Architecture and Justice Ebook3000

Architecture and Justice
Judicial Meanings in the Public Realm
Edited by
Jonathan Simon, Nicholas Temple and Renée Tobe
Ashgate Studies in Architecture Series
series editor: eamonn canniffe, manchester school of architecture,
manchester metropolitan university, uk
The discipline of Architecture is undergoing subtle transformation as design

awareness permeates our visually dominated culture. Technological change,
the search for sustainability and debates around the value of place and meaning
of the architectural gesture are aspects which will affect the cities we inhabit. This
series seeks to address such topics, both theoretically and in practice, through
the publication of high quality original research, written and visual.
Other titles in this series
A Life in Education and Architecture

Mary Beaumont Medd
Catherine Burke
ISBN 978 0 7546 7959 2
The Dissolution of Place

Architecture, Identity, and the Body
Shelton Waldrep
ISBN 978 1 4094 1768 2
Nationalism and Architecture

Edited by Raymond Quek and Darren Deane, with Sarah Butler
ISBN 978 1 4094 3385 9
Forthcoming titles in this series
Church in Concrete
Roman Catholic Church Architecture in Britain, 1955–1975
Robert Proctor
ISBN 978 1 4094 4915 7
Architecture as Civil Commitment:

Lucio Costa’s Modernist Project for Brazil
Gaia Piccarolo
ISBN 978 1 4094 5462 5
Judicial Meanings in the Public Realm
Edited by
Jonathan Simon
University of California Berkeley, USA
Nicholas Temple
University of Huddersfield, UK
Renée Tobe
University of East London, UK
© The editors and contributors 2013
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a

retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.
Jonathan Simon, Nicholas Temple and Renée Tobe have asserted their right under the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work.
Published by
Ashgate Publishing Limited Ashgate Publishing Company
Wey Court East 110 Cherry Street
Union Road Suite 3-1
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Architecture and justice : judicial meanings in the public
realm. -- (Ashgate studies in architecture)
1. Correctional institutions--Design and construction.
2. Justice. 3. Symbolism in architecture.
I. Series II. Simon, Jonathan. III. Temple, Nicholas.
IV. Tobe, Renée.
725.6-dc23
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Architecture and justice : judicial meanings in the public realm / [edited] by Jonathan
Simon, Nicholas Temple and Renée Tobe.
pages cm. -- (Ashgate studies in architecture)
Includes index.
ISBN 978-1-4094-3173-2 (hardback : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-1-4094-3174-9 (ebook)
1. Public architecture. 2. Architecture and state. 3. Justice, Administration of.
I. Simon, Jonathan, 1959- editor of compilation. II. Temple, Nicholas, editor of
compilation. III. Tobe, Renée, editor of compilation.
NA9050.5.A73 2013
725’.15--dc23
2012034190
ISBN 9781409431732 (hbk)

ISBN 9781409431749 (ebk)
V
Printed and bound in Great Britain by the

MPG Books Group, UK.
Contents
List of Figures and Tables vii

Notes on Contributors xiii
Foreword by Baroness Vivien Stern xix
Acknowledgements xxiii
Introduction 1
Part 1 Prisons and Prison Cells
1 The Aesthetics and Anaesthetics of Prison Architecture 9

Yvonne Jewkes
2 Architecture and Contested Space in the Development of

the Modern Prison 23
Helen Johnston
3 A Simple Idea in Architecture: On the Principles of

Projecting Prisons 37
Gabriela Świtek
4 The Watchman in the Vineyard: Historical Traces of Judicial

and Punitive Practices in Lincoln 51
Nicholas Temple
part 2 Courthouses and Courtrooms
5 Back to the Future? The Challenge of the Past for Courthouses

of Tomorrow 71
Linda Mulcahy
6 Lecture Theatre: Echoes of the Palais de Justice in Legal Education 85

Keith Crawford
vi Architecture and Justice
7 Virtual Courts and Putting ‘Summary’ back into ‘Summary Justice’:

Merely Brief, or Unjust? 101
Emma Rowden
8 Constitution Hill: Just Space or Space of Justice? 115

Zarina Patel and Clinton David van der Merwe
9 The Architecture and Operation of the Imperial Chinese Yamen 131

Peter Blundell Jones
Part 3 Civic and Societal Order
10 Violent Stone: The City of Dialectical Justice – Three Tales from Court 151
Jonathan Charley
11 The Spatial Registers of Justice 165

Richard Patterson
12 Gimme Shelter: Mass Incarceration and the Criminology

of the Housing Boom 177
Jonathan Simon
13 Drawing Conclusions: Fort Rupert, British Columbia in 1863 189

John Bass
14 Repurposing With A Vengeance: A Dance of Restrained Acts

Towards Justice 203
Catherine Hamel
Part 4 Philosophical Questions of Propriety
15 Architecture, Justice, Conflict, Measure 215

Peter Carl
16 Politikē Aretē: Or the Origins of Civic Justice 231

Renée Tobe
17 Ensemble Performances: Architects and Justice in Athenian Drama 245

Lisa Landrum
18 The Architecture of Lincoln Cathedral and the Institution of Justice 257

John Hendrix
19 Politics and Architecture 267

Raymond Geuss
Index 281
Figures and Tables
Figures
3.1 Panopticon’s section and ground plan. Jeremy Bentham, ‘Building and
Furniture for an Industry-House Establishment, for 2000 Persons, of
all Ages, on the Panopticon or Central-Inspection Principle’, in Pauper
management improved: particularly by means of an application of the
Panopticon principle of construction, 1812 43
3.2 Jeremy Bentham, ‘Building and Furniture for an Industry-House

Establishment, for 2000 Persons, of all Ages, on the Panopticon or
Central-Inspection Principle’, in Pauper management improved:
particularly by means of an application of the Panopticon principle of
construction, 1812 44
3.3 Bed-stages for single persons, married couples and cribs for infants.
Jeremy Bentham, ‘Building and Furniture for an Industry-House
Establishment, for 2000 Persons, of all Ages, on the Panopticon or
Central-Inspection Principle’, in Pauper management improved:
particularly by means of an application of the Panopticon principle of
construction, 1812 47
4.1 View of the upper town of Lincoln today, from Brayford Pool, showing
the relation between the cathedral and observatory tower of the
castle (left) (photo by author) 51
4.2 Plan of the ‘Upper Town’ of Lincoln (c. 1400) indicating relation
between the Outer Bailey of the Castle and the Cathedral Close.
A’ indicates locations of gates in the wall of the Cathedral Close and
‘B’, the gateways into the old Roman settlement (Drawn by author
after Francis Hill) 52
4.3 View of the Galilee Porch, with original courtroom on the 1st floor,
located off the south transept of Lincoln Cathedral (courtesy of
Chris Rees) 53
viii Architecture and Justice
4.4 Samuel Grimm (1786). Sketch of the interior shaft of the northwest
tower of Lincoln Cathedral showing a group of men, including Sir Joseph
Banks, crossing a ladder to the entrance to the old cathedral prison
(courtesy of Lincoln Cathedral Library) 54
4.5 Bronze model of Lincoln Castle, as it appears today, showing Lucy

Tower (bottom left), East Gate and Observatory Tower (bottom right),
Cobb Hall (top right), Prison building (centre) and Crown Court and
West Gate (top left) (photo by author) 57
4.6 View of Cobb Hall, from outside the castle walls, and Water Tower
in the background (photo by author) 58
4.7 View of the Observatory Tower from the Castle walls

(photo by author) 60
4.8 View of the Crown Court from above the east gate
4.9 View of the west towers of Lincoln Cathedral from the grounds of
Lincoln Castle (photo by author) 62
4.10 Anonymous, View of County Hall (c. 1837) showing peacock in the
foreground. (From the Local Studies Collection, Lincoln Central
Library, courtesy of Lincolnshire County Council) 63
4.11 View of the Chapel at Lincoln Castle Gaol, designed using the
‘Separate System’ (photo by author) 64
5.1 Manchester Civil Justice Centre (photo by author) 71
5.2 The layout of the courts at Westminster after the Whaddon

manuscripts (courtesy of Emma Rowden) 73
5.3 Final plan for main floor of Manchester Assize Court, after
Waterhouse as reproduced in The Builder, 25 February 1865, p. 136
(drawn by author) 74
5.4 The prescribed layout of the modern courtroom in a Crown Court

(courtesy of Emma Rowden) 77
6.1 Salle de Audience 1880 87
6.2 Diagram of the Layout of the Court (diagram drawn from visit to
Palais de Justice, 7 October 2009) 88
6.3 The French Lecture Theatre and ‘La Chaise’ 90
6.4 A French Law Lecturer in his Formal Robes 91
6.5 The French and the English Law Lecturer 91
6.6 Pictures from the French and the English Law Lecture 92
figures and tables ix
6.7 The French Insolvency Law Tutorial or ‘TD’ 93
6.8 The English Insolvency Law Tutorial, in the Tutor’s Office 94
6.9 French law students studiously take dictation onto their laptops 97
7.1 Remote Court Participation, and the shift from the court operating
on a single site, to multiple sites, significantly alters the structural
dynamic of court interactions (drawn by author) 105
8.1 Plan indicating location of Constitution Hill (map by Wendy Job) 118
8.2 Graph indicating declining visitor numbers to Constitution Hill

(graph by Clinton van der Merwe) 118
8.3 View of the Constitutional Court’s Foyer (photo by David Viljoen) 120
8.4 View of the doors to the Court Building (photo by David Viljoen) 120
8.5 View of the human rights inscribed on the entrance wall

(photo by David Viljoen) 121
8.6 View of the cow hides that embellish the Judges’ bench
(photo by David Viljoen) 122
9.1 Ping Xiang and its Yamen 1872. Redrawn by author from a traditional
Chinese map reproduced in Huang 1984 as note 1 below 132
9.2 Left: original Chinese version of Neixiang Yamen as redrawn by

Pengjin Liu 1998; Right: Author’s diagram picking out the main
spatial progression 132
9.3 Keyed plan of the Neixiang Yamen 133
9.4 View outside the main gate (photo by author) 134
9.5 View northward along the main axis taken just inside the first gate
9.6 View outside the second gate (photo by author) 135
9.7 View inside the second gate, facing the paifang with the hall beyond
9.8 View of the main hall where judgements are given (photo by author) 136
9.9 View of the magistrate’s seat completes the first part of the axis
9.10 View of door to the inner realms, back on axis but behind the
magistrate’s seat (photo by author) 140
9.11 View of the second court, for meetings and special cases
x Architecture and Justice
9.12 View of the small court leading through to the magistrate’s

residence, again on axis (photo by author) 141
9.13 View of the courtyard of the magistrate’s house leading to the

final hall (photo by author) 142
9.14 View of the way through to the garden, again facing north but to
the west side (photo by author) 142
9.15 Author’s diagram of the Yamen plan to indicate the three parallel
bands, north to top 144
10.1 View of the County Court, Glasgow (photo by author) 152
10.2 View of St George’s Hall, Liverpool (photo by author) 155
10.3 View of Palais de Justice, Brussels (photo by author) 158
10.4 Marx in Brussels (photo by author) 161
11.1 Demonstration of an attempt to schematize grammar. From

Jean Lefèvre d’Etaples, Grammatographia (Paris, 1529) 169
11.2 Alberti’s translation of the arborescent structure of rhetorical

composition to that of painting as ‘compositio’ (after Baxandall) 171
11.3 San Lorenzo, Florence. View showing progression of scale from

side chapels to nave (photo by author) 172
11.4 San Lorenzo, Florence. View showing culmination of scaled

progression to the dome crossing (photo by author) 172
11.5 Brunelleschi’s ‘compositio’ 173
13.1 1851 Admiralty Chart of Beaver Harbour, by GH Mansell RN

UKHO Admiralty Chart 2153 series A1 (1851) (courtesy of the UK
Hydrographic Office)192
13.2 Diagrams of the settlement at Fort Rupert in 1850, 1863,

1900 and 1930 (drawing by Jenny Xu, Heather Maxwell
and author) 194
13.3 Plan of One Hundred Acres. Survey by Pym Nevins Compton, 1863
HBCA G.1/231, detail (courtesy of the Hudson’s Bay Company
Archives, Winnipeg, MB) 195
13.4 Diagram of preemption survey and Queackar house relocation

(drawing by author) 196
13.5 Panorama of Fort Rupert, V.I., Frederick Dally, c. 1864 (courtesy of

the Toronto Public Library) 197
figures and tables xi
13.6 Group portrait of Fort Rupert Indians and Officers From HMS Scout,
Frederick Dally, c. 1864 (Image PN 2554 courtesy of the Royal BC
Museum, BC Archives) 198
13.7 As Fort Rupert Was in 1866, Sketch by George Hunt, 1919 (courtesy
of the American Philosophical Society Library, Philadelphia) 199
13.8 Numayms of Fort Rupert, 1866, detail (photomontage by author) 200
18.1 View of the nave elevation and vaulting of Lincoln Cathedral

18.2 View of the Dean’s Eye, Lincoln Cathedral (photo by author) 258
18.3 View of the Bishop’s Eye, Lincoln Cathedral (photo by author) 261
18.4 View of Saint Hugh’s Choir, Lincoln Cathedral (photo by author) 262
Tables
16.1 Table of Plato’s Protagoras. Different translations of Politikē Technē

and Politikē Aretē 231
16.2 Table of Plato’s Protagoras. Different translations of Aidos and Dikē237

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Contributors
John Bass is Associate Professor of Architecture at the University of British

Columbia School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture. His work
addresses contested landscapes, and uses visual tools and techniques to
describe relationships between environmental and industrial practices, physical
and historical events, spatial and social practices, and political and economic
structures. He does this work in the geographies of California water policy and
infrastructure, coastal British Columbia’s First Nations territories, and Punjabi
agricultural settlement.
Peter Blundell Jones was educated at the Architectural Association in London,

and has been involved in practice, criticism and teaching. In 1973–74 he wrote the
first book on Hans Scharoun, and in 1978 he joined the Cambridge Department
of Architecture, moving in 1988 to London’s South Bank University, then in 1994
to a chair at the University of Sheffield. He has published widely in journals, and
his books include Modern Architecture through Case Studies (two volumes), and
monographs on Hugo Häring, Gunnar Asplund, Günter Behnisch, Peter Hübner
and the Grazer Schule.
Peter Carl trained at Princeton and, after a Prix de Rome, taught first at the
University of Kentucky and then the University of Cambridge. He recently moved
to London Metropolitan University where he directs the PhD programme in
Architecture. His research interests revolve around architectural and urban order
and their philosophical interpretation.
Jonathan Charley lives and works in Glasgow where he is currently Director of

Cultural Studies in the Department of Architecture at the University of Strathclyde.
He studied Architecture in London and Moscow and publishes mainly on the
political and social history of buildings and cities. His most recent work was the
co-edited volume Writing the Modern City (2011) that explored the relationship
between architecture, literature, and modernity, and a collection of his essays,
Memories of Cities, published by Ashgate in 2012.
xiv Architecture and Justice
Keith Crawford is an Economics and Social Research Council funded doctoral

candidate at the University of Nottingham. His research is in the field of the law
and economics of corporate insolvency and banking, with a particular interest in
how procedure and regulation impact upon stakeholder behaviour.
Raymond Geuss was born in Evansville, Indiana (USA) in December 1946 and
studied in New York and Freiburg/Br, West Germany, as it then was, taking
a PhD in 1971. He has taught in faculties and departments of Philosophy
and Political and Social Sciences at various Universities in Germany, the
USA and the UK including Heidelberg, the University of Chicago, Hamburg,
Princeton University, Frankfurt/M and Cambridge. In 1982–83 he was a fellow
at Wissenschaftskolleg zu in Berlin. In 1993 he emigrated to the UK and was
naturalised here in 2000. He is the author of The Idea of a Critical Theory (1981),
History and Illusion in Politics (2001), Public Goods and Private Goods (2001),
Outside Ethics (2005), Philosophy and Real Politics (2008). In 2009 a collection
of his recent papers entitled Politics and the Imagination was published by
Princeton University Press. Some recent, as yet uncollected papers include
‘Blair, Rubbish and the Demons of Noon-Tide’, in Redescriptions (2008), ‘Goals,
origins and disciplines’, in Arion (2009), and Vix intellegitur in Cambridge
Literary Review (2009).
Catherine Hamel is an Associate Professor in Architecture at the University

of Calgary, Canada. Her interests lie in the potential role of architecture as an
instrument for social reconstruction. Themes investigated include identity and
estrangement in post-war contexts; memory in the scarred body; the voicing of
political experiences in public space. These topics are explored through teaching,
drawing, collaborative making, and writing. What agitates her is not the sides
people take, but the lines they draw in order to be able to take them. She loves
the sound of laughter …
John Hendrix is a Professor of Architectural History at the University of Lincoln,

UK, and a Lecturer at Roger Williams University, US. He is the author of Architecture
as Cosmology: Lincoln Cathedral and English Gothic Architecture; Robert Grosseteste:
Philosophy of Intellect and Vision; Architecture and Psychoanalysis; Aesthetics and the
Philosophy of Spirit; Platonic Architectonics; Architectural Forms and Philosophical
Structures; The Relation Between Architectural Forms and Philosophical Structures
in the Work of Francesco Borromini in Seventeenth-Century Rome; and History and
Culture in Italy.
Yvonne Jewkes is a Professor of Criminology at the University of Leicester,

author/editor of Prisons and Punishment (2008, Sage), Handbook on Prisons (2007,
Willan), and Captive Audience: Media, Masculinity and Power in Prisons (2002,
Willan). Publications on prison architecture include (with Philip Hancock) ‘Penal
aesthetics and the pains of imprisonment’, Punishment & Society, 2011, 13(5);
contributors xv
‘Penal Aesthetics and the Art of Prison Architecture’, in Leonidas K. Cheliotis, The
Arts of Imprisonment: Control, Resistance and Empowerment (2012, Ashgate) and
(with Helen Johnston) ‘The Evolution of Prison Architecture’, in Yvonne Jewkes
Handbook on Prisons (2007, Willan).
Helen Johnston is Senior Lecturer in Criminology and Co-Director of the Centre for
Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Hull. Her research interests lie
in the history of imprisonment particularly in local prisons, prison staff and prison
architecture. Her current project is concerned with the personal and financial
costs of imprisonment between 1850 and 1940 (with Professor Barry Godfrey
and Dr David Cox). She is editor of Punishment and Control in Historical Perspective
(2008, Palgrave Macmillan) and co-editor (with Professor Yvonne Jewkes) of Prison
Readings (2006, Routledge).
Lisa Landrum is Assistant Professor in the Department of Architecture at the

University of Manitoba, Canada, where she teaches history, theory and design.
Lisa earned a PhD and post-professional Masters in the History and Theory of
Architecture from McGill University in Montreal, and a Bachelor of Architecture
from Carleton University in Ottawa. Her research and publications explore
the dramatic origins of architectural theory and the dramatic underpinnings
of architectural representation. Landrum is also a Registered Architect in New
York State and the Province of Manitoba.
Linda Mulcahy is a Professor at the London School of Economics, University

of London. She was previously the Anniversary Professor of Law and Society,
School of Law, Birkbeck College, University of London. She has published
extensively in the field of dispute resolution. Her most recent work on
architectural design and law include ‘The Unbearable Lightness of Being? Shifts
Towards the Virtual Trial’, Journal of Law and Society, vol. 35(4) (2008): 464–89;
‘Architectural Precedent: Manchester Assize Courts and Monuments to Law
in the Mid-Victorian Era’, Kings Law Journal, 19 (2008): 525–50; ‘Architects of
Justice: The Politics of Court House Design’, Social and Legal Studies, vol. 16(3)
(2007): 383–403. Her forthcoming book The Place of Law: The architecture of the
law court and its relationship to due process, Routledge, was published in July
2010.
Zarina Patel has a joint appointment as a Senior Lecturer with Environmental and
Geographical Science and the African Centre for Cities at the University of Cape
Town. Her research is concerned with various dimensions of the meaning and
practice of sustainable development in local level planning in South African cities.
Her research focuses on three interrelated areas: interpretations of sustainable
development in theory and practice (rhetoric); environmental governance as it
applies to the transition to sustainability (practice); and tools for decision-making
(implementation).
xvi Architecture and Justice
Richard Patterson was formerly Assistant Head of the School of Architecture

and Design and Academic Programme Leader for Architecture at the University
of Brighton. He was born in San Francisco in 1945 and graduated with a degree
in Fine Art from the University of California at Davis. Patterson completed his BA
(Cantab) in Architecture, the AA Dipl qualifying as a registered architect in 1980.
His publications are concerned with architectural semiology and the linguistic
precursors of architectural principle. Patterson’s own practice, was concerned
with the restoration and refurbishment of seventeenth- to nineteenth-century
buildings.
Emma Rowden is a Research Associate with the Justice Research Group,

