a parade ground and parking lot during the 1950s and 1960s until its designation as the location for a new building to seat the Volkskammer, the unicameral legislature of the GDR, which was provisionally seated at the Langenbeck-Virchow-Haus at 58/59 Luisenstraße. The Palast was designed in a modernist style by Heinz Graffunder and the Building Academy of the German Democratic Republic (Bauakademie der DDR), with distinctive bronze-mirrored windows as a defining architectural feature. It consisted of two massive outer blocks and a middle piece inserted between them, which together gave the building the shape of a cuboid with a length of , a width of , and a height of which was based on that of the neighbouring buildings. The new building took up the eastern half of the plot while the western half was intended as a military parade ground, though tremors from the heavy vehicles were found to endanger the glass facade on the unstable grounds of Museum Island. Instead, the western half was used mainly as a parking lot and military parades were moved to Karl-Marx-Allee. In addition to housing the Volkskammer, the Palast was intended as a multiple-use structure influenced by the concepts of Palaces of Culture and People's Houses popular with socialist movements. Such cultural buildings were common not only in the Eastern Bloc, but also find examples in Belgium, France (Center Georges Pompidou), the Netherlands and Sweden (House of Culture in Stockholm) Buildings led. In the young Soviet Union in particular, cultural centers became symbols of the new state power. The Palast contained a large bowling alley at the lower level, from which the canal-side terrace along the River Spree could be accessed, and featured Brunswick lane equipment and a bar. The part of the Palace open to the public featured numerous cameras for the surveillance of staff and visitors by Stasi officials. It was the first building in the GDR to feature a self-supporting steel skeleton and contained 5,000 tons of asbestos used for fire protection. Seat of the Volkskammer The Palast was officially opened on 23 April 1976 and its facilities were opened to the public two days later. Numerous important cultural, political, academic, and social events of the German Democratic Republic occurred at the Palast after its opening. Events were held in the Palast's Great Hall, a large hexagonal room some 67 meters wide and 18 meters high. The Great Hall