As our society has entered the age of the digital, several problems have risen from the unprecedented amount of information circulation. While indeed the benefits of this instant access to information and data cannot be overstated, one cannot ignore problems such as misinformation. With that in mind, comes the problem of how could architecture deal with a society that is ever more dependent on the immaterial world provided by the digital in the context of politics.
This is where the parliament as a building typology factors in. It represents the intersection between political institutions (and by extension the societies they serve) and architecture. As such, the graduation project aims to explore how a parliament would look like in the context of an information society.
In short, the proposed answer of the project is injecting a higher degree of publicness to the parliament typology as stressing the physicality of such a political institution is ever more important. By trying to be more inviting to the public and more hones and transparent in regards to how its institution operates, the architecture of the New European Parliament emphasizes why actively engaging the public is crucial in an information society.

Financing Architecture: How The Urban Fabric of Manhattan Has Been Shaped by Money investigates the urban fabric of Manhattan, from single building case studies to larger scale urban planning developments, through the lens of money. The thesis introduces Manhattan’s grid layout, a result of the Commissioner’s Plan of 1811, its purpose being that of establishing the historical framework as well as actual urban design framework in which the rest of the analyzed buildings sit in. Moving on from the city-wide scale, the scope of the thesis narrows down to the neighborhood scale, exploring how developments such as the Grand Central Terminal are the result of newfound forces driving the design of architecture in modern times and how these same developments have effects which ripple around their surroundings. A transition is then made towards the study of skyscrapers, detailing how zoning laws have impacted their design and why those same laws were put in place. Finally, the thesis reaches its apex by tackling the symbolism of the 432 Park Avenue needle skyscraper, a building which plays a more important role in the trading market, rather than in the sheltering sphere, something which signals an entirely new way of understanding this type of expensive architecture. Ultimately, by constantly shifting the scale of focus, as well as addressing architectural projects of varying typologies and urban functions, this thesis hopes to emphasize that Manhattan is a product of a design motivated by finances, a far cry from more historically established cities such as London or Paris.