University of Western Sydney. She has a background in media, performance and
architecture. Her current research examines perceptions of inclusion, safety,
comfort, fairness and respect within institutional environments. Rowden recently
completed her doctoral studies at the University of Melbourne, exploring the
impact of video-mediated communications and the distribution of the space of
the trial on court design.
Jonathan Simon is the Adrian A. Kragen Professor of Law, UC Berkeley. His books
include Governing through Crime: How the War on Crime Transformed American
Democracy and Created a Culture of Fear (Oxford University Press, 2007) and
the forthcoming, Mass Incarceration on Trial: Human Rights and the Future of
Imprisonment (New Press, 2013).
Baroness Vivien Stern, CBE is currently a member of the Parliamentary Joint

Committee on Statutory Instruments. In 2009 Stern was invited by the UK
Government to conduct a review of UK rape laws and produced the subsequent
report The Stern Review. She lists her political interests as criminal justice,
foreign affairs, human rights, international development, penal reform, and
prisons, and has written several books, including Creating Criminals: Prisons
and People in a Market Society; Bricks of Shame: Britain’s Prisons; Failures in Penal
Policy; Imprisoned by Our Prisons: A Programme for Reform (Fabian Series); The
Prisons We Deserve and A Sin Against the Future: Imprisonment in the World.
Gabriela Świtek is a lecturer in the Institute of Art History, University of

Warsaw. She completed her PhD in History and Philosophy of Architecture
at Cambridge University (1999). She is an author of Writing on Fragments:
Philosophy, Architecture and the Horizons of Modernity (2009), editor of Avant-
garde in the Bloc (2009), Transfer (2006) and Zachęta 1860–2000 (2003). Since
1999 she has been curator and chief of the documentation department in
the Zachęta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw. In 2006 she curated the Polish
Pavilion for the tenth International Exhibition of Architecture in Venice.
Nicholas Temple is an architect and Professor of Architecture at the University

of Huddersfield, with research interests in the historical and cultural contexts
contributors xvii
of architecture. He has previously taught at University of Lincoln, Liverpool

University, Nottingham University and University of Pennsylvania. Temple
has been a Rome Scholar in Architecture (1986–88) and a recipient of the Paul
Mellon Rome Fellowship (2012). His published works include Disclosing Horizons:
Architecture, Perspective and Redemptive Space and renovatio urbis: Architecture,
Urbanism and Ceremony in the Rome of Julius II (Routledge, 2007 and 2011).
Renée Tobe is Head of Architecture at University of East London. She received

her AA Diploma and qualified as a chartered Architect in 1990. Tobe completed
her PhD in History and Philosophy of Architecture at Cambridge University
(2001). Published work investigates graphic novels, literature, film and television
and the forthcoming Architecture, Film and the Spatial Imagination (Ashgate).
Clinton David van der Merwe is a lecturer and the PGCE Coordinator with
the School of Education at The University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.
He teaches Geography and Geography Teaching Methodology to teachers in
training. He is reading towards a PhD at The University of Johannesburg, in
South African Heritage Tourism and remains interested in Heritage, Sustainable
Development and Urban Renewal or Regeneration – as well as the linkages
between the three in place, time and space.
Foreword
Baroness Vivien Stern
A collection of scholarly pieces on architecture and justice is long overdue and

very welcome. Thinking about the architecture of police stations, courtrooms and
prison cells leads to reflections on the meaning of these places, what purposes
they serve and what they say about the political culture of the country where they
are located. In most West European countries prisoners are held in small locked
rooms called cells. In Russia however cells are only used for punishment and
prisoners there normally live in large dormitories. In some countries prisons will
be designed with a corridor of small bedrooms, so the prisoners can meet their
partners in private. In others architects will need to design a visiting area where
prisoners communicate with their visitors as best they can through a grille in a
dividing wall. These differences matter.
In Perth in Western Australia in a quiet residential neighbourhood is a women’s
prison. Few would recognise it as such. The women live in one storey houses set
in flower-filled gardens with fountains. In the centre of the grounds is a circular
building open at all times for private reflection or for religious services. There is a
welcoming library building with a children’s corner, a health centre and a restaurant
which is used for eating out when families come to visit and also for training of
prisoners in catering skills. The reception area resembles the reception area of a
quiet small hospital. On arrival there is no strip-searching. The incoming prisoners
wait in a sitting room for various prison staff members to come and talk to them
about the prison and how it works.
Even though we may not know how well the women are treated by the staff or
by each other we can say with some confidence that the built environment of the
prison gives a message to those arriving there. It says, ‘You are worth something.
You are entitled to treatment that is respectful and humane.’ It also gives a
message to those working there. It tells them, ‘The people you are guarding are
fellow human-beings’.
In Texas is a women’s prison that gives a different impression. The women there
live in warehouse-type dormitories with about 100 beds in each. Each woman
has a bed, a small cupboard and about half a metre of personal space next to
xx Architecture and Justice
the bed. When the pressure of such confinement becomes unbearable and the
woman fails to conform she will be moved to a grey stone three-storey block with
rolls of razor wire between the storeys and little natural light. Her home will be a
cell with a slit in the heavy steel door through which she can be viewed, and from
which she will be let out once a day to walk round a wire cage in the central well
of the building. What women can take from their built environment is clear. ‘You
are not wanted. Society has no use for you. You are entitled to very little and we
do not accept any obligation to treat you with humanity and respect.’
Architecture and design matter.
Prisoners are in a very vulnerable situation, taken from their families and
communities to live with strangers, at the mercy of others for all their basic
needs, and with little access to the outside world. Therefore they are specifically
protected by the international human rights framework. For the past sixty years
the international community has accepted that no-one shall be subjected to
inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. International law requires that
‘all those deprived of their liberty shall be treated with humanity and respect
for the inherent dignity of the human person’. Manifestly many prisoners in
all regions of the world are not treated that way. Whose responsibility is it
therefore to protect the human rights of prisoners? Is it just the state which
takes away their liberty? Is it also the state officials who administer the prisons?
Do those who design and build brutal grey three-storey blocks with an internal
exercise cage bear any responsibility for the human rights abuses that such a
building gives rise to?
Doctors and medical professionals working in prisons have standards and
guidelines that govern their conduct. From their own professional organisations
and from the United Nations have come rules that preclude medical workers from
becoming involved in or contributing to torture or inhuman treatment. In 1981
and again in 2000 the World Medical Association resolved that it was unethical for
doctors to participate in capital punishment, in any way, or during any stage of the
execution process. Do architects have similar codes of ethics? Do architects face
any discouragement from their profession if they are contracted to design a death
chamber? Maybe such an initiative may be stimulated by this book.
Prisons are a universal expression of the state’s power to use legitimate force
over its people. All countries have prisons or if they are very small they put their
prisoners in the prisons of a neighbouring country. Prisons are recognisable
as places of captivity where cruelty and ill-treatment can take place. But quite
ordinary buildings can also be the site of illegitimate force, of egregious human
rights abuses by states. In Chapter 19, Politics and Architecture, Raymond Geuss
describes very well the decision to turn the building that was the head office of
the makers of the gas chambers used by Germany in the second world war into
premises for the University of Frankfurt and the measures used to decontaminate
it. It needed to be ‘symbolically detoxified’ with a permanent exhibition about its
history and the naming of one part of it after a forced labourer who had worked
for the gas chamber makers before it was felt to be appropriate for it to house an
institution of learning.
foreword xxi
A similar example of a building that needed to be ‘detoxified’ can be in seen in

Cambodia. A school in the capital Phnom Penh was used by the Khmer Rouge as a
torture chamber and massacre centre. It is now a genocide museum where visitors
can come and see the rows and rows of black and white photographs of the people
tortured and killed there and view the torture implements in the walls and the
floors. Turning this school into a museum and a place where respect can be shown
to the numerous dead is another way of decontaminating a building that has been
a site of human rights atrocities.
Architecture and justice then meet in many ways. The style and structure of
buildings is interwoven with what takes place in them. The design of buildings to
be used for criminal justice purposes can reflect human rights values, open justice,
and respect. Alternatively they can instil fear and become the site of torture and
institutionalised cruelty. Courtrooms can suggest that justice is for everyone and
all are equal before the law. Or they put into stone and glass the idea that the law
is an instrument for maintaining the power of the powerful and the legitimacy of
the status quo. Some buildings can be put to such monstrous uses that the echoes
remain long after the abuses have stopped.
This book illuminates these themes and many more. I hope it is widely read.
Acknowledgements
In November 2009 University of Lincoln supported by the University of East

London, hosted a conference that explored subjects of Architecture and
Justice. This publication extends the original discussions from the fields of
criminology, international law, philosophy and architectural history and
theory. This publication includes only a small fraction of the discussions that
arose in the course of the conference and some fascinating insights into the
subjects are left out. We would like to thank all the speakers who contributed
to the conference, many of whom travelled from different continents as well as
different countries in order to present their thoughts. In particular we extend
our gratitude to the keynote speakers whose papers are not presented here but
whose thoughts and practical interpretations added to the debate: Stephen
Quinlan, of Denton Corker Marshall whose Manchester Civil Justice Centre,
completed in 2007, sparked a round of discussion, and Professor David Wilson,
former HM Prison Governor and now Professor of Criminology. We also owe a
debt of thanks to those who contributed in different ways, in particular to Mani
Lal who formatted all the images in this book.
Introduction
The papers presented in this volume expound on the links between architecture
and justice, articulating the provocative and sometimes ambiguous juncture
between the two, seek to draw out the formal language of justice, and examine
the effects that architecture has on both the place of justice and on individual
and collective experiences of judicial processes. In bringing together disparate
disciplines this book aims to be evocative, informative and educational for both form
givers (architects) and law givers (legal, judicial, and criminological practitioners).
Baroness Vivien Stern, who gave the opening keynote address at the conference
(from which these papers originate), remarked that this was the first time she
had been invited to speak to a combined audience of architects, lawyers, and
criminologists. Her sometimes uncomfortable remarks, about the contributions
of architecture in the creation of both a just and unjust society, set the tone for
the debate in which each speaker was held under ‘surveillance’ by a watchful and
critical audience. A silent voice in these discussions was Michel Foucault, whose
Discipline and Punish has inspired countless students of architecture with its
detailed and imagistic descriptions of prisons and punishment, offering a range
of different readings for criminologists, lawyers and architects.1
The structure of this volume develops from the particular to the universal –
from local situations to unbounded dispositions. Hence the chapters are arranged
in escalating increments of scale, from the intimate, often personalized (and
depersonalized) scale of a single prison cell, to the courtroom where justice is meted
out, through cities that are registers of justice in the civic order and the social realm
and concludes with deeper discussions of the nature of both justice and injustice.
Drawn from a multitude of philosophical, political, juridical, theological, historical,
cultural, psychological and architectural interests, the book provides a platform on
which to debate the relationships between the ceremonial, legalistic, administrative
and penal aspects of justice, and the spaces that constitute their settings. These
relationships moreover are not always assumed as stable or unquestioned. Indeed,
historical claims of a universality – or standard – of justice are often predicated on the
basis of enforcement through violent or intimidating means; that questions of mercy
or salvation are intimately bound to various forms of punishment, whether through
the infliction of physical pain, public shame/humiliation or forced confinement.
2 Architecture and Justice
In the modern democratic world justice is fundamental to our notions of societal

order; that is to the order that is sustained between us as responsible citizens,
without recourse to force or violence. There is a strong assumption that justice is
something to which we have an unassailable and absolute right. Yet justice is not a
concept that lends itself easily to universal definition, or to codification. It is rather
subject to judgments which are deemed morally right before a mutually accepted
authority, in conformity to shared reasoning and values.
The problematic relationships between a universal concept of justice, whether
instituted through religious doctrine, democratic systems of government or an
autocratic regime, and the actual deliberations of justice – actualized through
judgments made by a judge or a jury – underlines the central role that architecture
plays in conveying the solemnity and legitimacy of the occasion, and ultimately
of the judicial outcome. In essence, architecture provides the setting in which
to situate – and declare – important moments of decision-making and their
consequences. At the same time, we should be aware that architecture both
frames – and is framed by – justice. Building practices, which involve bringing
disparate parties (architects, surveyors, planners, clients and users etc) together
for a shared/common purpose, are explicitly bound by judicial processes; laws
that are both written (codes of professional conduct, planning law etc) and
unwritten (the ethical responsibility of architects to society at large). What is
arguably at stake in this bureaucratization of justice is succinctly summarized by
Peter Carl: ‘… the truth of the legal trial is neither the winner nor the loser of the
context, but the re-affirmation through the context of lawfulness.’2 It is this quest
for lawfulness, and ultimately of our search for a just society, that is at the heart
of this series of essays.
Part 1 in the volume, ‘Prisons and Prison Cells’, examines the distinction
between incarceration and correction, between penitence and the penitentiary.
It traces prison design and suggests that there may be other forms of control that
are more efficacious in the expressions of justice. Yvonne Jewkes suggests that
prison architects face acute, paradoxical challenges. Not only must they design
prisons that fulfill the brief issued by government ministers, who prioritize low
cost and high security before anything else, but they must also meet public
expectations about what prisons should look like. At the same time their
designs must aid rehabilitation as well as deliver punishment. Helen Johnston
discusses how the architecture of the prison has developed historically. Prison
space has been contested and used to reflect the competing philosophies of
punishment of the time. She describes how the prison ‘cell’ became the main
space for this transformative regime whether underpinned by ideas of reform
or deterrence. Oscar Wilde’s invocation of ‘humanity’s machine’ and the dark
and narrow cells in which we dwell, informs the next chapter as well.3 Here
Gabriela Świtek expounds on the Piranesian fantasy as the basis of a rich body
of literature inspired by the impossible, labyrinthine and endless spaces of the
Carceri. Historical and contemporary developments of prisons and visions of
Bentham’s panopticon reflect descriptions of imagined dwelling places, and
shed light on visual culture. Nicholas Temple’s description of the transformation
introduction 3
of Lincoln Castle into a prison, and the use of the nearby Lincoln Cathedral as a
courthouse and prison, reveal often overlooked aspects of judicial and punitive
practices in the early modern world and their implications in the relationship
between canon and civil law. Focusing in particular on the punitive role of
the Lincoln Castle, Temple examines the governorship of the gaol under John
Merryweather who used the surveillance tower for both guarding prisoners and
as a personal astronomical observatory, a dual function that speaks volumes
about the ambiguous relationships between appearance and function in
the varying acts of surveillance. The prison chapel, still preserved intact, was
designed so that prisoners were isolated from their fellow inmates and could
only observe the minister. An example of Wilde’s ‘humanity’s machine’ described
earlier, the psychological effects of this confinement (highlighted during a
short visit to Lincoln Castle by participants from the conference), remind us
of the effectiveness of certain design strategies to instill feelings of extreme
claustrophobia and isolation – in the face of legitimate punitive and judicial
practices.
The following part, ‘Courtrooms and Courthouses’, brings the discussion into the
place where justice is meted out, and the symbols of both justice and authority in
courtrooms and courthouses. Justice framed by Architecture forms the basis of this
section, and the symbols of both Justice and authority expressed on or framing the
architecture are recurrent themes. Justice implies an imposition of an authority, and
cultures and societies create architectural forms for this expression. Linda Mulcahy
asks what contemporary courthouses should ‘look’ like and whether we are required
to ‘recognize’ justice in architectural form. Just as the previous part examines the
distinction in architectural decision making between external and internal design,
Part 2 offers different codes for courthouse presence and courtroom layout. The
discussion of whether and how courtrooms may be ‘read’ draws from distinctive
internal planning that dictates circulation routes and separate rooms where those
who once rubbed shoulders are now kept apart. Design guides for courtrooms
standardize how a courtroom should be experienced to maintain neutrality of
design so that the justice is the same wherever it is practiced, the principle being
that if the place where justice is decreed looks identical, then the justice will be
standardized as well. Keith Crawford discusses the courtroom as place to practice
authority through symbol and civic code based on Revolutionary France and the
Palais de Justice, where the seat of the judge, the authority of law, becomes the
magistral of the law faculty lecture theatre. In contrast to this discussion of physical
imposition, Emma Rowden questions whether there is still a place for the physical
courtroom, or if justice can be rendered ‘virtual’ as effectively. In the virtual court
it is difficult to determine when justice begins, and without symbols of authority
there is mistrust of the fairness of the court.
Implicit within this section on Courtrooms and Courthouses, is the notion of
authority and how it is expressed in architecture. Spatial form and symbolism
informs the conceptions of social justice discussed by Zarina Patel and Clinton
van der Merwe, who examine Constitution Hill in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Constitution Hill, once military garrison, then Boer fort, became a jail that
housed at different times, Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela as well as

