a spatial history of swedish rural courts of specific space to court activities may be deemed the most significant innovation in modern legal history.15 In Sweden, the new Civil Code established the notion first introduced in the late seventeenth century that justice should be administered in a fixed location, in permanent premises. The court should not hold sessions wherever it suited its members or the public, but in a place as predictable and reliable as the law itself. This constituted a step towards an architectural concept that included different functional zones.16 Although it was difficult for several activities at once to be underway in the court building without them affecting one another, it was nowpossible at least to divide them between separate rooms. In that respect, it was a step towards a formal spatial segregation of actors and activities. In the spatial layouts proposed by the Crown’s architects towards the end of the eighteenth century (Fig. 10.2), changes were made that created a clearer and more distinct distribution of actors and determined their position within the configuration. Rooms were added that were explicitly intended for certain purposes and people. A second entrance allowed the judge and clerks to arrive without having to cross the public vestibule. It also made it possible for maids and cooks who worked in the building to get on with their work without disturbing legal proceedings. Interconnected rooms were still the most common spatial solution, representing the established participatory architecture, but increasingly there were passageways that kept people and activities apart. In the courtroom, the distinctions between actors were spatially guaranteed by a set of architectural elements that now became standard. The dais, known frommediaeval Britain and France, was one of them.17 Normally very large, sometimes taking up more than one-third of the room, it could also be constructed in several levels and was enclosed on three sides by the walls of the room while on the fourth side it had railing with gates at both sides. It was modest as furnishings went, and people still 15 Graham 2003; Mulcahy 2011. 16 Eva Löfgren, ‘This is not a courthouse’, in Kjell Å. Modéer &Martin Sunnqvist (eds.), Legal stagings: The visualization, medialization and ritualization of law in language, literature, media, art and architecture (Copenhagen:Museum Tusculanum, 2012), 237–63. 17 Graham 2003; Association française 1992. 149
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