THE WATCH(US)MAN
James R. Thompson Center

Grad Studio 4, Spring 2020, SAIC

^{. THE PANOPTICON

. THE MEETING POINT

. REVERSING OF POWER

. POLITICAL CORRECTNESS

. EXPRESSING

. FREE SPEECH

. HEAR US

. FIGHTING WITH SPACES

. BREAKING

. TRANSPARENCY VS PRIVACY

. PULL GOVERMENTS DOWN TO PEOPLE}

It is normal for architecture to entangle with society and power. Architecture is the structure of society that represent how each society stand to the world. If we look back into the history, human use architecture to idealize the concept and idea of their people, whether religion, such as church, Buddhist pagoda, or political idea which especially link to the monumental architecture. The origin of the word "monument" comes from the Greek mnemosynon and the Latin moneo, monere, which means 'to remind', 'to advise' or 'to warn’, suggesting a monument allows us to see the past thus helping us visualize what is to come in the future. In architecture, monument is an element that expressing the idea, capture and make a statement of what system they are supporting in that space and time. We could say that architecture supports the system that is used by the society to conceptualize the world. It makes a connection with political power as said by Mitchell kapor, “Architecture is politics”. Obviously there is a relationship between social and political that architecture reveal the power and embodied it in specifically element, shape and form as monumental.

James R. Thompson Center originally the State of Illinois Center; is located at 100 W. Randolph Street in the Loop district of Chicago and houses offices of the Illinois state government. This building has been through its highest and lowest day. From the beginning, the building has been stand for the idea of the future. Helmut Jahn, the architect, has expressed his transparency idea of modern government through his reflective interior curtain wall and glass structure so that everyone could see the government whether from the outside or inside the building. Also the iconic empty space inside the Thompson Center has been serve the Chicago citizens from time to time. People always show up here when they need the government to listen, to protest, and to make a speech. This particular space and void has been using as a meeting space to express the idea of the people and society of Chicago.

“…That function I call the meeting, that human beings come together and need to come together for obvious reason. But the important point is to understand that when we meet and come together, we do not necessarily come to agreement.”

"We are difference and meeting really preserve our differences. In the senses that we need other to learn from them and if they were exactly alike then we wouldn’t gain anything new.”

- FIGURATIVE ARCHITECTURE LECTURE (1958) , AIA CONFERENCE , SAN FRANCISCO BY CHRISTIAN NORBERGE-SCHULZ

In my idea, the meeting place is not just the empty space where the people can come and meet. In order to emphasize this particular function, the space need something, or some kind of element, shape, form or structure to stand out there. In order to clarify that it is ‘HERE’ where the community has it center, where the people need to come and listen to each other. Here is the place where the government has to listen to the man speaking. This void need a monument, the monument that represent the people and its society. The monument will be locate in the ‘middle’ of the empty space, surround by the government. It will carry the power of people, looking and checking the government through those reflective and transparency curtain wall.

It is the ‘Panopticon’ for the government which observe by people with the power of people.