other less iconic offenders whose very imprisonment represented the injustice
of the society, and is now a tourist attraction. Symbols of justice and the path to
freedom and redemption question the individual’s place in the society, and form
a backdrop for the South African Constitution. This discussion of architecture
and ritual expressed through codified building forms is seen through the veil
of the typically authoritarian representation of justice in architecture, in the
form of the Chinese yamen, where Peter Blundell Jones discerns a transition
(expressed in the gatehouse) between the public realm and the lawcourt. The
need for continuity and tradition in judicial matters is typically expressed in
the ceremonial trappings of the courthouse and in the language of the legal
document and demonstrates the inseparability of administration and law-
keeping. In the yamen, before imposing judgement, the law keeper determines
the truth through seven tactics of detection, evocatively named as: the hook,
the raid, the attack, intimidation, browbeating, comparison, and compelling,
codified in a legal manual for magistrates.
Part 3, ‘Civic and Societal Order’, offers reflections on the dialectical character
of the contemporary city looking at how it has developed from nineteenth
century consumerism, of ‘ownership’ and material consumption, the crimes
associated with these appropriative spaces, through to examinations of how
imagery imposes justice and exposes injustices. The space of justice becomes
the space of the theatre of the public realm; that we also refer to as the space of
the city. Jonathan Charley expounds on how politics, power, and the edifices of
justice in three European cities are inextricably linked to the history of the slave
trade, colonization and the plantation economies of Africa and the Americas.
Just as Foucault’s Discipline and Punish sits as a constant companion throughout
the book, two other texts inform much of the writing. One of these is David
Harvey’s Social Justice and the City describing social processes and spatial forms.4
Richard Patterson applies Harvey’s special and social anthropology to urban
semiology and linguistic structures in social expression and a spatialization of
knowledge. Another text, John Rawls’ A Theory of Knowledge, sets the mise en
scène for Jonathan Simon’s chapter that begins by rejecting the pre-conceptions
of ideologies and policies that shape prisons and courtrooms, and demonstrates
how home ownership and crime are interconnected in surprising ways,
contextualized with the economic crisis and politics of the current era.5 John
Bass’s chapter exposes the role of photography and images in investigating
colonial ‘preemption’ of Native settlements in Western Canada. These images
although possibly staged, offer spatial evaluation of both truth and injustice.
Catherine Hamel’s poetic and abstract expressions of justice, politics and
boundaries evocatively rounds off the debate.
The final part, ‘Philosophical Questioning of Propriety’, concludes these
discussions by casting light on our human condition of being individuals in a
globalized society where justice is a central political concept. Peter Carl looks at
the concept of fairness and equity through a discussion of temporality, symbolic
order, measure and spatial ordering by Hammurabi in ancient Mesopotamia,
introduction 5
and then in Plato’s Republic, with its proposals for the just well-ordered state.
He questions whether Justice itself is subsumed in a black hole of laws and law-
giving, of control and contracts, or remains firmly in the centre of architectural
form and thought. Renée Tobe’s commentary examines different translations of
Plato’s Protagoras. No matter the asymmetry of meaning between civic justice and
citycraft, political skill, or citizenship our capacity for urban life is always requisite
on common sense and justice. In Lisa Landrum’s chapter, classical Greek plays
featuring architect-protagonists provide exemplary dramatizations of the quest for
justice, peace and social order. This relation of symbolic justice is developed in the
medieval cathedral and expressed through light and spirit expounded on by John
Hendrix through a reading of justice as the good through the experience of Lincoln
Cathedral. The final chapter, by Raymond Geuss, questions our desire ‘to know’
and our quest for truth in a world that is unstable and insecure. Geuss examines
freedom and politics in relation to architecture and the city. While we can turn
away from an image of injustice or close a book that describes an uncomfortable
truth, we can not avoid the architecture and cities we construct for ourselves.
This publication includes only a small fraction of the discussions that arose
in the course of the conference. One subject that we were not able to include
here described in detail is the experience of the Supermax prison. The sensory
deprivation (the little lockable room where a prisoner is placed so that two
inmates did not pass in a hallway, for example) and the details of the minutely
controlled routine of each day are both fascinating and compelling. It is worth
highlighting here briefly the impact of reading about the Supermax prison on
one of the editors to this volume:
While sitting in the British Library Reading Room, after having finished the
relevant chapter, I looked up and ‘felt’ the materiality of the space, the feel of air
movement, the colour, texture, sounds of people turning pages, the clothes and
hair of the readers around me, the lighting. It was as if the world, the one we take
for granted, described as ‘asleep on the back of a tiger’ was suddenly brought into
existence for me and I had woken up. I never felt so free and so rich and so lucky.
I sat for some minutes, just looking.’
In another part of the world, the ferry from San Francisco to Larkspur, a highly
priced and desirable area of real estate in the West coast of the USA, passes
right in front of the State prison of San Quentin, somewhere inside of which
is an execution room where people are put to death and someone, maybe an
architect, has determined the shape and form, decided how it should be painted,
whether or not it has carpet on the floor and what kind of lighting it has. It is a
chilling thought.
People are incarcerated all over the world. As architects we look at prisons as
‘typologies’ or try to make them better places to be in. Traditional discussions of
Architecture and Justice designate prisons and courtrooms. We hope that this
publication will open up future discussions about how the cities and environments
we build for ourselves are expressions of notions of ‘justice’, and that we are
responsible for not just the cities we live in, but how and why we live in them.
notes
1 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan
(London, 1991).
2 Peter Carl, ‘Architectural Design and Situational History’, in Adam Hardy and Necdet
Teymur (eds), Architectural History and the Studio (London, 1996), pp. 74–89, esp. p. 81.
3 Oscar Wilde, De Profundis, The Ballad of Reading Gaol and Other Writings (Ware,
1898/2002).
4 David Harvey, Social Justice and the City (Baltimore MD, 1973).
5 John Rawls, A Theory of Knowledge (Cambridge MA, 1971).
part 1
Prisons and Prison Cells
1
The Aesthetics and Anaesthetics of Prison Architecture1
Yvonne Jewkes
Introduction
This chapter synthesizes perspectives from the field of critical organization studies
with those from criminological studies of prison design and the lived experience
of imprisonment. It brings together these distinct areas of scholarship in order to
consider the proposition that prison spaces are layered with meaning and that
prison design has a profound psychological and behavioural influence on prisoners,
prison staff, and the communities in which prisons are located. Mindful of Elaine
Scarry’s call for an intrinsic link between ‘beauty and being just’ the aim is to explore
meanings conveyed by carceral spaces and to reflect on both the monotonous,
anaesthetizing effects of penal architecture and design, and the potential civilizing,
rehabilitative role they can play.2 The chapter is in two parts. First, it will first consider
‘space as symbol’, or the multifarious penal philosophies that can be seen reflected
in the form and fabric of prison buildings, and ‘space as practice’, or what ‘aesthetics’
means within a penal setting. Then the chapter will discuss some of the difficulties
facing those who want to rethink prison design, and will examine the competing
discourses influencing contemporary prison architects. It will explore the idea that,
while most penal institutions are commonly (and accurately) characterized as sites of
control, abuse and neglect, prison designers might consider adopting an emerging
philosophy – ‘humane architecture’ – which has recently transformed many public
institutions, including hospitals and healthcare centres. Given that its advocates
believe that humane architecture has a rehabilitative impact on patients, it begs
the question of whether it might have similarly positive effects on prison inmates.
However, prison architects face a particularly acute challenge, for not only must they
design institutions which fulfil the client’s brief (the clients for the most part being
government ministers and private security companies, both of whom will prioritise
value for money and security imperatives before anything else) but they must also
meet public expectations about what a prison should look like. Prison designs which
enhance dignity and promote rehabilitation through a normalized aesthetic may not
appear sufficiently punitive to a public with an appetite for punishment.3
Penal aesthetics: space as symbol and space as practice
The architecture of incarceration traditionally has been inscribed with symbolic

meaning that seeks to secure the acquiescence of society at large as well as that
of convicted offenders. Whether gothic cathedral, monastic citadel or castellated
fortress, the purposefully scripted exteriors of eighteenth and nineteenth century
prisons incorporated symbolism that had a ‘see and beware’ function, warning the
community at large to refrain from committing crimes lest they too should end up
within the monstrous institution’s imposing walls. Indeed, the internal life of inmates
was a secondary consideration to the symbolic meaning transmitted by the external
façade to society at large and inside these splendid palaces was a highly restricted
economy of space as prison accommodation became increasingly enclosed and
claustrophobic. Arguably no other type of building employs the concepts of
‘outside’ and ‘inside’ quite as dramatically or self-referentially (in the sense that
one interpellates the other) as the prison, and the penal philosophies of the late
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries – based on principles of austerity, isolation,
silence, remorse and reform – are evident in the juxtaposition of the prison’s
cathedral-like exterior and the minuteness of private interior space within. Echoing
Jeremy Bentham’s (1791/1843) famous belief that morals could be reformed, health
preserved, industry invigorated and instruction diffused ‘all by a simple idea in
architecture’, Daniel Nihill, Governor and Chaplain of Millbank Penitentiary in the
mid-nineteenth century, proclaimed that good behaviour among his prisoners was
maintained ‘with the passive instrument of the building itself’.4
The conceptualization of the prison cell as a restricted subterranean space, a
place of death or entombment, is common in academic studies of imprisonment.
The disparity between the upward gaze toward the vast, vaulted, chillingly austere
exterior5 architecture and the downward gaze into the darkness of the coffin-like
cells is beautifully illustrated by the following quote from a twentieth century prisoner:
The whole is an enormous enclosure of space, top-lit from secular clerestories,

and, at the far end of the halls, by gargantuan round-headed windows rising
atria-like from floor to ceiling…One feels like some rare exotic bird, trapped in
an intricate gilded cage; a metaphor not inappropriate as the hammer beamed
roofs frequently resound to the flapping of real birds, curious and unfortunate
enough to have found their way into these vast basilicas of human discontent. It
is once inside the cell that the prisoner really begins to feel the oppressiveness of
these city fortresses…more often than not, living space for 23 hours a day, seven
days a week, averages 800 cubic feet; that is, 8 x 13 x 9. Roofs are shallow arches,
so it easy to imagine oneself on the Orient or Trans-Siberian Express taking
some never ending journey to the edge of the world. These cells look like gutted
sections of railway carriages without the panoramic windows. The only window
in evidence here is sunken into the back wall, too high to look out of, and usually
double-barred. Standing underneath this aperture, one glances up at Oscar
Wilde’s ‘little tent of blue the prisoners call sky.6
Of course, the paradox of their external splendour and internal squalor is still
keenly felt by the thousands of inmates still held in them but, ironically, the
The Aesthetics and Anaesthetics of Prison Architecture 11
aesthetic qualities of Victorian prison buildings have never been more appreciated
by the free community than they are two centuries after their construction. The
British government is considering selling off many large Victorian prisons such
as Pentonville, Brixton, Wandsworth and Wormwood Scrubs; a venture that is
estimated to be worth £350 million. It has not been revealed what these prime sites
might be turned into, but one can well imagine that if converted into apartments
with the façades kept intact, they are likely to appeal to the kind of affluent young
professionals who stay in the boutique hotel housed in the former HMP Oxford.
Here, the aesthetics of imprisonment are considered so desirable that rooms have
been converted from the old cell blocks with views of the prison’s former exercise
yard, as well as a ‘luxury suite’ in the governor’s house. The hotel group’s publicity
material leaves the potential guest in no doubt about the ‘charms’ of staying in a
former jail:
Perhaps the most striking of all Malmaison hotels, Oxford is as close to staying in
a prison as it gets (without the real thing of course). Your eye will go immediately
to the original heavy metal studded doors, while once you enter the main atrium
and see the wrought ironwork stairs and three inch thick steel doors, you could
almost forget that you’re on a break – and not actually doing time.7
Ironically, here, the aesthetics of incarceration are considered highly desirable but
for earlier occupants of HMP Oxford and, indeed, for most prison inmates, penal
aesthetics might more accurately be described as anaesthetics, whereby the
senses are blunted or depressed.8 In the UK, anaesthetic design is perhaps best
exemplified by the prisons established in the 1960s and 1970s, such as Albany,
Long Lartin and Gartree; all of them functional, featureless and concrete. As Peter
Wayne puts it:
[P]erennially water-stained walls; crisscrossed with miles of razor-wired fencing;

and sheltering under the ultimate anti-escape devices – highly strung threads of
orange, red and yellow balloons to stop invasion by helicopter; an archipelago of
identical…blocks.9
Many of these prisons were established at the height of penal welfarism and they
echo the austere styles of high, progressive modernism.10 Whether their design
simply reflected what was considered to be humanely functional and most likely to
meet the therapeutic goals of punishment at this time, or whether it was a knowing
strategy to reassure the public that penal welfarism did not equate to leniency,
is open to debate. Either way, they share a melancholy and sometimes brutal
external appearance while, inside, they are characterized by bland uniformity in
colour, texture, lighting and levels. Even more recently, since the early 1990s, the
introduction of the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) has paved the way for contracts
to be awarded for the entire design, construction, management and finance
(DCMF) of a prison, and new penal institutions have been built with the imperatives
of efficiency and security in mind, while keeping costs to a minimum. Prisons
operated by Serco, G4S and Kalyx all share a countenance that is antithetical to
their Victorian predecessors, yet not as stark and sombre as the post-Mountbatten
(1966) prisons. Dull, unassuming and uniform in appearance, the typical hallmarks
of prison exteriors built in the last twenty years are vast expanses of brick, few
(small) windows and no unnecessary ornamentation or decoration. In general they
look rather like private hospitals, no-frills chain hotels, or the kind of nondescript
corporate HQ you might expect to find in a business park.11
Prison historian Sean McConville asks whether it is morally acceptable for
ugliness, vulgarity or mere indifference to be part of punishment given that one
of the core values of our civilization is a belief in the beneficent effects of beauty.12
His conclusion is that, like supporters of the separate system a century ago, we are
spared the need to make decisions about prison aesthetics but now, in addition
to ‘the passive instrument of the building’, we have a ‘routine grinding of politics,
administration and public expenditure priorities’ overseen by an ‘impersonal’
and ‘dispassionate’ system, that counteracts the need for petty vindictiveness.13
While this is true, the restrictions of cellular confinement remain unchanged
even in the most recently-constructed prisons, and many prisoners are ‘doubled-
up’ in rooms which are no bigger than cells with sole occupancy. Indeed, Henri
Lefebvre’s comment that ‘space commands bodies, prescribing or proscribing
gestures, routes and distances to be covered’ seems particularly apposite in the
context of the cramped cells, gated wings and walled exercise yards of a ‘typical’
closed prison.14 We may no longer subject prison inmates to the treadwheel or
prevent them from communicating with each other but the disciplinary power
underpinning nineteenth and early twentieth century institutions, is retained
within the architectural logic of prisons and continues to influence penal design,
despite being abandoned in penal policy and practice almost a century ago.15
The designing of prisons that blend in with their characterless environs may be,
in part, an attempt at counteracting the controversy and NIMBY-ism that inevitably
arise when proposals to build a new prison are announced.16 The highly visible
prison might be a constant reminder to society of the perils of transgression but
it also arguably generates disproportionate fears about inmate escapes, an influx
into the area of ‘undesirables’ visiting prisoners, and ex-inmates settling into the
community in which the prison is situated on completion of their sentence (striking
at the heart of middle-classes fears about local property values plummeting). For
all these reasons, aesthetic considerations have been submerged by the imperative
to disguise penal institutions; they simply merge with the environs, whether urban
or rural. The camouflage effect is further achieved because, at the same time as
the prison has become increasingly indistinguishable from its surroundings, urban
design has taken on the features of the carceral with gated communities, visible
surveillance systems, and fortress style security paraphernalia.
Mike Davis characterizes contemporary prisons as ‘melting into the archi-
texture’ of the city and ‘becoming architecturally naturalized as aesthetic objects’.17
The notion of the city and the prison merging finds ideological18 form in Michel
Foucault’s rhetorical question; ‘is it surprising that prisons resemble factories,
schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?’,19 and also in the title of an
article on the criminalization and control of young, lower-class black men; a ‘deadly
symbiosis’ formed ‘when ghetto and prison meet and mesh’.20 The spaces and places
of urban landscapes are further evoked by Michel de Certeau who characterizes
institutions as one of the primary sites in which the powerful construct and exercise
their power, but the weak create their own ‘spaces’ within those places; making
them temporarily their own as they occupy and move through them.21 In some
prisons in the UK, the long, narrow corridors that connect different wings and run
past association rooms – sometimes out of the sight of staff in the wing offices – are
known as ‘the streets’. In these spaces, groups of prisoners congregate to replicate
some of the activities they might engage in on the streets outside, that is, hanging
around doing nothing except marking their patch.22
Prison design that incorporates spaces where prisoners can associate with each
other while remaining beyond the sight of staff would be unthinkable for the
architect of today. In the medium and low security prison estates, mid-twentieth
century discourses of therapy and rehabilitation have given way to new ideas
concerned with helping prisoners to change and improve as a result of their own
efforts, backed up by systems of privileges or penalties to be administered for good
and bad behaviour and by the introduction of new technologies which augment
staff powers to reward or punish. Spatial organization is instrumental in this
strategy of ‘responsibilization’, and the new generation of prison architecture seeks
to incorporate features of situational crime prevention into design; for example,
discrete housing units staffed by officers who operate informally and interact with
inmates in the living area while having a clear sight of all cell entrances. This model
of direct, informal supervision by officers – often referred to as ‘dynamic security’
– is aimed, not simply at aiding surveillance and control, but also at facilitating
communication between staff and inmates, so that the role of officers is no longer
to watch and respond to inmate problems, but to predict and prevent them.23 In
the ‘deep’ end of the prison estate on the other hand – that is, high and maximum
security – inmates have little or no contact or communication with each other
or with prison staff, and officers enforce secure custody conditions with the aid
of architecture designed to deprive the senses (including long-term isolation of
individuals considered a ‘risk’ to themselves or others) and militarized weaponry.
Rethinking prison design: towards a ‘humane architecture’
It is only the agencies responsible for the construction of prisons and jails, one
of the costliest building types to construct, that frequently indicate no desire to
incorporate architecture into their facilities and in some cases actively discourage
it. It has been our experience, in several recent designs, to have clients mandate
that certain degrees of bleakness (one could argue ugliness) be incorporated.24
This admission from an American architect that he is frequently discouraged

from incorporating ‘architecture’ into correctional facilities and is sometimes even
encouraged to design in elements of bleakness or ugliness reminds us of something
so obvious that we that we take it for granted: environments are thought before
they are built.25 As the quote underlines, one of the most difficult issues for an
architect commissioned to design prisons to overcome is an apparent total lack
of concern on the part of the client as to a fundamental goal of the profession: the
artistic and aesthetic endeavour to create spaces which can improve, enhance and
nurture the lives of those who come into contact with them.26
Conversely, an enduring problem for academics and other ‘experts’ when
voicing opinions about the benefits of building aesthetic considerations into
the architecture of incarceration (or any number of other ‘civilizing’ influences or
humanitarian measures) is that the accusation can be levied that one is simply
tinkering at the edges and doing nothing of substance to challenge the institution
of the prison itself. This is a dilemma familiar to prison reformists. Given the upward
trend in prison population numbers in the United States and in most European
countries over the last two decades, even groups that were set up with a strong
abolitionist agenda have been forced to switch their focus to reducing further
expansion of the penal system, and making prisons more humane, which can cause
some reformists discomfort. It is a predicament that has also penetrated discussions
about prison design among architects and planners. In the US an organization
called Architects/Designers/Planners for Social Responsibility (ADPSR) has called
for a boycott of all prison design, construction and renovation on the grounds
that the current prison system is ‘a devastating moral blight’ on society, and an
‘overwhelming economic burden’ to taxpayers which ‘has no place in a society
that aspires to liberty, justice, and equality for all’. San Francisco-based architect
Raphael Sperry, President of ADPSR, is unequivocal about his aims, arguing that
architects should be engaging in:
… making our country and our world a more sustainable, prosperous and
beautiful place … Saying ‘no’ to prisons is a very important part of that. Saying
we’re going to make prettier prisons, it’s not part of that. It’s neither here nor
there.27
The call by ADPSR for a boycott has generated heated debate within some of
the main firms contracted to design and build correctional facilities, as well as
more widely among members of the American Institute of Architects (AIA).28
Unsurprisingly, most architect and construction firms are unwilling to go as far as
turning down lucrative contracts, even if privately they have reservations about
aspects of prisons and imprisonment. In many cases, the professional architects
commissioned to design and construct correctional institutions are themselves
‘anaesthetized’ as they must desensitize themselves from not being able to deliver
a full aesthetic experience.29 However, Michael Fuller, a senior associate at global
architects HOK, refutes the suggestion that he is compromised or constrained by
the particular demands of designing prisons, and is unapologetic about the firm’s
commitment to building facilities that are responsive to the ‘the kinds of crimes
and populations we are finding’.30 In his opinion, improving correctional facilities is
a more realistic goal than simply refusing to build more prisons, and he claims that
HOK are at the cutting edge of prison design because they are finding innovative
solutions for dealing with specific prison populations, for example, sex offenders.
Frank J. Greene of Ricci Greene Associates and the AIA Academy of Architecture
for Justice agrees: ‘America might not need more prisons, but it desperately needs
better ones’.31
Most architects and penal reformers who share the views of Fuller and Greene
underline the importance of design that is sensuous (that is, appeals to the senses).
They emphasize that facilities should be in tune with the seasons; warm or cool
as appropriate and maximizing natural daylight. Direct access to outside space is
also widely considered vital to a sense of well-being. Over the years, many penal
experiments have been instigated which attempt to reflect progressive regimes
and aspirational aims in innovative, sensuously rich environments. For example, at
the prison in Brest, France, efforts have been made to improve the psychological
quality of inmates’ life, resulting in:
… a spatially stimulating environment that is filled with light and colour wherein
the confined inmates can move about with more freedom. Bright colours are
applied to surfaces throughout the building…the cell interiors are of a lighter,
softer tone that is accentuated by colour features.32
On a similar theme, Brians Penitentiary in Barcelona, Spain, has adopted a model

