Palace of Light

The Palace of Light (Palais de Lumière) is the official of Odentia and its capitol building. Its six main buildings house offices for Odentia’s government and military, as well as the city of Odèneville. The building also contains a 3,000-seat theater and a smaller 500-seat auditorium. It sits at the north end of the Avenue des Lumière and its south facade, facing the Mer Dorée, serves as its terminating vista. The palace grounds are known as the Place d’Odentia and, alongside numerous parks and statues, serve as home to the Kinov Museum, a group of museums that formally include the Royal Art Collection. Also located on the grounds is the International School of the Place d'Odentia, a highly prestigious and private. The complex is surrounded by a series of ramparts and gun emplacements, which, although available for defensive use, were intended from the start to be largely decorative. These emplacements themselves are now historic sites, and many of the original guns (now in non-functioning states) remain preserved.

The main and original building was originally completed in 1926, with the main annexes being completed through 1937. The most significant expansion was the 1973 renovation that added Building Epsilon to serve as the headquarters for the nation’s military. The building also serves as the official headquarters for various Odentian-backed, most notably the Fifty-Star Foundation. Although the Palace of Light serves as the official royal residence, the House of Odene retains residence at the Forteresse d'Odéneville (with offices at the Palace of Light). In 2014, some offices were moved to the Administration Royale building in downtown Odèneville.

Background
Prior to the establishment of the Palace of Light, official Odentian business was conducted alternately at the Forteresse d'Odéneville and at a small cluster of buildings in the Odèneville city center. However, the spaces, especially at the centuries-old Forteresse, were beginning to show their age, and signs of advanced deterioration had begun to show. Following a 1910 incident in which the roof of the castle's assembly hall collapsed, King Olivier III commissioned the construction of an entirely new capital complex.

Antoine Marrau, then Lord-Mayor of Odèneville, favored a system of gridded and numbered buildings surrounding a large government house. This system was intended to integrate seamlessly within the city's existing infrastructure; security was intended to be handled by a series of street-level checkpoints. However, urban planner Michal Brecher proposed a far more open campus. Brecher's design shared Marrau's large central building, but placed it inside a large park with open spaces and public facilities, bordered on each corner by a circular. Central to Brecher's vision was a inspired by Acronia's Champs-Bleus. The government house would sit at the north head of the Rue Augustine directly opposite the Augustine River. Standing on the Pont-Augustine, Brecher envisioned that one could look over the river, down the Rue Augustine to the building's southern facade, or turn around and see towards Liberty Park.

Design
Brecher's proposal found support in several members of the Conseil du Roi, most notably the Stasnovan-born industrialist Jack Kinov. painter Adam Roux, a good friend of King Olivier's, also supported the design. During a public meeting held to address the issue, the citizens of Odéneville showed great enthusiasm for the establishment of a new grand landmark surrounded by parks. Olivier officially approved the project on September 19, 1912, and the government formally acquired the land to be used the next day.

Brecher and Roux were formally appointed the building's designers, though neither were architects by trade. Instead, they established a six-month-long architectural contest, with the winner receiving a cash prize of ₳1000 (approximately $30,000 in 2019). The first entry was submitted on November 21 by a man named Carlo Tobin; it was rejected by Brecher and Roux as "obscenely phallic".