Designed to represent: Parliamentary architecture, conceptions of democracy, and emotions in the postwar Netherlands

Architecture offers an insightful approach to explore how governments and politicians have made sense of the emotional relationship between state and society. In this chapter, we will explore both the emotions that have been evoked by the material surroundings in which Dutch MPs have operated in the postwar years, and the emotions that have been inscribed into the built space of Parliament by its designers and users. We will do so by analyzing discussions among Dutch politicians, journalists, and architects about the construction of a new parliamentary building. The chapter shows that the move to a new building in 1992 gave Dutch politicians occasion to reflect on the key transformations (and dichotomies) of Dutch parliamentary culture over the past decades: intimacy and domesticity versus functionality; self-expression and passion versus a disciplined and restrained culture of debate; parliament as a theatre of epic battles and dissension versus the politics of compromise and consensus.