of ‘functional flexibility…[in] a setting that is conducive to personal development
and positive change’.33 Its architects have achieved this by incorporating elements
of unevenness and differing horizons in the belief that ‘distances and shadows
help to create an environment with less spatial repetition to ward off monotony’.34
In prisons in the Netherlands (for example, De Geerhorst and Breda), imaginative
use has been made of glass in roofs and floors which maximizes light and space
(while, it must be said, increasing opportunities for surveillance and security), and
at Rotterdam’s De Schie Penitentiary, the bright interior paintwork is reminiscent
of Southern climates.35 In the UK, the privately run HMP Peterborough, which
opened in 2006, has rejected the usual green-grey paintwork of institutional
conformity, and instead has a bright colour-coding system to identify the purpose
of its different areas. With its low-rise design, natural lighting, healthy living
and alternative therapy centre, and artificial trees placed in the workshops and
education block, Peterborough prison more closely resembles a shopping centre
than an archetypal jailhouse. Cells have been designed with as few ligature points
as possible to reduce suicide, each cell is fitted with an intercom linked to the wing
office, rather than the more usual simple call button, and prisoners can control the
lighting in their cells.36
While many European countries have examples of prisons that strive to
incorporate aesthetics, rather than anaesthetics, some of the most striking
examples of progressive penal experimentation are to be found in Scandinavia,
whose countries have an exceptionally low prison population and a reputation
for striving to make prison conditions approximate those on the outside as far as
possible, rather than degrading and dehumanizing the individuals within.37 For
example, the buildings which make up high-security Halden prison in Norway have
been designed to maximize the natural resources available, including the forest in
which it is situated. As an architects’ news website puts it, the prison has a ‘sensitive
landscape, light buildings, with much local timber on display, and shockingly large
windows [which] allow prisoners a dialogue with their surroundings’38 Large bar-
less windows (including in one of the two segregation blocks) might be ‘shocking’
to many, but every facet of Halden prison is purposefully designed to normalize
the environment for those who live and work within its walls (which, incidentally,
are rounded at the top so as not to appear too hostile, according to the prison’s
governor, Are Hoidal.39 Since it was opened by the King of Norway in April 2010,
Halden has been the focus of much controversy, much of which has emanated
from the fact that many regard Halden’s comfortable living quarters with fully-
fitted kitchens, sofas and flat-screen TVs as inappropriately conceived indulgences
to an anti-social population40 (see, for example the see Daily Mail’s report on the
‘world’s poshest prison’.41 Ironically, and somewhat paradoxically, opprobrium from
the Norwegian media and public focused not on home comforts and aesthetic
considerations but on the number of foreign prisoners initially held there. Not only
was it not their own criminals who would be enjoying the well appointed prison
but, as Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) reported, most of those held at Halden and
taking part in its enlightened rehabilitation programmes would not contribute to
Norwegian society on their release because they will be deported.42 As a result of
public dissatisfaction with this situation, Halden has changed its policy and is now
taking offenders from its own boundaries.
Another penal experiment was the Dóchas Centre (aka Mountjoy Women’s
Prison) in Dublin. Opened in 1999 to house about 80 women in medium security
conditions, Dóchas (meaning ‘hope’) promised to usher in a new penological
era within the Irish prison system. With an aim of encouraging the women held
there to take responsibility for their lives and successfully reintegrate into the
community on release from prison, the Dóchas Centre also set out to be different
from traditional penal institutions: it had no high external wall, no barred windows
or barbed wire and no visible external indication that it was actually a prison. The
‘exercise yard’ was a garden around which the inmates’ accommodation – situated
in five houses – was situated in intimate proximity and with an emphasis on
domesticity. Phoenix, the fifth house, provided private bed-sitter accommodation
and was intended for long-term prisoners who in the months leading up to their
release usually went out to work. With an emphasis on nature, and natural light
and sound (including a water feature designed to block out noise from Dublin’s
north circular road on which the centre was situated), the prison was, as far as the
architect who led the project was concerned, a triumph.43 However, Dóchas has
proved to be a short-lived success. In 2006 the Irish Prison Service announced its
decision to replace all four prisons on the Mountjoy complex (which included a
dilapidated and much-criticized men’s prison) with a ‘new modern operationally-
efficient prison’ on a green field site in north County Dublin.44
Like Halden, Dóchas might be considered an example of ‘humane architecture’;
a philosophy that has penetrated the building and design of other kinds of
institutions, e.g. hospitals and healthcare centres in recent years. While the
nineteenth century prison and hospital shared a disciplinary logic the twenty-first
century hospital is based on a very different model of medical power to that of
their Victorian predecessors.45 For example, private health company Circle recently
commissioned Foster and Partners to design a hospital in Bath which feels more
like a boutique hotel, while AHMM’s Health Centre in Kentish Town was shortlisted
for the RIBA Stirling Prize in 2009 and architect firm Gareth Hoskins has designed
several health centres which embrace the experiential and sensual dimension of
architecture.46 One of the most extensive and well-known projects, however, is
the Maggie’s Centre initiative, established by architectural theorist and designer
Charles Jencks, following the death from cancer of his wife, Maggie Keswick, in
1993. This growing network of cancer care centres – many designed by high-profile
‘starchitects’ – are not claiming a deterministic relationship between architecture
and health. However, Jencks believes that if there is an architecture of hope – an
architecture that helps one to live longer – it is not to be found in the traditional
hospital. Indeed, he has described the space in which his wife received her weekly
chemotherapy – a windowless, neon-lit space dictated by the demands of hygiene
and efficiency with hard, sterile surfaces, bright, white spaces, long corridors
and artificial ventilation systems – as a form of ‘architectural aversion therapy’.
By contrast, Maggie’s Centres are linked by design that is defined by inarguably
positive qualities: natural light, space, openness, intimacy, views, connectedness to
nature, and domestic in space and feeling.
The parallels between these innovative health centres and progressive prisons
are as obvious as are the similarities between traditional hospitals and penal
institutions (and any number of other ‘total’ institutions as Erving Goffman and
Michel Foucault remind us). Both are inscribed with narratives about the individuals
confined within them, their supposed characteristics and how they are expected
to behave. Historically, in both types of institution the needs of their occupants
(prisoners and patients) for an architecture that offers the required resources for
persons displaced from their routine lives by legal or medical necessity – resources
enabling them to nurture their sense of self and maintain the narrative of their
lives – has been absent. Instead, the architecture, internal landscaping, fixtures
and fittings of traditional hospitals convey messages about illness, alienation,
vulnerability and acquiescence to expertise; they encourage conformity and
obedience while giving the patient little opportunity to present his or her identity,
far less to assert autonomy or resistance to the dominant discourse. Prisons impart
similar messages about weakness, subservience and loss of identity, though they
may also communicate something crueller and more brutal. Cage-like interiors,
dormitories stacked with bunk beds which resemble human filing cabinets, and
heavy, vandal-resistant furnishings communicate to inmates that ‘you are animals’,
‘you are sub-human’ and ‘you are potential vandals’ respectively.47 Even basic
healthcare for inmates has sometimes only been provided as an afterthought. For
example, in California, prisons in the 1980s and 1990s were designed with little if
any consideration to the need for medical space to examine and treat patients;
an oversight that subsequently necessitated a massive and expensive building
programme to retro-fit a healthcare infrastructure into the penal estate. The most
extreme penal environment, the ‘supermax’ (synonymous with the USA, but also
found in other parts of the world, including Australia), incorporates numerous
design elements that result in psychic and physical pain on a par with techniques of
torture. But the coercive use of architecture to instil total psychic and bodily control
over prisoners is not dedicated solely to those individuals designated ‘threatening’,
‘non-compliant’ or ‘high-risk’. Overcrowded accommodation, physical separation
of prisoners and guards, hi-tech monitoring and surveillance, and areas of both
sensory deprivation and sensory overload can be found in many prisons around
the world that hold inmates who are not deemed a high security risk. Conventional
penal aesthetics may thus simply reinforce criminal and criminalized identities to a
prison population who will (mostly) return to society.
In contrast, one of the most striking similarities between the Maggie’s Centres
and Halden and Dóchas prisons is their emphasis on ‘normal’, domestic spaces. In
all of them, kitchens are especially important and all the things that commonly go
on in kitchens – cooking food for oneself and others, drinking tea, having informal
talks around a kitchen table – are viewed as an important form of rehabilitation and
therapy. An emphasis on domestic space has also been found in many ‘progressive’
prison regimes in the UK; among them, Parkhurst C Wing, Glen Parva, Gartree
and Grendon Underwood therapeutic communities, Blantyre House resettlement
prison and Barlinnie Special Unit. In these institutions, regimes were based on
individual responsibility and accountability and collective support and solidarity.
Prisoners could follow their own daily routine, wear their own clothes, decorate their
cells, cook their own food, take delivery of uncensored mail and receive visitors.48
Yet all of these places have been shut down, fundamentally changed or left on
the margins of the penal system because their regimes challenged the retributive,
punitive philosophy underpinning penal policy in this country.49 For example,
Barlinnie – established as an alternative to the notorious ‘cages’ at Inverness prison
– became a political embarrassment despite (or perhaps because of ) the positive
evidence from its prisoners and prison officers that it was possible to rehabilitate
those long-term prisoners who were viewed by the political establishment as
incapable of redemption’.50
For former inmate Jimmy Boyle, ‘what made the Unit unlike any other place was
the way staff and prisoners were allowed and encouraged to sit down and talk
together’51 a nod to normalization which caused fellow prisoner Johnny Steele to
reflect that eventually ‘All the bitterness and hatred seemed to have abandoned
me; the instinct for revenge, which so often flared up in me, had extinguished.
This was all I needed to get out of life, this friendly, loving feeling, this human
feeling that had been gone from my life for so long’.52 Here again we might draw
parallels with humane health centres. For founder of Maggie’s Centres, Charles
Jencks, we need medical environments to cure us, but ‘we also need to feel like
people again, rather than patients’.53 The question arises, then: shouldn’t we be
purposefully designing penal institutions which make convicted offenders – the
vast majority of whom will come back into society – feel like people again rather
than prisoners? One of the key problems for the prison architect is that he or
she has formal clients in the form of government ministries and private security
companies awarded design contracts, but must also serve further ‘clients’ in the
guise of prison staff, inmates and the wider community in which the prison is
located. Of these, only the last may be considered worth consulting and designers
do not generally liaise with the actual ‘end users’ of their designs.54 In an ongoing
climate of populist punitiveness, enlightened penal experiments, including
those which employ aesthetic considerations aimed at making prisoners feel
like people again frequently prove too controversial to survive in societies where
the prevailing public view is that offenders deserve to be held in anaesthetizing,
pain-inducing environments.
notes
1 Thanks to Jonathan Simon for his insightful comments on an early draft of this chapter.
2 Elaine Scarry, On Beauty and Being Just (Princeton NJ, 1999), p. 58.
3 Public expectation is itself complex and contested terrain. Media-fuelled anxiety
projecting ideas about ‘risk’ and ‘dangerousness’ on to offenders suggests that
the general public want to see ‘traditional’ looking prisons with all the motifs of
punishment, retribution and deterrence implied – until they are proposed in their own
neighbourhoods.
4 Daniel Nihill cited in Robin Evans, The Fabrication of Virtue: English Prison Architecture,
1750–1840 (Cambridge, 1982), p. 323.
5 M. Fiddler, ‘Projecting the prison: The depiction of the uncanny in The Shawshank
Redemption’, in Crime, Media, Culture: An International Journal 3/2 (2007): 192–206.
6 Peter Wayne, ‘Prison design in the twentieth century’, in Iona Spens (ed.), Architecture of
Incarceration (London, 1994), p. 21.
7 See <http://www.malmaison-oxford.com>.
8 Karen Dale and Gibson Burrell, ‘An-aesthetics and architecture’, in Adrian Carr and
Philip Hancock (eds), Art and Aesthetics at Work (Basingstoke, 2003).
9 Wayne, ‘Prison design in the twentieth century’, p. 22.
10 Philip Hancock and Yvonne Jewkes, ‘Architectures of incarceration: the spatial pains of
imprisonment’, in Punishment & Society (December 2011).
11 Yvonne Jewkes, ‘Penal aesthetics and the art of prison architecture’, in Leonidas K.
Cheliotis (ed.), The Arts of Imprisonment: Essays on Control, Resistance and Empowerment
(Aldershot, 2011); and Yvonne Jewkes and Helen Johnston, ‘The evolution of prison
architecture’, in Yvonne Jewkes (ed.), Handbook on Prisons (Cullompton, 2007).
12 Sean McConville, ‘The architectural realization of penal ideas’, in Leslie Fairweather and
Sean McConville, Prison Architecture: Policy, Design and Experience (Oxford, 2000).
13 McConville, ‘The architectural realization’, p. 10.
14 Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (Oxford, 1991), p. 143.
(London, 1991); and E. Goffman, ‘On the characteristics of total institutions: the inmate
world’, in Donald Cressey (ed.), The Prison: Studies in Institutional Organisation and
Change (New York, 1961).
16 Jewkes, ‘Penal aesthetics’.

17 Cited in Fiddler, ‘Projecting the prison’, p. 194.
18 Ideological, not literal as, strictly speaking neither are concerned with form and
fabric. For Foucault the common thread that binds these institutions is a disciplinary
technology of power while Loïc Wacquant’s comparison of urban ghetto and prison is
functional, not architectural.
19 Foucault, Discipline and Punish, p. 228.
20 Loïc Wacquant, ‘Deadly symbiosis: when ghetto and prison meet and mesh’, in
Punishment & Society 3/1 (2001).
21 Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley and Los Angeles CA, 1984).
22 Yvonne Jewkes, Captive Audience: Media, Masculinity and Power in Prisons (Cullompton,
2002).
23 Ian Dunbar, A Sense of Direction (London, 1985).
24 Architect Michael Walden of Dworsky Associates, Los Angeles, cited in Spens,
Architecture of Incarceration, p. 11.
25 Amos Rapoport, ‘Vernacular architecture and the cultural determinates of form’, in
Anthony D. King (ed.), Buildings and Society: Essays on the Social Development of the
Built Environment (London, 1980).
26 Spens, Architecture of Incarceration, p. 11.
27 T. Fuss, ‘Rethinking prison design: is it time to throw away the key to prison
architecture?’, in LA Architect, May/June (Glendale CA, 2006): 64.
28 Fuss, ‘Rethinking prison design’.
29 Dale and Burrell, ‘An-aesthetics and architecture’.
30 Ibid.
31 Ibid.
32 Spens, Architecture of Incarceration, p. 123.
33 Ibid., p. 115.
34 Ibid.
35 Ibid.
36 Jewkes and Johnson, ‘evolution of prison architecture’.
37 John Pratt, ‘Scandinavian exceptionalism in an era of penal excess’, in British Journal of
Criminology 48/2 (2007): 119–37.
38 See <http://www.worldarchitecturenews.com>.
39 Time, 10 May 2010.
40 It should be noted, however, that despite the lack of spatial and architectural
repression at prisons such as Halden, ‘modern’ does not necessarily and unequivocally
equate to ‘better’. In fact, Hancock and Jewkes (2011) argue that such experiments in
flexible, aesthetically sensitive penal design may engender their own distinctive ‘pains
of imprisonment’ and represent an extension of state power over the individual; one
all the more inhuman due to its apparent absence.
41 See <http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1277158/Halden-Prison-
Inside-Norways-posh-new-jail.html>.
42 See <http://www.newsinenglish.no/2010/05/25/shocking-lack-of-prison-security/>.
43 Barbara Mason, ‘A gendered Irish experiment: grounds for optimism?’, in Frances
Heidensohn (ed.), Gender and Justice (Cullompton, 2006).
44 Irish Prison Service (2006), p. 35.
45 Foucault, Discipline and Punish.
46 See <http://www.garethhoskinsarchitects.co.uk/projects/health>.
47 Christine Tartaro, ‘Watered down: partial implementation of the new generation jail
philosophy’, The Prison Journal 86/3 (2006).
48 Joe Sim, ‘Barlinnie’, in Yvonne Jewkes and Jamie Bennett (eds), Dictionary of Prisons and
Punishment (Cullompton, 2008).
49 Ibid.
50 Ibid.
51 Sim, ‘Barlinnie’, p. 22.
52 Ibid.
53 Cited in the Guardian, 6 May 2010.
54 Hancock and Jewkes, ‘Architecture of Incarceration’.
2
Architecture and Contested Space in the
Development of the Modern Prison
Helen Johnston
Each narrow cell in which we dwell

Is a foul and dark latrine,
And the fetid breath of living Death
Chokes up each grated screen,
And all, but lust is turned to dust
In Humanity’s machine.
(From The Ballad of Reading Gaol by Oscar Wilde)1
Introduction
This chapter will examine the changing place of architecture and the contested
nature of prison space across 100 years of the development of the modern
prison.2 Prisons in the eighteenth century were often places of disorder and
disease; inmates paid for their entrance, food, lodgings, release; gaolers profited
from the fees and those prisoners with little or no family or support lived a
meagre existence.3 Prisoners were held until their court appearance, or until they
were transported overseas to the colonies or publicly executed for their crimes.
Those imprisoned for a short prison sentence or until debts were paid were
simply detained; the function of the prison was detention and prisons, at this
time, did not claim to do any more than secure custody. The architecture of such
prisons was largely unimportant; prisons had to be secure but had little meaning
beyond this function.
During the eighteenth century, it was probably the architecture of the gallows
used across the country, or the permanent Triple Tree at Tyburn that had a
more symbolic place in the minds of the populous with regard to the operation
of punishment. But by the end of the century, this began to alter as the prison
and more importantly, for this chapter, the architecture and spatial planning
of the prison was transformed and the prison was placed at the centre of a new
philosophy of punishment.
There were various reasons for the shift towards the use of imprisonment, some
philosophical, others more practical responses; there was a decline in the use of
execution by the beginning of the nineteenth century and public executions were
ended in 1868, by which time it was often only those convicted for murder that
were actually hung. Sending prisoners overseas and banishing them to one of the
colonies for their crimes had also fluctuated in use, transportation to America had
ended with the War of Independence in the 1770s and although the discovery
of Australia had relatively quickly become the replacement, it too as a convict
destination was under scrutiny in the early decades of the nineteenth century and
had all but ended by the 1850s.
The ‘birth’ of the prison was a significant shift in the way in which the modern
world saw the treatment of those who committed crimes, a movement away from
the barbarous infliction of physical pain in public, whether that be execution,
flogging, stocks, or pillory, towards a system of punishment that reflected the
supposed civilisation of the nation and Utilitarian ideas about proportionality in the
law, sentencing and punishment. As outlined, it was also a practical response to the
problem, it was not deemed appropriate to execute offenders in the numbers in
which they had in previous generations; indeed the system of capital punishment
was seen as unjust and barbaric, often resulting in a lottery as to who actually stood
at the gallows.4 Various mechanisms operating throughout the criminal justice
system meant that a person may not be executed, despite the large number of capital
offences (about 250 offences: ‘the Bloody Code’). Legislation was minutely defined so
many of these statutes did not result in offenders being put to death. Some offenders
could claim immunity through an old concept of ‘benefit of clergy’ but only for the
first offence. At trial, juries were reluctant to convict if they thought the offence
did not deserve such a punishment, or if there was an error in prosecution, or they
judged stolen goods to be of lower value; thus removing the possibility of a capital
sentence. In addition, at sentence the judge may reduce sentence to transportation
or it could be reduced through a plea of mercy to the King.5
Although transportation had been fairly widely used, as a sentence and for those
reprieved from death, it was also becoming apparent that prisoners could not be
sent abroad as the former colonies no longer wanted the ‘dregs’ of English society.
Therefore, by the early to mid-nineteenth century, England was faced with a new,
and what was for some, uncomfortable reality; prisoners would have to serve
their sentences in prisons in this country and many of them would at some time
be released in this country. This briefly summarises just some of the conflicts and
complex questions which confronted penal commentators and social observers in
this period.
What was important for the prison at this moment in history was that it
developed from a holding and detention function to a place in which the offenders
could potentially be transformed by the regimes and routines within the prison
walls. The architecture and design of prisons became central to the way in
which the transformation of offenders would occur and to the changing penal
philosophies and practices in the following years. As this chapter will discuss,
different penal philosophies came to prominence at different times, the new
Architecture and Contested Space in the Modern Prison 25
prison architecture which began in the late eighteenth century had to embrace
these shifting penal ideologies and practices. Architectural meaning in internal
construction and external façades became multi-layered; communicating ideas of
reform, punishment, deterrence, state power often at the same time but with one or
another philosophy at the fore. Predominantly focussing on the nineteenth century,
this chapter will focus on internal prison architecture and space in three distinct
but linked moments in the development of the modern prison. It will consider
first, the period of prison ‘reform’ at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of
the nineteenth century; second, the height of the use of the separate system in
the 1830s and 1840s; and finally, a period of severely deterrent prison regimes,
from the mid-nineteenth century, through the centralisation of local prisons in
1877, to 1895 when the Gladstone Committee on prisons began to challenge the
deterrent regime and promote the idea that prisons could be both deterrent and
rehabilitative.6 In each of these periods, all key in the development of the modern
prison, architecture and design of space in prisons was fundamentally important to
the regime and became deeply embedded into the way in which prisons operated.
Unlike the United States, where a large scale prison building programme of ‘Big
House’ prisons such as Sing Sing occurred in the early twentieth century, there
were few prisons built in England. In the twentieth century, new prisons were
located in disused army barracks, airfields, military hospitals or country houses,
where buildings were adapted for the purpose rather than newly constructed. As
John Pratt has argued the prison ‘disappeared’, becoming increasingly invisible,
remote and cut off from society.7 New progressive thinking in the early twentieth
century saw the development of open prisons and ex-military facilities suited
the requirements and so the first complete new build was HMP Everthorpe
in 1958, which originally opened as a borstal.8 Some ‘new-generation’ prisons
appeared from the 1960s onwards, HMP Holloway was rebuilt in the 1970s but the
architectural design was its fundamental flaw, since then, most have conformed
to the traditional spurred design.9 In the twenty-first century, there has been more
discourse on penal aesthetics and humane treatment in prison building but this
exists alongside a discourse for more security and in a terrain where new prison
builds are likely to be undertaken by private companies.10
However, it is important to remember that the prisons of the nineteenth century
still play a central role in current prison system, local prisons built in the Victorian
period, such as HMP Liverpool, HMP Wandsworth; two of the largest prisons in
Western Europe, and HMP Hull, HMP Leicester, HMP Birmingham, HMP Leeds, HMP
Wormwood Scrubs, ‘have not been consigned to the history books; thousands of
prison inmates still live, sleep and work in these monoliths of the Victorian penal
imagination’.11
Architecture and prison space in the period of reform
The architectural development and prison designs of the early reform period in
the late eighteenth century were not just about providing a moral environment
in which prisoners’ behaviour could be potentially altered, in the preceding

