a spatial history of swedish rural courts In 1734, the Book of Building in Sweden’s new Civil Code stipulated that all rural districts, of which there were about 320, were to erect a courthouse with ‘a courtroom as large as required and two small rooms’.6 The tiny section was added late in the legislative drafting process and defies easy interpretation. We can understand the point of geographically determining permanent law courts, but why settle on a certain number of rooms? The few dedicated courthouses at the time were more complex structures; there is nothing to indicate a building tradition. What the legal text did convey was the idea of a court building that enabled parallel activities by dint of having separate rooms; a courthouse that could stage public events but also permitted work out of the public eye. A limited range of spatial configurations was applied in the purposebuilt courthouses constructed in the years following the new code. The most common layout had six or eight rooms in a symmetrical plan with a central axis running through the entrance, the vestibule, and the courtroom, usually right through the judge’s seat (Fig. 10.1).This was a layout commonly used for smaller manors and better farmhouses – it was originally designed for dwellings, in other words. The configuration did not correspond to a set of judicial functions, but to concepts related to a certain way of organizing social life. As the architect JulianneHansonwrites, a layout with ‘interconnected rooms … results in a sociable and participatory architecture’.7 In such a configuration, people are forced to meet. In the Swedish context, the layout is often said to have been influenced by the French chateau Vauxle-Vicomte, but it also refers to the villas of the sixteenth-century architect Andrea Palladio, whose ideal was the private residences of Ancient Greece.8 Such were the grand roots of the first purpose-built rural courthouses. 6 Civil Code 1734, ch 26 s 4. 7 Julienne Hanson, ‘The architecture of justice: Iconography and space configuration in the English law court building’, Architectural Research Quarterly 1/4 (1996), 50–9 at 55. 8 See Johan Mårtelius, preface to Carl Wijnbladh, Ritningar på fyratio våningshus af sten, och 145 Dedicated courthouses?
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjYyNDk=