Consensus

This work has been conceived for the Parliament Building in Bern. It is installed in the corridor giving access to the stands of the National Council chamber, which is the only public area of the building.

It consists in five metallic titles, translated in the national languages and in English, that underline the five windows punctuating this passageway. Each title starts with a variation of the word ‘consensus’, or: Conciliation, Convention, Compromise, Transaction and Connivance. 

These five words are followed by their material description, for instance: Compromise, Helvetica cast in 850g of gold from South Africa. 

The provenances of the different metals used refer to the five continents and their link to Swiss history, as well as to the leading role of Switzerland in the raw materials trade.

The sizes of the titles vary in dimension in order to represent their different commercial values.
Two title cards symmetrically installed at both ends of the hallway give information about the routes followed to obtain the different metals.

On one side of this corridor, doors giving access to the public stands are topped with metal letters specifying their destination, that is to say the closed space of deliberations. On the other side the windows underlined by metallic titles give them an abstract replica directed towards the outside world.