decades there had also been a widespread concern about disease and health in
the post-reform gaols and houses of correction. Much of the squalor, disease and
the poor conditions in which prisoners were housed as well as the deficiencies of
administration were exposed by reformers such as John Howard and Elizabeth
Fry in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Howard was concerned
with the spread of disease and poor health in prisons but he was also interested
in improving the moral environment, ending the debauchery, association and
drunkenness he had observed.
Broadly speaking, the changes in prison design and space came in two phases;
in the early phase came designs influenced by the concerns about the physical
health of prisoners, particularly concern about gaol fever and an influential design
by Jeremy Bentham, his plan for the ‘Panopticon’ prison. In the second phase,
prison design and architecture was more deeply embedded in the regime and was
thought to encourage the transformation of the prisoner through inward religious
and moral reflection influenced by Evangelical thought, as demonstrated in the
use of the separate and silent systems of the early nineteenth century (discussed
in the following section).
From the mid-eighteenth century, the architecture of prisons was being altered
due to the concerns about health. As Robin Evans has pointed out in the years
up to 1795 there was widespread prison building in England, at least 45 new
gaols and bridewells were constructed and these projects were undertaken by
magistrates at the local level and not by the government.12 This was partly due to
the end of transportation to America (the number of prisoners in gaols and houses
of correction had increased and the hulks (prison ships) were overcrowded and
had a high mortality rate), but was also due to the concern about the spread of
‘gaol fever’. Although it remained clear that prisons should be ‘places of terror’ and
the external architecture of the prison should convey this, there was concern that
‘gaol fever’ could escape the prison walls and infect the populous. Therefore prison
architecture and design focused on the prevention of the spread of disease by the
use of ventilation, ‘salubrity and airiness’ determined prison construction, as it was
believed that the putrid air in prisons was the cause of contagion.13
The work of pioneering prison architects such as Stephen Hales, who installed
ventilation devices and bellows at various prisons across the country, can also be
seen to influence the recommendations of reformer Howard, made in the latter
decades of the eighteenth century. Howard recommended that prisons should be
built in open country, perhaps on a hill or close to running water, and that the
building itself should be divided into pavilions for different classes of prisoners,
each pavilion raised above ground on arcades to allow the flow of air around the
building.14 One example of a prison which embraced all the principles of design
and location recommended by Howard was Shrewsbury prison, built in 1793.
Shrewsbury prison was built (and still stands) on Castle Hill, near to the River Severn,
and internally the prison was designed around four main courts and other smaller
ones. Each court was surrounded by an arcade with arches, above which were the
sleeping cells connected by railed galleries and at the centre of the prison stood the
chapel.15 The prison was designed by William Blackburn, and a local architect John
H. Haycock and the construction fell to the then County Surveyor of Shropshire,
Thomas Telford. Blackburn was a leading prison architect who designed many of
the prisons constructed across the country in the period of reform; he translated
Howard’s reforms into practical construction.16
Howard’s influence can also be seen in the 1779 Penitentiary Act; it was resolved
that penitentiaries should be built by the government to hold prisoners before
transportation (or until a new destination was found) and it was to this tender
that Jeremy Bentham submitted his plans for the Panopticon. The Panopticon
has probably become the most famous prison design and its influence on prison
construction and the construction of other buildings is clearly evident, but it has
never been built in the way in which Bentham envisaged, at least not in the UK.
The Panopticon design is based on the ideas of surveillance, observation and
inspection, the design is of six floors in a circular structure, each floor has cells
around the outside and all the cells face an observation tower in the centre of the
structure. Prisoners in their cells were therefore observable from the guard tower
at all times, conformity induced by the fact that prisoners could not tell at any one
moment whether they were being observed or not.
Despite Bentham’s long correspondence with the government, the Panopticon
was never built and neither were the penitentaries; in the end the discovery of
Australia led to a new penal colony and from 1787 convicts were sent to this new
faraway land. The problem of housing large numbers of prisoners in England
was largely abandoned until 1816 when the first government penitentiary,
Millbank opened for convicts to serve sentences of solitary confinement before
transportation overseas. The demise of Millbank was relatively swift as public
attention grew to the numbers of prisoners with mental health problems caused
by the severe regime.17 By the time the Millbank experiment had ended and it was
converted to a convict depot, penal philosophies had moved on and across the
Atlantic the development of new ideas about how prisoners should be treated
and could be transformed began to influence architecture and design of prison
regimes in this country.
The separate cell: architectural isolation and space
The spread of new penal philosophies from the United States to England in the
1820s and 1830s had a fundamental impact on the prison, its architecture and
its regimes. Penal administrators, magistrates and social commentators debated
the relative merits of two systems of punishment; the separate system and the
silent system. Both systems were in use in the US; the separate system at Walnut
Street Prison and the Eastern Penitentiary in Philadelphia, and the silent system at
Auburn and Sing Sing Prisons in the State of New York. Under the separate system,
prisoners were held in separate cells, where they would sleep, eat and work, they
would only leave to go to chapel or for exercise. Even then their faces could be
covered to prevent recognition, or exercise may be undertaken in a separate yard
to prevent contact with other prisoners. Under the silent system, prisoners were
held in association during the day and put to labour, but communication was
prohibited at all times. Both of these systems operated in the belief that moral
contamination should be prevented through the isolation of, or the prevention
of communication between, prisoners; young offenders and those in prison for
the first time would not be contaminated by the hardened or more experienced
offenders confined with them.18
One of the first Inspectors of Prisons, William Crawford, had visited
penitentiaries in the US operating both systems of imprisonment and presented a
detailed report demonstrating his support for the separate system. Crawford and
another Inspector, Reverend Whitworth Russell used their position to advance
the benefits of the separate system and the establishment of Inspectors of Prison
in 1835 allowed the government to inspect and make recommendations to local
magistrates who administered prisons across the country.
The architecture of imprisonment was to play a central role, as the attention
to detail in the construction of the cells and buildings was crucial to enforce
the required degree of separation, isolation (physical and acoustic) and yet
maintain space for sleeping and labour within the cell; the use of separate system
enforced by architectural isolation in a cell was seen as an important part of not
only punishment but also of reformation. As Crawford noted in his report to the
government:
In the silence of the cell contamination cannot be received or imparted. A sense

of degradation cannot be excited by exposure nor reformation checked by
false shame. Day after day, with no companions but his thoughts, the convict
is compelled to reflect and listen to the reproofs of conscience. He is led to dwell
upon past errors, and to cherish whatever better feelings he may at any time
have imbibed. These circumstances are in the highest degree calculated to
ameliorate the affections and reclaim the heart. The mind becomes open to the
best impressions and prepared for the reception of those truths and consolations
which Christianity can alone impart.19
The government’s second penitentiary Pentonville, opened in 1842 had embraced

the use of the separate system and this had been designed into the architecture
of the building, by Joshua Jebb (Surveyor-General of Convict Prisons). Even before
the first prisoners arrived at Pentonville the new government experiment came
under considerably scrutiny in the press. The Times was a staunch critic of the new
regime, calling the system ‘unnecessarily cruel, impolitic and injudicious’20 and the
new cells of isolation held up to offer a space of moral and religious conversion
were quickly seen by critics as a source of mental breakdown in prisoners and
unnecessary severity. Charles Dickens, who had also observed the separate system
in operation in Philadelphia, argued that:
Very few men were capable of estimating the immense amount of torture and
agony which this dreadful punishment, prolonged for years, inflicts upon the
sufferers; and, in guessing at it myself, and in reasoning from what I have seen
… I am only the more convinced that there is a depth of terrible endurance to it

which none but its sufferers can fathom, and which no man has the right to inflict
upon his fellow creature.21
In the following months, the periods of isolation under the separate system were
reduced from eighteen to twelve and then to nine months as prisoners’ mental and
physical health began to breakdown.22
Whilst the use of the separate system may not have been as widespread in
practice as some authors have suggested, the Prison Act 1839 did order that all
prisons across the country operate the system (it also required each separate cell
to be certified by the Inspectors of Prisons) and it is at this point that the use of
‘the cell’ becomes the central focus of penal philosophy and practice. Across the
country, the use of the separate system varied, some prisons like Shrewsbury had,
even before the Act, built separate cells and began a slow conversion of the whole
of the prison in the following decades,23 yet other prisons still operated the silent
system, or the local magistrates did not, or were not willing to, commit the financial
resources required for such a project, it remained the case that the systems and
practices in use were diverse.
In practice, the use of the separate system in local rather than government
controlled prisons, was not universal, and conversion to the system could be
long and protracted but the dominance of the separate system within the penal
system was ensured by Prison Inspectors appointed under the Prison Act 1835.
These five inspectors and notably, two in particular, Crawford and Russell, began to
exert considerable influence and pressure on the local authorities running prisons
across the country. They began regular inspections, certified prison rules, advised
magistrates and the Home Secretary, they interviewed applicants for posts in
government prisons, approved all architectural changes and developments and
Crawford and Russell prepared the Prison Act 1839 which pushed through their
preferred separate system.24
In the US, the silent system won out in the mid-century, but it appears that
the use of the systems across the Atlantic were different; in the US the silent
congregate system was used in cellular confinement, but in England the silent
system was often operated through cellular confinement at night, but during
the day, labour was undertaken in large workrooms where the prisoners were
in association but silent. Advocates of the silent system like the Governor of
Coldbath Fields House of Correction, George Laval Chesterton, were not as
convinced by the religious transformation of the separate system and thought
that prisoners needed to be taught new attitudes. A system of rewards and
punishments came along with the silent system; a more pessimistic view of
reform, in which defiance was met with immediate punishment, which was
both automatic and increased in severity if the defiance lasted. Chesterton
believed that prisoners were ‘forced into reflection … they become penitent
and submissive. The lesson is not lost upon them and in the process of time
their dispositions are so obviously improved as to attest the valuable benefit of
the treatment they have received.’25
So, by the late 1830s the separate system and the separate cell had been
established by its advocates as a place of potential transformation, the cell
was a space in which, under the correct conditions, the prisoner could reflect
on their own behaviour, past criminal life and mistakes, repent and look to
God for salvation. In ‘the solitude of the cell … alone with God and a wounded
conscience, the unhappy man is forced to exercise his powers of reflection, and
thus acquires a command over his sensual impulses which will probably exert a
permanent influence’.26
But by the mid-1840s to early 1850s the separate system was beginning to lose
its appeal, the penal philosophy underpinning the system came under attack as
long periods of isolation were deemed too severe for the majority of prisoners
to endure. On the other hand, it was claimed prisoners manipulated chaplains
with false claims of religious enlightenment. Others thought the regime too soft;
questions were raised about the amount of food given to prisoners particularly
in relation to the daily food given in workhouses and the everyday diet of the
labouring poor. But others stuck firmly to their claims that through the separate
system: ‘a very strong impression on the nervous system is made, and it requires
careful watching to regulate it, but we believe that with such watchfulness it not
only is controllable, but essential to that change of mind which reforms character.’27
However, the decision to choose cellular confinement made in this period was
a fundamental moment in the history of the prison. It was at this moment that
the way in which architecture and space in prisons were devised and internally
organised (at least in the Western world), became the focal point for many of the
regimes that followed and continues to remain central to the way in which many
prisons are organised today.
Deterrence and architecture
From the mid-nineteenth century until the Gladstone Committee in 1895 prison
regimes were dominated by a deterrent philosophy of punishment. Whilst a
deterrent element of the prison regime and architecture already existed, the
reformative potential of the separate system had been undone and combined
with public fears about the ‘criminal classes’ and the end of transportation
gave prominence to a more deterrent penal philosophy.28 By the early 1850s
transportation to Australia had virtually ended and the government had designed
a new system of convict prisons where those prisoners who would otherwise have
been transported would undergo sentences of penal servitude. Thus from the
mid-century existed two systems of imprisonment, the government-run convict
prisons and the local prisons for shorter sentences of imprisonment (under two
years) which were administered by the magistrates of the county or borough.
Both local prisons and convict prisons from the mid-century were to operate
a regime in which deterrence was the primary aim. The reformative potential
of the separate system enforced through architectural isolation was lost and
although separate cells remained a key feature of the prison regime, they were
no longer seen as offering the potentially transformative function of religious

and inward reflection that the earlier commentators had hailed. Instead the
architecture of isolation in cellular confinement was to form the central part
of a regime to deter the offender. The new regime saw the use of the cell
embedded into a severe prison regime based on deterrence and uniformity.
This regime came from the recommendations of the Carnarvon Committee in
1863 and is often referred to as ‘hard labour, hard board, hard fare’; prisoners
were put to hard labour for long hours of the day, given low diets and sparse
living conditions. The use of cellular space remained; to isolate the prisoner at
night or to separate them from others during the day, whilst they were put to
hard labour on the crank or making clogs or picking oakum (prisoners were
given old rope which they had to untwist and separate by hand this would then
be sold on, hence the expression ‘money for old rope’). The types of hard labour
given varied according to the establishment; convict prisoners may be put to
work on the dockyards yet those prisoners in local prisons often completed
hard labour in their cells and therefore may have only left the cell for short
periods to attend chapel or for exercise. The cell was pivotal within the control
of the regime and the cramped, poorly-lit environment loomed large in the
memoirs of prisoners in this period. Fraudster, Austin Bidwell, sentenced to
twenty years imprisonment in 1873 wrote:
[a] little box with a mixture of curiosity and consternation for the thought smote
me with blinding force that for long years that little box – eight feet six inches
in length, seven in height and five feet in width, with its floor and roof of stone –
would be my only home – would be! must be! And no power could avert my fate.29
The cell conditions were sparse; the main furniture was the bed or hammock,
although the 1863 Committee replaced them with plank beds and coarse
mattresses for short term prisoners and those in the early stages of a long sentence.
The pillow of the plank bed was also a piece of wood, nailed to the plank and stuffed
with coconut fibre. The early reformers had been concerned about ventilation and
circulating air in the prisons but as the separate system had spread, the arcades
and galleries of prison had been filled in, separate cells with built-in lavatories were
insanitary and poorly maintained or the use of cell buckets resulted in stench and
stagnant air trapped in the architecture of the wings.30
In 1877, the Prison Act transferred the control of the local prisons from the
magistrates to the government. The slow and gradual process of uniformity that
had been a concern for most of the century had been overcome, all prisoners in local
prisons could be subject to the same conditions regardless as to their geographical
location and a system of marks (used in the convict prisons) was introduced. Under
the marks system, each prisoner was set a daily number of marks to achieve through
labour and good behaviour, through 28 day stage system marks were accumulated,
and if the required number were obtained during the period, then the prisoner
would pass to the next stage which had some amelioration in the regime. Periods
of imprisonment in both convict and local prisons remained focused on deterrence
and conditions were harsh. Convict prisoners were still to serve nine months in
separate confinement before they were set to penal servitude. In local prisons,
most sentences were short, commonly less than one month but frequently less
than two weeks, this often meant that prisoners were unable to progress through
the marks system and were to experience the whole of their sentence at the first
and therefore most meagre stage of the system.31 One-who-has-tried-them argued
in 1881 that:
Unless one has experienced it, one can have no conception of the effect of close
confinement upon the nervous system. People who have not tried it are apt to
say ‘Well, it’s only for twenty-eight days;’ but if they were to try what it was like
having nothing but white-washed walls to stare at day after day, and neither
book nor employment to take one’s thoughts, as it were, out of one’s self, I don’t
think they would say anything about it’s being ‘only twenty-eight days’.32
The deterrent regime persisted until the Gladstone Committee in 1895 which
reviewed prisons in the late nineteenth century; this Committee advocated
some alterations in the regime and was based on ideas which bought together
rehabilitation and deterrence. Some alterations in the day to day lives of prisoners
emerged yet separation and silence was still dominated the regime. Brocklehurst
wrote, in 1898, of his twenty-eight day sentence of solitary confinement:
Imagine a blind man denied human intercourse, with power of motion only in
a space 14 feet by 7, whose only contact with a limited outside world comes
through the ceiling, walls and iron door, and you can form a faint idea of what
life in prison must be. A prisoner sees nothing beyond the limits of his cell; feels
only its discomforts; tastes the prescribed prison fare; hears limited sounds of his
strange environment; and smells little beyond the scent of creosote as it exhales
from the oakum.33
Conclusion
Examining prison architecture and space in the historical development of the

modern prison, particularly focusing on the key period between the end of
the eighteenth and the end of the nineteenth century, demonstrates not only
how prisons operated in the past, but also provides an important insight into
the shape of prisons today. As this chapter has shown, the influence and indeed,
the continued use of Victorian prisons today, means that these architectural
influences remain at the core of our prison system. The lack of prison building
and the decline of the prison population in England in the early twentieth
century meant that when new developments and a rise in the prison population
occurred in the post Second World War era, these Victorian prisons were needed.
But it is not simply about the functional requirements of the system, the popular
cultural image of a ‘prison’ is a Victorian prison, long three tier buildings with
small windows and an austere exterior, is the ‘prison-look’ and this is deeply
culturally embedded.34
The use of cellular confinement as opposed to other collective methods

