issues. Additionally, a virtual hub is proposed to offer an overview of these physical spaces and their events, promoting broader participation.
Rida Perret & Viviane Vu
The concept envisions a singular virtual platform functioning as an archive or search engine, offering a new way to access the intricate connections present in referenda. Designed to be intuitive like navigating physical spaces, it serves as a tool for citizens to become informed, providing a virtual environment for instinctive exploration.
Complementing the virtual are satellite structures in public spaces like parks and squares across Switzerland, designed to merge the virtual and physical realms, fostering social interaction and political discourse. These installations, adaptable to their environments yet consistent in information delivery via dome-shaped screens, draw inspiration from the referendum analysis against the free-trade agreement with Indonesia. This analysis revealed a solar system analogy, with stakeholders influencing one another like planets in orbit.
Mapping these relationships visualizes the forces at play and the varying scales of influence, from federal to district levels, symbolized by a network of satellites. The virtual space, depicted as an all-encompassing sphere, is chronologically organized, with the outer galaxy representing one of the four annual referenda and its key events. Inner galaxies illustrate the stakeholders' networks, linking data with its publication date. This spans from Facebook posts to TV debates, newspaper articles, official press releases, or federal announcements, all centralized in the virtual archive for accessibility.