Compared to historical court buildings, today’s courts are highly complex systems of separation. As Hanson would have it, the reason for connecting rooms using corridors and passageways is to ‘prevent contamination between social groupings’, and instead to create peace, security, and segregation.19 The current principles of spatial distribution are primarily set to maintain the rule of law as we commonly understand it. Spatial segregation is about security, and ultimately about fear. Sweden has had its security issues since the 1960s, but they were not much prioritized before the turn of the twenty-first century. Furthermore, and related to the rule of law, present-day court architects have to consider the concepts of accessibility and transparency, which have resulted in bulletproof glass walls that give an unobstructed view – and permit surveillance. Unlike past court buildings, spatial enclosures are also absolute in the sense that doors are locked and intrusion may result in fines. For obvious reasons, this does not count as participatory architecture, and it is hard to imagine a future when it could be. More than ever, there is reason to ask what particular set of cultural rules these built structures communicate and to understand their influence on how we the people think. part ii • legal cultures • eva löfgren 156 19 Hanson (1996, 55) in turn cites the architect Robin Evans’s essay ‘Figures, Doors and Passages’ of 1978, printed in Robin Evans, Translations from drawing to building (Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1997).
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