of holding prisoners has also been pivotal in shaping the organisation and
management of prison space and regime throughout the following centuries.
In the twenty-first century, we can observe the use of such deeply embedded
attitudes about cellular architectural and prison space in the construction and
use of Supermax prisons across the globe. These spaces confine the ‘worst of the
worst’ prisoners in solitary lockdown for 23 hours per day with little visual stimuli,
possession or activities and by design, contact with human beings at a minimum or
the use of Supermax isolation for death row inmates to ‘prime’ the condemned for
death in the US.35 Whilst supermax prisons have not been built in the UK, instead
dispersal prisons and high security units are used, elements of supermaxes such as
segregation, isolation, surveillance, constant artificial lighting are features which
predominate. Such use of the cell and the architectural enforcement of this space
in the twenty-first century and the debates they provoke are strongly reminiscent
of some of the historical developments in prison architecture discussed above. The
cell is perhaps irremovable in our view of how prisons should be organised. It has
been through various incarnations as a space of reform, separation, deterrence
and isolation and although often now occupied by more than one prisoner, has
remained architecturally the most significant space in the prison.
notes
1 Oscar Wilde, De Profundis, The Ballad of Reading Gaol and Other Writings (Ware,
1898/2002), p. 136.
2 An earlier version of this article appeared in the Prison Service Journal 187 (2010):
9–14.
3 Randall McGowen, ‘The Well-Ordered Prison, England, 1780–1865’, in Norval Morris
and David J. Rothman (eds), The Oxford History of the Prison – The Practice of Punishment
in Western Society (New York, 1998), pp. 71–99.
4 Victor Gatrell, The Hanging Tree – Execution and the English People 1770–1868 (Oxford,
1994).
5 Clive Emsley, Crime and Society in England, 1750–1900 (Harlow, 2010).
6 Report from the Departmental Committee on Prisons [Gladstone Committee] (C.7702),
vol. LVI, Parliamentary Papers (London, 1895).
7 John Pratt, Punishment and Civilisation: Penal Tolerance and Intolerance in Modern
Society (London, 2002).
8 Ian Dunbar and Leslie Fairweather, ‘English prison design’, in Leslie Fairweather and
Sean McConville (eds), Prison Architecture: Policy, Design and Experience (Oxford, 2000);
Mark Leech, The Prisons Handbook (Manchester, 2005).
9 Leslie Fairweather, ‘Prison design in the twentieth century’, in Iona Spens (ed.)
Architecture of Incarceration (London, 1994); Paul Rock, Reconstructing a Women’s
Prison: The Holloway Redevelopment Project, 1968–1988 (Oxford, 1996); Yvonne Jewkes
and Helen Johnston, ‘The evolution of prison architecture’, in Yvonne Jewkes (ed),
Handbook on Prisons (Cullompton, 2007), pp. 174–96.
10 Fairweather, ‘Prison design’; Jewkes and Johnston, ‘The evolution of prison

architecture’, pp. 174–96.
11 Jewkes and Johnston, ‘The evolution of prison architecture’, p. 191.
12 Robin Evans, The Fabrication of Virtue: English Prison Architecture, 1750–1840
(Cambridge, 1982).
13 Evans, Fabrication, p. 102; also see Jewkes and Johnston, ‘The evolution of prison
14 Evans, Fabrication.
15 Owen, Some Account of the Ancient and Present State of Shrewsbury (Shrewsbury,
1808, republished Manchester, 1972); Jewkes and Johnston, ‘The evolution of prison
16 Evans, Fabrication.
17 Sean McConville, A History of English Prison Administration Vol. 1 1750–1877 (London,
1981).
18 William J. Forsythe, The Reform of Prisoners 1830–1900 (London, 1987).
19 William Crawford, Report of William Crawford Esq., on the Penitentiaries of the United
States, addressed to His Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for the Home Department
(593), vol. XLVI.349, Parliamentary Papers (London, 1834), p. 12.
20 The Times, 20 May 1841.
21 Charles Dickens, American Notes (London, 1842), pp. 153–4, cited in Helen Johnston,
‘“Buried Alive”: Representations of the separate system in Victorian England’, in Paul
Mason (ed.), Captured by the Media: Prison discourse in popular culture (Cullompton,
2006), p. 108.
22 Johnston, ‘‘‘Buried Alive’”.
23 Helen Johnston, ‘Transformations of imprisonment in a local context: A case study
of Shrewsbury in the nineteenth century’, unpublished PhD thesis (Keele University,
2004).
24 Forsythe, Reform.
25 George Laval Chesterton, Revelations of Prison Life (London, 1856), cited in Forsythe,
Reform, p. 32.
26 Dr Daniel Ritchie, The Voice of our Exiles; or Stray Leaves from a Convict Ship (Edinburgh,
1854), p. 4, cited in Phillip Priestley, Victorian Prison Lives: English Prison Biography
1830–1914 (London, 1999), p. 37.
27 Robert Ferguson, ‘Pentonville Prisoners’, Quarterly Review, 82 (1847): 184–5.
28 Johnston, ‘Buried Alive’.
29 Austin Bidwell, From Wall Street to Newgate (London, 1895), p. 397, cited in Sarah
Anderson and John Pratt, ‘Prisoner memoirs and their role in prison history’, in Helen
Johnston (ed.), Punishment and Control in Historical Perspective (Basingstoke, 2008),
p. 181.
30 Anderson and Pratt, ‘Prisoner Memoirs’.
31 Sean McConville, ‘The Victorian Prison, 1865–1965’, in Norval Morris and David J.
Rothman (eds), The Oxford History of the Prison – The Practice of Punishment in Western
Society (New York, 1998), pp. 117–50.
32 One-who-has-tried-them, Her Majesty’s Prisons and their Effects and Defects by …

(London, 1881), p. 264, cited in Priestley, Victorian Prison Lives, p. 41.
33 F. Brocklehurst, I was in Prison (London, 1898), p. 29, cited in Anderson and Pratt,
‘Prisoner Memoirs’, pp. 181–2.
34 Jewkes and Johnston, ‘The evolution of prison architecture’.
35 Roy D. King, ‘The rise and rise of the supermax: An American solution in search of
a problem?’, Punishment & Society, 1/2 (1999): 163–86; Sharon Shalev, Supermax:
Controlling risk through solitary confinement (Cullompton, 2009); Mona Lynch,
‘Supermax meets death row: legal struggles around the new punitiveness in the US’,
in John Pratt, David Brown, Mark Brown, Simon Hallsworth and Wayne Morrison (eds),
The New Punitiveness: Trends, theories, perspectives (Cullompton, 2005), pp. 66–84.
3
A Simple Idea in Architecture:
On the Principles of Projecting Prisons
Gabriela Świtek
‘The world itself is but a large prison, out of which some are daily led to execution’,
said Sir Walter Raleigh, favourite of Elizabeth I and member of her court, for
whom the political meanderings of justice were far from indifferent.1 He was
imprisoned in the Tower, then released, then imprisoned again, sentenced to
life imprisonment, until finally they cut off his head. It is no coincidence that
his contemporary William Shakespeare compared the state and the world to a
prison, lovers to prisoners and love to being shackled in handcuffs.
The prophets of the Old Testament foretold the liberation of those held captive
and freedom for prisoners. In Book VII of The Republic, Plato housed people in a
cave, or in a habitation which he compared to living in a prison: ‘in this they lie from
their childhood, their legs and necks in chains.’2 Descartes, in his turn, in developing
his moral outlook concurs with stoic resignation in asserting that one should ‘first
and foremost change one’s desire rather than the order of the world’. Or, in other
words, in practice if we are sitting in prison, as the philosopher gives us an example,
should we in order to achieve peace of mind rid ourselves of the desire for freedom,
which is merely the desire to possess ‘wings to flutter like a bird’.3
Oscar Wilde, when writing his celebrated Ballad of Reading Gaol on the basis not
just of an aesthetic vision but of his own experiences, described a prison as a place
in which each day is as long as a year, which itself is composed of very long days. In
De Profundis he confessed:
I have lain in prison for nearly two years. Out of my nature has come wild despair;
an abandonment to grief that was piteous even to look at; terrible and impotent
rage; bitterness and scorn; anguish that wept aloud; misery that could find no
voice; sorrow that was dumb. I have passed through every possible mood of
suffering.4
George Bernard Shaw maintained that a home is like a prison for a girl and like
a workhouse for a woman, although this time the claim did not come from
personal experience. Evelyn Waugh, the literary inheritor of those cited above
and connoisseur of the Oxford climate, maintained in Decline and Fall that
‘anyone who has been to an English public school will always feel comparatively
at home in prison’.5
In escaping from Oxford to the picturesque English Lake District, Thomas De
Quincey did not succeed in freeing himself from the prisons that oppressed the
hallucinations brought on by opium and laudanum:
I seemed every night to descend – not metaphorically, but literally to descend

– into chasms and sunless abysses, depths below depths, from which it seemed
hopeless that I should ever re-ascended. … The sense of space, and in the end the
sense of time, were both powerfully affected.6
As Anthony Vidler notes, De Quincey found his alter ego in the person of Giovanni
Battista Piranesi. He imagined him hazily under the influence of an account by
Coleridge who described to him ‘a set of plates from that artist [Piranesi], called
his Dreams and which record the scenery of his own visions during the delirium
of a fever’.7 Piranesi was climbing up the stairs of a prison, which he had engraved
himself; the stairs abruptly came to a halt in a sheer abyss, but higher lay the next
stairs where the figure of Piranesi was once again visible climbing strenuously. And
so on without end until both the stairs and Piranesi disappeared in the upper gloom
of the hall. De Quincy was fascinated by the endless division and self-reproduction
of the space of the Carceri. Although he never actually saw the drawings, it was
they who provided the architectonic backdrop for his narcotic visions.
De Quincey’s celebrated account of his conversation with Samuel Taylor
Coleridge set off a chain reaction. There are shackles that bind the interpretation
of Piranesi’s famous Carceri in English gothic tales with French romanticism.
Mario Praz found the spirit of the Prisons in Horace Walpole’s The Castle of
Otranto, in the letters of William Beckford and in the literature of the period
of the French Revolution.8 The influence of Piranesian fantasies has also been
identified in the work of Alfred de Musset, Charles Nodier, Honoré de Balzac,
Victor Hugo, Charles Baudelaire and Stéphane Mallarmé. Thèophile Gautier
imagined Hamlet played on a backdrop of set drawn from the Prisons – because
after all ‘Denmark is a prison’.
Aldous Huxley, the master of dystopia, whose The Doors of Perception emerged
under the influence of the hallucinogenic mescaline, wrote the introduction to
one of the editions of the engravings. In the Prisons he saw the reflection of the
torpor of the soul.9 Analysing ‘the dark brain of Piranesi’, Marguerite Yourcenar
stresses that the Prisons are not reminiscent of the claustrophobic space of
funeral darkness traditionally associated with prison nightmares. They are also
dissimilar to the ‘cold functionalism of [the] model prison, the sinister banality
of concentration-camp barracks … , the image of human crowds penned in the
abattoirs of the first half of the twentieth century’.10
It is prisons that are never built that become myths of architecture, astutely
observed by Manfredo Tafuri in his book The Sphere and the Labyrinth: Avant-
Gardes and Architecture from Piranesi to the 1970s (1987). The Prisons, however,
A Simple Idea in Architecture: On the Principles of Projecting Prisons 39
did not become a motivation for the writing of a history of prison buildings,
but to the following of their influence, as labyrinths along which artists fumble,
on the presentation of space in architecture, and also in other domains. One of
the heirs to this myth, for example, is Sergei Eisenstein who found in Piranesi’s
drawings the potential for film sequences.11 Drawing on the hazy vision of the
Carceri presented by De Quincey, Vidler finds them the first appearance of
‘spatial uncanny’, which is displayed in ‘the abyssal repetitions of the imaginary
void’.12
The prison, thus, was first and foremost an allegory of the human condition,
in particular for the state of mind of the romantic artist and all mental,
emotional and institutional violations, rather than a theme worthy of great
architecture. Indeed, the history of architecture has little to say about this type
of building. Vitruvius, the author of the one ancient treatise on architecture says
virtually nothing about prisons. In Book V which deals with the principles for
the projection of public buildings, there is simply a reminder that ‘the treasury,
prison and senate house ought to adjoin the forum, but in such a way that
their dimensions may be proportionate to those of the forum’.13 In reality, the
history of the architecture of prisons begins with the descriptions of dungeons
in citadels and castles, of the cells of town prisons or hulks, but the prison as a
noble task for architects appears only in the eighteenth century, when in the
name of the public good, a series of other types of public buildings, such as
museums, hospitals or factories, also started to emerge.
Cesare Beccaria and John Howard
In his Essay on Crimes and Punishments (Dei delitti e delle pene, 1764), translated
into English as early as 1767, Cesare Beccaria, a Milanese aristocrat contemporary
of Piranesi, inspired by the accounts of Alessandro and Pietro Verri about the
torture and horrifying conditions which were the norm in prisons, proposed a
reform of the justice system. According to Beccaria the aim of punishment is
not revenge, but social adjustment, and he therefore called on governors and
lawmakers to establish clear laws and to do away with the death penalty.14 The
law and the penitentiary system were indeed to become a safeguard for the basic
principles of the social contract, thus establishing that the members of a society
are endowed with free will and reason, and that human actions are predictable
and subject to control.
Beccaria’s view that long term punishment acts as a more effective deterrent to
the committing of a crime than a rapid execution not only had a profound influence
on the shape of modern law codes, but also acted indirectly as a challenge to
architecture. Given such ideological foundations, it would be necessary to come to
terms with a new type of public building. In France, Beccaria’s treatise was greeted
with enormous enthusiasm, although he himself, apparently excruciatingly
timid, did not make a big impression during his stay in Paris at the invitation of
Enlightenment intellectuals.
As W.C. De Pauley notes in his essay, ‘the best commentary on the principles
advocated by Beccaria is the life of John Howard, who translated into action the
spirit of his “benevolent” inspirer’.15 Howard, who began an inspection of European
prisons in 1773, died of typhus when visiting Russian military hospitals, but none
the less bequeathed to history the work The State of the Prisons in England and Wales,
with Preliminary Observations and an Account of some Foreign Prisons and Hospitals
(1777), which was reprinted on three occasions prior to the end of the eighteenth
century. Here he also presented a plan for a prison of rectangular design divided
into separate blocks for men, women and young offenders.16 In the centre of the
establishment, Howard situated the house of the gaoler, who was supposed to be
an honest and sober minded person, and also a garden and a chapel. The blocks
were also divided according to category of crime committed: debtors were divided
from felons. Each block was to have its own courtyard, and each prisoner his own
cell for sleeping and a guaranteed change of clothing twice a week.
The individual endowed with the task of undertaking the reform, begun by
Howard, was the architect William Blackburn. He built seventeen prisons and acted
as consultant on another five projects, but did not stay faithful to any one form
of construction.17 He designed prisons in the form of a single block, with interior
courtyards, pavilions, polygons and wings departing in a radial form. The great
campaign about prisons ended with the death of Howard and Blackburn in 1790.
By the end of the century the French Revolution had made its own contribution
to the architecture of prisons, not so much through the storming of the inglorious
Bastille, as through the return to the spectacle of swift and absolute punishment
– the guillotine.
Architecture terrible versus the Panopticon
‘If I placed this august Palace above the shadowy lair of Crime, I should not only
show to advantage the nobility of the architecture on account of the resulting
contrast, but I should also have an impressive metaphorical image of Vice
overwhelmed by the weight of Justice.’18 Etienne-Louis Boullée obtained this
contrast, necessary for the expression of the poetry of architecture, by placing
the entrance to a prison under the monumental mass of the Palace of Justice.
The picture of this never realised Palace is painted with great assiduousness by
Boullée in his Architecture, Essay on Art from somewhere around 1793. The palace
is majestic, as befits its function. Surrounded in ‘brilliant light’ and placed on a
high podium, it ‘appears to be part of the Heavens’. It was designed according
to an ideal square design, with interior courtyards which, assuring a plentiful
supply of air and light, would reinforce the healthy and salutary atmosphere of
the whole construction.
Boullée does not, on the other hand, present detailed plans of the level of
the underground prisons, since, in his opinion, their arrangement is ‘of no great
interest’. We are merely informed that the entrance to the prisons is to be at ground
level, as if they were ‘the precarious tomb of criminals’.19 His contemporary, Claude-
Nicolas Ledoux, miraculously avoided prison, or even perhaps the guillotine,

during the time of the Terror. He went on to design a prison in Aix, but not in his
ideal industrial town Chaux; this town was a more developed version of the Royal
salt mines in Arc-et-Senans built according to his design in the years 1774–78. In
the centre of the circular complex, Ledoux placed the building of the director: an
all-seeing manager.
As Barry Bergdoll argues, architecture terrible, architecture of a horrifying
physiognomy is presented as being the characteristic feature of a prison as
a public building of a unique type in the Cours d’architecture (1771–77), or the
series of lectures by Jacques-François Blondel, Boullée’s teacher, given at the
Parisian Academy of Architecture.20 Taking from Germain Boffrand the theory
of architectural character, Blondel builds an aesthetic hierarchy of the effects of
architecture, based on classical rhetoric and physiognomic treatises. A prison
should be repugnant: through its monumentality and the heavy proportions of
its elevations it should both deter the committing of a crime, and express the
heavy and ensnared fates of the prisoners.
An answer to this physiognomic approach was given by George Dance the
Younger in the infamous London prison of Newgate (1768–75) demolished in 1902.
Dance, it should be noted, studied in Rome between 1759–64 and met Piranesi
during his Italian sojourn.21 The massive rustication of gloomy elevations without
windows and the chains above the entrance gate were meant not only to arouse
fear, but also to fulfil the role of an urban spectacle replacing the public acting
out of punishment. This place was already a cursed one for, from the 1630s on,
successive prisons had been built on this site.22
In the Panopticon (Letter VI. Advantages of the Plan) Jeremy Bentham
maintained, showing more concern for the gaoler than for the prisoners, that
if Newgate had been designed according to the principles of the Panopticon
its inspection would have taken just a quarter of an hour.23 Newgate was
conceived more as a huge, terrible symbol of justice and punishment – thus
in line with the sensualist aesthetic, the theory of character, of effect and of
architecture parlante – than as a practical, architectural resolution of the
dilemmas of the penal theory of the day. This spectacular prison was designed
before John Howard published The State of the Prisons (1777) and Bentham
his Panopticon (1791). However, aesthetic techniques for the manipulating
of emotions and impressions can easily be transformed into a programme
for reforming society. Edmund Burke’s aesthetic categories of sublime and
beauty, and the descriptions of the arousing of feelings of anxiety, fear, power,
enormity or the threat of darkness are based on the simple psychological
mechanisms presented by Claude Adrien Helvétius: the avoidance of pain and
trouble and the desire for pleasure. Knowledge of these mechanisms is vital
and is therefore a desirable attribute for a governor, a lawmaker or an educator.
Not accidentally, the mechanisms of pain and pleasure considered as sanctions
are extensively discussed in Jeremy Bentham’s Introduction to the Principles of
Morals and Legislation (1789) and in his Theory of Legislation: ‘Evil is pain, or the
cause of pain. Good is pleasure, or the cause of pleasure.’24
Some see in Bentham’s Panopticon an outstanding Enlightenment game with

