“This is a building people might know from the inside but generally don’t know from the outside,” says architect Antón García-Abril about the European Parliament in Brussels. He and his Madrid-based firm, Ensamble Studio, are part of EUROPARC, a five-office, pan-European collective that recently won a competition to overhaul the parliament, whose debating chamber, housed in what is officially known as the Paul-Henri Spaak Building (PHS), regularly features in TV news reports—as when Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky addressed all 705 European Parliament Members (MEPs) there last month.

Completed in 1993 by Belgian architect Michel Boucquillon, and named after a former Belgian prime minister and father of the EU, the imposing oval structure is the centerpiece of a vast complex known as the Espace Léopold, built for the European Parliament in various stages between 1989 and 2008. Located in the greenery of the Parc Léopold, but entered on the other side, via the Place du Luxembourg, the 904,000-square-foot PHS also houses extensive press facilities and the offices of the parliament’s president.