light and shadow. Cells were lit only by a window in the external wall, thus presenting
the prisoner in silhouette so that he would be more visible from the central
tower. In the centre, ‘the guards remained in darkness’.25 Bentham suggested that
sometimes they did not even need to be there, since the prisoners would not know
when they were being observed. The Panopticon was thus the most economical in
its upkeep since it permitted the reduction of the number of personnel.
Michel Foucault and Jeremy Bentham
It is through Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, and his ‘panopticism’ and
‘incarceration’ that the name of Bentham is today one that arouses negative
connotations. And taking a glance in University College will not help change
this opinion, for there sits Bentham’s auto-icon, the embalmed body of a jovial
looking old man with a wax head that has become the butt of student humour.
We are imprisoned in the modern version of the cave, in a disciplinary society
where, as Foucault argues, prisons are similar to factories, schools, barracks
and hospitals, which all in their turn are redolent of prisons.26 But Bentham’s
utilitarianism was a doctrine of Greatest Happiness, measurable through the
Greatest Number of the members of any state,27 and his theory of punishment
was based on the concept of prevention, one that must be less damaging than
the practice of bloody revenge.
It is through Michel Foucault that Jeremy Bentham, a philosopher of law, language
and ethics,28 became the architect of all manner of surveillance institutions, even
though he never actually built anything himself, and that the Panopticon became
worthy of being condemned as an architectural allegory of all-seeing power, of the
mechanism of discipline. The first Panopticon was planned, but never completed,
in 1786 in Crecheff (Krichev) in Belarus by Jeremy Bentham’s younger brother
Samuel, a naval architect and engineer, as a workshop (‘Inspection House, or the
Elaboratory’), not as a prison. The second Panopticon built by Samuel in 1806 in
St Petersburg housed a fine arts’ school and the design was then copied all over
Russia, as was in line with the tsarist theatre of absolutism, but it could hardly be
said to have had much of an impact on Russian prison reform.29 It is noteworthy
that Jeremy Bentham’s Traités de Legislation Civile et Penale (the first edition in
French prepared by Etienne Dumont and published in 1802) was translated into
the Russian language as early as in 1805. Interestingly, in 1814 Bentham sent a
letter to Alexander I, the Emperor of Russia, in which he offered his aid in the field
of legislation, but very quickly were his expectations disappointed.30
Jeremy Bentham adapted his brother’s architectural plans to his prison
project, the famous rotunda with a central guard’s tower, but his efforts to build a
Panopticon in London ended in fiasco. He received twenty three thousand pounds
as a compensation for the purchase of the plot lying under the construction. It
was there that Millbank prison was built according to a design by William Williams
and Thomas Hardwick between 1812–1821. The prison design was reminiscent of a
flower with six petals: in the centre was a six-sided

courtyard with a chapel, out from which in radial
form spread pentagonal courtyards. The prison,
which Bentham could not stand, was destroyed in
the end of the nineteenth century and on this site
now stands the Tate Britain.
Bentham’s publication did not have a direct
or immediate impact on prison architecture. The
French edition prepared by Etienne Dumont
enjoyed greater success than the English
original.31 In 1825, Dumont designed a prison
in Geneva, destroyed in 1862, which was close
to Bentham’s concept. As the authors of English
Prisons argue, the prison closest to the conception
of the Panopticon is, however, the small prison
for women, the so-called K-wing near to the
castle in Lancaster, built between 1818–1821
by Joseph Michael Gandy. It is a semi-rotunda
with a centrally situated establishment for the
supervisor, and is five storeys high with nine cells
in each of them.32 Pentonville prison in London
(1840–1842) built by Joshua Jebb, often cited as
built on the Panopticon model, is not a rotunda,
but has a central hall from which wings depart in
a radial configuration. It was the model for fifty
four Victorian prisons. The Koepel (dome) Prison
in Arnhem, Netherlands (1882) became well-
known due to the renovation project presented by Rem Koolhaas and O.M.A. 3.1 Panopticon’s
(1979–1981). As Koolhaas claims, the Arnhem Koepel represents the Panopticon section and
ground plan.
principle in its purest form: ‘a single, all-seeing “eye” is placed dead center in a
Jeremy Bentham,
circle of the observed.’33 Taking things from an architectural perspective, ‘Building and
according to Foucault virtually any design of building can become a Furniture for an
Panopticon; on the basis of the influential projects for penitentiary institutions Industry-House
developed by Nicolas Philippe Harou-Romain (Plan for a Penitentiary, 1840) the Establishment, for
philosopher lists in his Discipline and Punish a series of possibilities: Bentham’s 2000 Persons, of
all Ages, on the
Panopticon understood in the narrow sense, or semi-circular, cross-shaped or
Panopticon or
star-shaped.34 Central-Inspection
It was equally due to the publication of Discipline and Punish that Bentham Principle’, in Pauper
went on to become one of the heroes of contemporary visual studies, although management
Foucault was far from the first in the latter half of the twentieth century to improved:
rediscover the Panopticon.35 Bentham’s invisible guard in the tower came to particularly by
means of an
replace the Eye of Providence, was transformed into Big Brother, and the whole
application of
world into a prison supervised by the CCTV cameras and satellites.36 As Nicholas the Panopticon
Mirzoeff argues, total visual surveillance does not prevent crime either against principle of
individuals or against humanity.37 What has happened, however, is that prisons construction, 1812
3.2 Jeremy Bentham, ‘Building and Furniture for an Industry-House Establishment, for 2000
Persons, of all Ages, on the Panopticon or Central-Inspection Principle’, in Pauper management
improved: particularly by means of an application of the Panopticon principle of construction, 1812
have become destinations for tourist trips, to be visited like museums. In some
analyses of contemporary visual culture the Panopticon starts to disappear,
leaving behind it little more than ghosts in refugee camps, almost invisible and
barely observed, deprived of any sort of social status: ‘The internment camps
for migrants is becoming the model institution for a range of social practices,
just as the Panopticon was the model for nineteenth-century factories and
schools.’38
Michel Foucault did not attack architects. He did not put them in a single
bracket with ‘doctors, prison wardens, priests, judges and psychiatrists’. He
even opposed Le Corbusier being called a ‘crypto-Stalinist’. He saw him rather
as a person full of good intentions.39 Was this not also true of Bentham? In the
late eighteenth century Bentham’s utilitarianism was not perceived as the root
of all totalitarianisms. When Robert Owen bought a factory from his father-in-
law in New Lanark on the River Clyde in Scotland, he limited the hours of work,
improved the worker’s living conditions and created a worker’s cooperative.
When however he wanted to reduce the returns on the investment of capital,
the shareholders protested. They convinced him to buy the shares and create
a new enterprise together with Bentham and the Quaker William Allen.40 As
Joseph Rykwert argues, this experience turned Owen into a theoretician of the
campaign against the abuses of the industrial revolution. Is it not, however,
possible to conclude that Bentham’s utilitarianism turns out to be more
desirable to those concerned than trade unionism?
The Panopticon, or ‘a simple idea in architecture’, is universal. Bentham does
not write only about prisons, but about all types of institutions that in his opinion
require special supervision, such as factories, hospitals, psychiatric hospitals
and schools. In a simple way, he demonstrated the usefulness of this structure
for other functions, such as increasing the number of floors from four to six. In
Letter XVI of the Panopticon, he also indicates that, dependent on the function,
‘the gloomy paradox of crowded solitude might be exchanged, perhaps, for the
cheerfulness of a common refectory’.41 It was not Bentham, however, who began
the date on modern forms of public institutions. The debate on the theme of
the hospital, for example, began in 1772 when the Parisian Hôtel-Dieu caught
fire.42 It was then that were formed two types of approach to hospitals: one
similar to the later Panopticon project, and another, pavilion type, which was
more popular and easier to rebuild. In the case of the Panopticon as a hospital,
Bentham fully justifies the need for ubiquitous vision. The doctors placed in the
position of the observers will have the possibility of full control over the path
of treatment, for instance over whether medicines are really given in the right
proportions.
The Panopticon is also an idea about long-term construction. Bentham
proposed that a building destined to become a factory should be built in iron and
glass, be of fire-proof construction, and allow the maximum amount of daylight
in order to improve working conditions. For these reasons, it was an important
element in the debate over the reform of factory buildings, begun after the huge
fire in the Albion Grain Mills in 1791.
The maximisation of production was not based purely on the optimisation of

surveillance, but also on a specific division of work. In Letter X of the Panopticon,
Bentham asks a simple question: ‘What trades may I put my men to when I have
got them?’ And he provides an answer by dividing prisoners/workers into four
classes dependent on the type of work and the manual workers’ capabilities:
‘good hands’, ‘capable hands’, ‘promising hands’ and ‘drones’.43 This fragment
sounds rather alarming as our physicality as potential manual workers is reduced
purely to our hands, or as if our productivity could be exclusively described ‘from
the point of view of the hand’.44 But Bentham is also quick to point out that if it
is not a question of punishment, labour should not be forced. In schools, above
and beyond the fact that there would be no possibility for cribbing, the youth of
either sex would study and sleep under the kind of supervision that any loving
parent would dream of. In a boarding-school for young ladies, built according to
this ideal plan, gentlemen would assemble in order to choose themselves wives.
Bentham, however, has doubts as to whether the liberal spirit and energy of a free
citizen should definitely be replaced by the mechanical discipline of the soldier
or the austerity of a monk. But in the final account he affirms, as if anticipating
Foucault’s interpretation: ‘Call them machines: so they were but happy ones, I
should not care.’45
The Panopticon and the Cell for Living
From the mid-eighteenth century, the two paradigms, or rather two mythical
types of buildings, have dominated architecture, argues Anthony Vidler in the
celebrated essay The Third Typology (1977). The first is the primitive hut described
by Vitruvius, but evoked by Marc-Antoine Laugier in 1753 in the Roussean version
of a return to nature. This was a model legitimising architecture as assuring safe
shelter. The second is Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon, an effect of the industrial
revolution, which identified architecture with the world of machine production,
and with economic and technical criteria. This is a model legitimising architecture
as an effective machine for habitation, for work and also for acting out a
punishment. As Vidler notes: ‘Laugier’s primitive hut and Bentham’s Panopticon
stand at the beginning of the modern era.’46 Thus, the Panopticon should not
be understood in terms of a realised building but in terms of ‘the principle of
construction’ as Bentham himself suggested, or as a ‘system of Industry-houses
upon a large scale’, where the poor were to be maintained and employed.47
In 1971, an Italian group of architects, Superstudio, presented a conception of
twelve ideal cities, or Twelve Cautionary Tales for Christmas, in which the models
for safe shelter and effective machines for living were blended in an absurd city-
machine in total control over the lives of its inhabitants.48 The tales about cities
are also a variation on the theme of the modern and rational Existenzminimum.
In the majority of the cities we find cells allotted to a single person, in which
sometimes there are no windows, but where a stable temperature and humidity
are maintained. In some are to be found forms of apparatus that emit images,
sounds and smells. In one version the cells are replaced by ten million crystal 3.3 Bed-stages
coffins, and in an another by allotments a few metres in area where everybody for single persons,
married couples
could build the house of their dreams.
and cribs for
The fourth city is reminiscent both of a cosmic Panopticon and a cosmic Odyssey, infants. Jeremy
although the architects do not reveal the source of their inspiration. This is a ring Bentham, ‘Building
of a diameter of fifty metres. In the central nucleus is a computer that controls and Furniture for
the life of the city and steers its journey. The ring is divided into eighty sectors an Industry-House
each containing two cabins, with a man sleeping in the upper cabin and a woman Establishment, for
2000 Persons, of
in the lower. The inhabitants sleep connected to a machine, which maintains
all Ages, on the
their physical functions, as well as to a dream generator. One complete rotation
Panopticon or
of a cabin takes eighty years. When the cabin enters the eightieth sector the Central-Inspection
inhabitants are ejected into cosmic space. At the same time, in the fortieth sector Principle’, in Pauper
the dream generator stimulates the emission of ovules and sperm. As a result of management
this mechanically controlled fertilisation are born a woman and a man who occupy improved:
the vacated cabins. And thus travels the city-ship on its way to the New Land. particularly by
means of an
At the end of the twelve tales the architects propose a test. You have to answer
application of
the question as to how many of the twelve cities you would like to come true. If the the Panopticon
answer is more than nine you are a head of state and the mechanisms of power principle of
are perfected within you. From six to nine, you are a cog in the system, functioning construction, 1812
perfectly within its mechanism. From three to six, you
are a slave, a succubus. From one to three, you are a
worm, because you are so scared that you are even
afraid to run away. And if none of the cities appealed
to you then you have no reason to feel satisfied. All of
these cities already exist.
In Superstudio’s Twelve Cautionary Tales for
Christmas one may observe a paradoxical blending
of the two architectural paradigms, that of the safe
shelter as a modernist Existenzminimum and that of
the prison cell. This subversive project points to the
heart of the architecture of justice. The architecture
of justice concerns the principles of projecting
prisons as well as designing a homely house and safe
environment. Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon principle
of construction should be seen, on the one hand, in the
historical context of the birth of modern legislation and
the claim for the effectiveness of industrial production.
On the other hand, due to Michel Foucault’s idea
of panopticism and its impact on the visual culture
studies, the Panopticon appears today as a symbol of
total control and visibility. The most demanding task
for contemporary architectural discourse is to reflect
upon the far-reaching consequences of the Panopticon
principles of construction. Bentham referred to his
manual workers as ‘machines’ and put them in the
cells for living, which assured ‘preservation of health from infection’, ‘preservation
of morals from corruption’, or even ‘prevention of unsatisfiable desires’.49
This idea should not sound surprising, especially when one recalls the
modernist architectural claim for ‘machines for living in’.50 If the Panopticon were
borne of ‘good intentions’, the same could be said of the modernist concept of
Existenzminimum. What we need today, facing the crisis of late capitalism, is a
balanced criticism both of the oldest cultural paradigm (Vitruvius’, Laugier’s and
even Heidegger’s primitive hut as a symbol of dwelling) and of the modern type of
institution (Bentham’s and Foucault’s Panopticon as a symbol of productiveness
and social control).
notes
1 J.M. (John Michael), M.J. Cohen, The New Penguin Dictionary of Quotations (London,
1998), p. 325. A version of this essay first appeared under the title ‘Annexe to Book
V: On the Principles of Projecting Prisons’, trans. B. Cope, in Hanna Wróblewska (ed.),
Panopticon: The Architecture and Theatre of Prison (Warszawa, 2005), pp. 60–73.
Reprinted in Polish in Gabriela Świtek, Aporie architektury (Warszawa, 2012), pp. 39–51.
2 Plato, The Republic, trans. A.D. Lindsay (London, n.d.), p. 207.
3 René Descartes, Discourse de la mèthode, in Oeuvres choisies, ed. T. (Bar-le-Duc)
Contant-Laguerre (Paris, 1879), p. 56.
4 Oscar Wilde, De Profundis: Being the First Complete and Accurate Version of ‘Epistola’ in
‘Carcere et Vinculis’ the Last Prose Work in English of Oscar Wilde (London, 1949), p. 78.
5 Evelyn Waugh, Decline and Fall (London, 1937), p. 225.
6 Thomas De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium Eater (Ware, Hertfordshire, 1994),
pp. 235–6.
7 Ibid., p. 239.
8 Anthony Vidler, The Architectural Uncanny: Essays in the Modern Unhomely (Cambridge
MA; London, 1992), pp. 38–41, 232.
9 Aldous Huxley, Prisons. With the ‘Carceri’ Etchings of G.B. Piranesi (London, 1949).
10 Marguerite Yourcenar, The Dark Brain of Piranesi and Other Essays, trans. Richard
Howard (New York, 1984), pp. 108–9.
11 Manfredo Tafuri, The Sphere and the Labyrinth: Avant-Gardes and Architecture from
Piranesi to the 1970s, trans. P. d’Acierno, R. Connolly (Cambridge MA and London, 1987),
pp. 55–90.
12 Vidler, The Architectural Uncanny, p. 37.
13 Vitruvius, The Ten Books on Architecture, trans. M.H. Morgan (Whitefish, 2005), p. 137.
14 Cesare Beccaria, Dei delitti e delle pene, in Edizione nazionale delle opere di Cesare
Beccaria, ed. L. Firpo, (15 vols, Milano, 1984), vol. 1, pp. 86–95. See also Marcello
Maestro, ‘A Pioneer for the Abolition of Capital Punishment’, Journal of the History of
Ideas, 34/3 (1973): 463–8.
15 W.C. De Pauley, ‘Beccaria and Punishment’, International Journal of Ethics, 35/4 (1925):
411.
16 Allan Brodie, Jane Croom, James O. Davies, English Prisons: An Architectural History
(Swindon, 2002), p. 33.
17 Ibid., pp. 41–53.
18 Etienne-Louis Boullée, Architecture, Essay on Art, in Helen Rosenau (ed.), Boullée and
Visionary Architecture (London and New York, 1976), p. 98.
19 Ibid., p. 99.
20 Barry Bergdoll, European Architecture 1750–1890 (Oxford, 2000), pp. 91–4; Jacques-
François Blondel, Cours d’architecture (9 vols, Paris, 1771–77), vol. 1, pp. 426–7.
21 Harold D. Kalman, ‘Newgate Prison’, Architectural History, 12 (1969): 55.
22 Brodie, Croom, Davies, pp. 26–8.
23 Jeremy Bentham, Panopticon, in The Panopticon Writings, ed. M. Bozovic (London,
1995), pp. 29–95.
24 Jeremy Bentham, Theory of Legislation, trans. E. Dumont (London, 1904), pp. 2, 20–30.
Bentham’s Theory of Legislation was first published in three volumes under the title of
Traités de Legislation Civile et Penale (Paris, 1802).
25 Bergdoll, p. 94.
26 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. A. Sheridan (New
York, 1995), p. 228.
27 See, for example, Graham Wallas, ‘Jeremy Bentham’, Political Science Quarterly, 38/1
(1923): 48.
28 See Jeremy Bentham, Legislator of the World: Writings on Codification, Law and
Education, ed. P. Schofield, J. Harris (Oxford, 1998); Janet Semple, Bentham’s Prison: A
Study of the Panopticon Penitentiary (Oxford, 1993).
29 The workshop was planned on the estate of Grigori Aleksandrovich Potemkin, a
statesman and the lover of Catherine the Great. See Matthew S. Anderson, ‘Samuel
Bentham in Russia, 1779–1791’, American Slavic and East European Review, 15/2
(1956): 165–7; Robert Alan Cooper, ‘Jeremy Bentham, Elizabeth Fry, and English Prison
Reform’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 42/4 (1981): 676; Simon Werret, ‘Potemkin and
the Panopticon: Samuel Bentham and the Architecture of Absolutism in Eighteenth-
Century Russia’, http://www.ucl.ac.uk/Bentham-Project/journal/nlwerret.htm [accessed
18 July 2011].
30 In the letter of July 1814 Bentham writes to Alexander I: ‘The object of this address is
to submit to Your Imperial majesty an offer relative to the department of Legislation.
My years are sixty-six. Without commission from any Government, not much fewer
than fifty of them have been occupied in that field. My ambition is to employ the
remainder of them, as far as can be done in this Country, in labouring towards the
improvement of the state of that branch of Government in Your Majesty’s vast Empire.’
After the Congress of Vienna (1815), Bentham became disillusioned. As we read in his
comment to the correspondence with the Emperor: ‘The Constitution of Poland had
taken its seat on the same cloud with Utopia and Armata: that what remained of that
unhappy country under its own name, had been finally swallowed up in the gulph of
Russian despotism.’ See ‘Jeremy Bentham, to the Emperor of all the Russias, London,
July 1814’, in Jeremy Bentham, Papers relative to codification and public instruction:
including correspondence with the Russian Emperor and Divers constituted authorities in
the American United States (London, 1817), pp. 83 and 94.
31 Wallas, ‘Jeremy Bentham’, p. 54.
32 Brodie, Croom, Davies, pp. 58–9.

33 Rem Koolhaas, Bruce Mau, S, M, L, XL, ed. J. Sigler (New York, 1995), p. 237.
34 Foucault, p. 250.
35 Martin Jay, Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French
Thought (Berkeley and Los Angeles CA, and London, 1994), pp. 381–3.
36 See, for example, Thomas Y. Levin, Ursula Frohne, Peter Weibel (eds), CTRL [Space]:
Rhetorics of Surveillance from Bentham to Big Brother (Karlsruhe and Cambridge MA,
and London, 2002).
37 See Nicolas Mirzoeff’s argument: ‘The abduction of the toddler Jamie Bulger from a
Liverpool shopping mall [1993] was impersonally captured by a video surveillance
camera, providing chilling evidence of the ease with which the crime was both
committed and detected. At the same time, despite the theory that constant
surveillance provides increased security, it in fact did nothing to help prevent the
child’s abduction and eventual murder.’ Nicholas Mirzoeff, An Introduction to Visual
Culture (London and New York, 1999), p. 1.
38 Nicholas Mirzoeff, ‘Imperium obozów’ [‘The Empire of Camps’], trans. M. Walkowiak,
Czas Kultury, 1 (2004): 134.
39 Michel Foucault, ‘Space, Knowledge, Power’, interview with Paul Rabinow, Skyline
(March 1982), trans. C. Hubert, in K. Michael Hays (ed.), Architecture Theory Since 1968
(Cambridge MA and London, 2002), pp. 433–4.
40 Joseph Rykwert, The Seduction of Place: The History and Future of the City (Oxford, 2000),
p. 58.
41 Bentham, Panopticon, p. 75.
42 Bergdoll, p. 119; Foucault, Discipline and Punish, p. 212.
44 I refer here to Jacques Derrida’s expression. See Jacques Derrida, On Touching –
Jean-Luc Nancy, trans. C. Irizarry (Stanford CA, 2005), p. 122.
46 Anthony Vidler, The Third Typology, in Hays (ed.), Architecture Theory Since 1968, p. 288.
47 Jeremy Bentham, Pauper Management Improved: Particularly by Means of an Application
of the Panopticon Principle of Construction (London, 1812), p. 3.
48 Peter Lang, William Menking, Superstudio: Life Without Objects (Milano, 2003),
pp. 150–61.
49 Bentham, Pauper Management Improved, p. 17.
50 ‘The house is a machine for living in.’ See Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture,
trans. F. Etchells (New York, 1986), p. 4.
4
The Watchman in the Vineyard*
Historical Traces of Judicial and Punitive Practices in Lincoln
Nicholas Temple
Introduction
Towering above the flat rural landscape of Lincolnshire is the majestic Gothic
cathedral of Lincoln that stands as testimony to both human piety and divine
worship. Located on the summit of a limestone ridge, and within the precinct
of the former Roman settlement, the iconic profile of the cathedral has served
for centuries as a potent symbol of the city and its rich history. The dominance,
however, of this venerated place of worship overshadows a less apparent
topographical relationship that was gradually to define the dual identity of Lincoln
as both a pilgrimage destination and a stronghold for defence and incarceration.
Partly revealed from the south aspect of the city (from Brayford Pool), the lofty
4.1 View of the

upper town of
Lincoln today,
from Brayford
Pool, showing the
relation between
the cathedral and
observatory tower
of the castle (left)
(photo by author)
bell towers of the minster are counterpoised by the fortified walls of the ancient
castle that culminate in the prominent ‘observatory tower’ on the south side of the
east gate. Both cathedral and castle confront each other as two key monuments
in Lincoln’s history, that speak of the various accords, disputes, collusions and
conflicts that have defined the relationships between church and state, canon and
civil law, salvation and punishment.
The present investigation examines the history of judicial and punitive practices
at both the castle and cathedral, from the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century,
in the context of their territorial and topographical relationships. My aim in the
enquiry is to trace changes in the various deliberations of justice and punishment
in the ‘upper-town’ of Lincoln, through the agency of architecture, urban space
and topography. In particular, the study will demonstrate how acts of justice and
injustice were circumscribed by a complex – and sometimes conflicting – interplay
4.2 Plan of the between adherence to changing religious/political practices and the emerging
‘Upper Town’ of instrumental methods of punishment and imprisonment.
Lincoln (c. 1400)
indicating relation
between the Contested Territories: The Outer Bailey and the Close
Outer Bailey of
the Castle and the
Relations between the authorities of the castle, cathedral and the larger city of
Cathedral Close. ‘A’
indicates locations Lincoln were often confrontational, and disputes arose concerning both rights of
of gates in the wall jurisdiction and the levying of taxes for the sale of goods.1 The catalyst for these
of the Cathedral disputes can be identified in the emerging territorial demarcations in the ‘upper
Close and ‘B’, the town’, between the outer bailey and the cathedral precinct, which was to persist
gateways into
until 1832 when the precinct was subsumed into the parliamentary constituency
the old Roman
settlement (Drawn of the city, and subsequently into the municipal borough.2
by author after To understand the reasons for these earlier territorial and judicial divisions
Francis Hill) we need first to examine the building of the cathedral in the thirteenth century,
when the dean and canons of the
cathedral issued a petition (in 1255)
to King Henry III for a licence to extend
the building eastwards, so that it would
breach the old Roman wall of the outer
bailey. This initiative formed part of the
scheme, instigated by Bishop St Hugh
(1181–1200), to reconstruct and enlarge
the earlier Norman cathedral in the
Gothic style, following its destruction
in an earthquake in 1185. However, the
dismantling of the city wall, along its
eastern and northern frontiers, meant
that the minster and its clergy were no
longer under the protection of the outer
bailey, being exposed to potential attack
from outside invaders.
Historical Traces of Judicial and Punitive Practices in Lincoln 53
To remedy this threat a further royal

licence was granted for permission to build
a high wall to enclose the precinct of the
cathedral. Initially, this only surrounded
the projecting east end of the edifice, but
eventually it enclosed the whole cathedral,
creating in the process a minster ‘close’ that
was separated from the bailey. Later raised
and crenelated in the early forteenth
century, with the addition of turrets, the
wall was punctuated by a network of six
secured gates, some of which still exist
today – most notably the monumental
West or Exchequer Gate. As part of the
royal licence to create a cathedral close
the dean and chapter also acquired legal
rights of jurisdiction over the precinct
which they were to vigorously enforce
almost without interruption until the
Civil War when disputes arose about the
reinstatement of the ‘ancient privileges of
the close’.3 As Carl Estabrook states: ‘In the
tumultuous decades leading up to the civil
war, cathedral officials waged a symbolic
battle to demarcate and delimit their
sacred space more visibly, invoking royal
adjudication to fend off the appropriation
of sacred symbols by civic authorities.’4
These rights included the establishment of a law court, located above the Galilee 4.3 View of the
Porch on the west side of the cathedral’s south transept, which had authority over Galilee Porch, with
original courtroom
all those inhabiting the close and working within its confines, including clergy and
on the 1st floor,
their secretaries: located off the
south transept of
… in a letter sent to the city authorities by Henry II, we learn that the dean and Lincoln Cathedral
chapter were allowed to hold a weekly court … for every kind of dispute affecting (courtesy of
the inhabitants of the Close. They were entirely free from interference, wither by Chris Rees)
the city or the castle, and were an independent community of their own.5
We should be reminded here that the disputes at the end of the Civil War, over
the ‘ancient privileges’ of the cathedral close (by then considered anachronistic
practices), roughly coincided with the abandonment of the nearby castle as a
defensive structure and its subsequent transformation into a county gaol and
court, a topic for later discussion. In each case we witness significant changes in the
judicial roles of castle and cathedral that in one sense could be said to constitute a
defining moment in the history of the ‘upper-town’.
The trials held in the ‘Galilee Court’ imposed a range of punishments, including
incarceration for serious offenders. It may seem surprising that the cathedral
accommodated a prison.6 Nicknamed ‘le Wynde’ (meaning narrow lane or passage),
and located in the north-west tower, the entrance to the prison was highlighted
in a curious drawing executed in 1789 by Samuel Grimm, which shows a group
of men (including the renowned botanist Sir Joseph Banks) crossing a ladder to a
door in the tower.7
Trials within the cathedral precinct were not just limited to the Galilee Court.
We know that the Chapter House was also periodically used as a courtroom during
the Middle Ages, only here for cases that extended beyond the jurisdiction of the
close; in the early forteenth century one of many trials to convict the knights of
the heretical order, the Templars, was held here as well as for royal parliaments
summoned by both Edward I (1301) and Edward II (1316).8 Much later the Chapter
House was used as a temporary county court, probably during periods when the
courthouse in the castle was being reconstructed.
4.4 Samuel
Grimm (1786).
Sketch of the
interior shaft of the
northwest tower of
Lincoln Cathedral
showing a group
of men, including
Sir Joseph Banks,
crossing a ladder
to the entrance to
the old cathedral
prison (courtesy
of the Cathedral
Library)
Whilst the cathedral, and its walled precinct, enjoyed over many years
independence from the authorities of the castle bailey and the city, we know
that accommodation within the close was used at various times by officials of the
bailey to officiate their own judicial duties. Indeed, during the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, the lodgings for the judge of the county court were located
in various places around the cathedral, including College House which stood on
the green near the Chapter House and leased from the dean and chapter.9 The
lodgings were later moved to a house in the ‘Minster Yard facing the east end of
the Minster’.10
What emerges from this brief examination of the relation between the outer
bailey and the close is that there existed a fluid – and sometimes contested –
relationship between territorial jurisdiction and judicial authority. In spite of the
close inter-dependence between cathedral and castle, from the period of William
the Conqueror and his loyal Bishop Remigius, the establishment of a bounded
enclosure for the minster served as a catalyst for greater autonomy and self-
determination for the cathedral authorities. This privileged position was no doubt
aided by the declaration in the Magna Carta that: ‘the English Church shall be free,
and shall have its rights undiminished, and its liberties unimpaired.’11
As Claire Breay reminds us, this clause ‘…confirmed the right of the church to
elect its own bishops and other officials, without royal interference. It reflected
the powerful influence of Archbishop Langton who was clearly eager to confirm
the rights and freedoms of the Church, which John had challenged so persistently
earlier in his reign.’12 Moreover, the mere presence of the Lincoln copy of the Magna
Carta (the ‘Lincolnia’) in the cathedral, where it was deposited in the treasury in
1215 and remained there for over 600 years, is likely to have been viewed by the
clergy as further grounds for reinforcing their claim of independence, both from a
judicial and political standpoint.13
At the same time, however, we should consider the authority of the English
Church in the light of the particular and unique circumstances of Lincoln Cathedral’s
foundation. Unlike Canterbury, Winchester, Norwich and Durham, which emerged
as cathedrals from Benedictine monastic foundations, Lincoln was established in
response to different needs: ‘The vast size of the diocese [that stretched from the
Humber to the Thames] required a body of administrators and lawyers to ensure its
smooth running.’14 Hence, Remigius saw the need for this large diocese to have ‘a
chapter of secular canons, each endowed with a prebend or source of income …’15
We can only imagine the effectiveness of this significant body of legal experts in
the cathedral when challenging any disputes arising with the castle sheriff or city
authorities, thereby ensuring the longevity of the ancient privileges of the clergy
referred to earlier.
The judicial and punitive actions of the close were largely inconspicuous to the
attending worshipper or pilgrim, concealed behind the religious iconography of
the cathedral; the prison was largely camouflaged by the monumental Norman
west front of the minster, whose eschatological meanings were intimately
associated with the symbolism of the triumphal gateway to Heavenly Jerusalem.16
The courtroom, on the other hand, would have drawn its own Biblical associations
from the Galilee Porch to which it forms part; the title ‘Galilee’ suggests a threshold
of a journey of faith that emulates Jesus’ journey from Galilee to Jerusalem, or
alternatively as a point of departure from where the disciples were ‘commissioned’
by the ‘Risen Christ’.17 In both cases we see notions of justice and punishment being
recapitulated as acts of mercy and salvation. As I suggest elsewhere, ‘… the criminal
represents the sinner par excellence, and is made into a good Christian through his
forced penance/sacrifice consequent to trial’.18
Civil Unrest and Strategies of Punishment
Whilst the Civil War signalled the demise of the ancient privileges of the clergy,
that once sustained the judicial and religious codes of conduct in the cathedral
close, the eighteenth century witnessed the abrupt closure to what was left of
this tradition. This forms part of a more general transformation of the upper-town
during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, where cathedral and castle
became fragments of a larger socio-political order.
An indication of the direction of these changes can be seen in an incident that
took place in 1724. Following the destruction of the central spire of the cathedral
by high winds in 1548, there was increasing concern about the stability of the
remaining two spires on the west towers. A report by the appointed architect
James Gibbs recommended that the west towers should be secured, but that their
spires are removed. The implementation of these recommendations provoked a
riot in the city. The secured gates of the Close were breached by a mob of five
hundred protesters. According to the then Secretary of State, Lord Townshend,
the reasons for the riot may not have been just about the proposed demolition
of the spires but also a demonstration of the protesters’ ‘disaffection with the
state’, its prevailing injustices.19 If we accept Townshend’s assessment then the
incident could be said to constitute not just an act of violence but also one of
opportunism; trespassing the minster close (ostensibly to protest against the
destruction of the spires) provided an opportunity to express more general issues
of discontentment. In the ensuing confrontation the sacred precinct became the
scene of mob riots against both the dean and chapter of the cathedral, as well as
the city authorities.
We should be reminded here of the historical significance of the gateways
into the close. Mary Lucas describes the Exchequer Gate in these terms: ‘It
marks the symbolic entrance to the peace and sanctity of the cathedral where
the pilgrim leaves behind the hurly-burly of everyday life beyond the gate.’20
The tranquillity of the close was abruptly disturbed, and the sanctity of the
cathedral violated, by the riot. Consequently, the close was subsumed into the
lawlessness of the larger city, which Daniel Defoe describes in rather scathing
terms in 1720 as ‘… an ancient, ragged, decay’d and still decaying city; it is
full of the ruins of monasteries and religious houses’, even stating that it was
scarcely tolerable to call Lincoln a city at all.21 No longer reserved exclusively for
visiting pilgrims as a sacred enclosure, the minster precinct finally concedes to
new – more prosaic – priorities; the construction of a turnpike in the eighteenth

century, which passes through the close, resulted in ‘the dean and chapter
giving up their right to lock the gates’.22 This development provides an important
backdrop to examining the later developments of the other enclosure in the
upper town – the castle yard – during the early nineteenth century. Whilst the
circuit wall of the minster yard was dismantled, and the close absorbed into
the larger city, parts of the castle wall were reinforced and the surrounding
derelict buildings along its dyke demolished through a programme of slum
clearance.
Castle and Gaol
Throughout the Middle Ages, the fabric of Lincoln Castle underwent a number of
major additions and alterations, including the construction of more substantial
fortified walls, towers and a larger keep, later called the Lucy Tower on the south
side of the enclosure. After the Civil War, Lincoln Castle became redundant as a
fortification, resulting in the disbandment of its garrison of soldiers. It subsequently
accommodated a courthouse and county gaol, the latter used to incarcerate
debtors and those who required provisional detention either before a trial or
deportation.
A more substantial purpose-built county court was completed in 1776, in the
centre of the castle yard, whilst the gaol was located in the north east corner of
the yard. As the name implies, the courthouse dealt with cases from the county
of Lincolnshire, whilst the trials of those citizens within the city took place in the
Guildhall, located in the Stonebow, which contained its own prison.23 Hence,
4.5 Bronze model

of Lincoln Castle,
as it appears today,
showing Lucy
Tower (bottom
left), East Gate
and Observatory
Tower (bottom
right), Cobb Hall
(top right), Prison
building (centre)
and Crown Court
and West Gate
(top left) (photo
by author)
whilst the castle and its constable originally had control over the enclave of the
outer bailey, defined by the extant boundary stones, the later introduction of a
courthouse within the castle’s inner bailey gave its magistrates judicial authority
over the whole county.24
By the late eighteenth century, however, Lincoln Castle was in a ruinous state
and was declared by the magistrates as unsuitable for a gaol, partly as a result
of the security risks arising from buildings being erected immediately outside its
crumbling perimeter wall. Hence a petition was submitted to parliament in 1775 by
the city magistrates to enable the trustees to purchase ‘the perpetuity of the castle
yard for the use of the county for ever’.25
It was not until 1831 that an Act was finally passed which permitted the city
authorities to buy the castle from the duchy of Lancaster, followed later by a Local
Government Act of 1896 that formally concluded – after much dispute – that the
castle and its adjacent judges’ lodgings lie ‘within the city’.26
The castle was the setting for a number of public executions. Originally
these probably took place on the ramparts at the west gate, as was traditional
practice away from the sacred precinct of the cathedral to the east. In 1400
however the west gate was blocked and the site for the executions relocated.
By 1817 public hangings were held at Cobb Hall, a horseshoe shaped tower
constructed in the thirteenth century and located on the north east corner of
4.6 View of Cobb

Hall, from outside
the castle walls,
and Water Tower
in the background
(photo by author)
the inner bailey. Significantly, the tower probably served as the castle’s prison
during the Middle Ages, long before the construction of a purpose built prison
in the castle grounds. During public hangings in the nineteenth century, crowds
reserved places at the nearby taverns to watch the spectacle, giving Cobb Hall
an infamous reputation as a dramatic ‘theatre of the scaffold’.27
This brief overview of the transformation of Lincoln Castle into a gaol, with
its regime of public hangings and assize courts, provides a useful background
in which to trace the judicial and punitive practices in the outer bailey. The
period of John Merryweather’s governorship of Lincoln Castle Gaol, from 1799
to 1830, is especially interesting in this regard. During this period we witness
significant changes, some of which were initiated by Merryweather’s own
personal agenda. A native of Lincoln, Merryweather seems to have possessed a
somewhat dubious character, having been both admired and reviled in almost
equal measure by his contemporaries. His job as governor of the gaol led to
protests from various quarters about his ability to manipulate the system for
his own financial gain. As Brian Taylor explains, ‘[Merryweather’s] appointment
as keeper of the gaol … meant that he was responsible for debtors, prisoners
awaiting trial, and those convicted prisoners who awaited their call to the
gallows or the ships to transport them to distant colonies.’28
His management of the gaol was highlighted by a series of scandals, most
notably allegations of having illicit sexual relations with female inmates and
fathering daughters out of wedlock, one of whom lived with him in the governor’s
residence. At the same time Merryweather was noted for his eccentricities and
interests. A keen astronomer, he also cultivated a garden within the castle yard,
with the help of inmates, and was a collector of animals and birds, including a
peacock. These various character traits and hobbies paint a picture of a man
seeking to make his own life within the austere confines of the castle as pleasant
and as enjoyable as possible, often at the expense of the inmates over whom he
had responsibility.
Under his governorship the gaol underwent a number of alterations and
additions which include the following:
1. Judges’ Lodgings built in 1812

2. So-called Observatory Tower in 1825
3. Assize Courts/County Hall in 1826
The establishment of permanent lodgings for the judges of the assize court,
directly opposite the east gateway and across the castle ditch in Castle Hill,
formed part of a gradual process of institutionalisation of court facilities and
proceedings in Lincoln. Constructed in white brick, this monumental and rather
austere building, situated at the threshold to the gaol and in visible range of
the County Court, served as a reminder of the authority of the judge in court
deliberations.
On the south-east corner of the castle wall is a substantial mound and tower
believed to date originally from the twelvth century. Most probably used as a
4.7 View of
the Observatory
Tower from the
Castle walls (photo
by author)
second keep to the castle, it was originally built in timber on a stone substructure. In
1825, with the aid of public funds, Merryweather substantially altered the medieval
structure and surmounted the tower with a castellated round turret. Within the
turret a cast-iron spiral staircase was installed to provide access to the observation
platform at its summit.
The project was funded, it seems, on the understanding that a more effective
guard tower was needed at this corner of the castle, to provide a high enough
vantage point from which to survey the whole circuit wall. What we know however
is that the turret was also used by the governor as his own personal astronomical
observatory. As Samuel Bamford states: ‘[Merryweather] was not an educated man,
but had a reputation of being an adept in astronomy. He had a handsome mounted
telescope and frequently spent whole nights in star-gazing …’29
From the perspective of the security of the gaol, the outward appearance of
the so-called observatory tower could be construed as a ‘camouflage’, designed to
deflect attention from its secondary function. Merryweather’s attempt to benefit
directly from such developments at Lincoln Castle also involved more substantial
projects, in particular the construction of the new county hall, following the
subsidence of the earlier courthouse

– referred to earlier – soon after its
construction in 1776.30
Robert Smirke, one of the
leading architects in Britain at the
time, was appointed to undertake
the design in the ‘Regency Gothic
Style’31 The terms of the contract
for the project quickly aroused
suspicion, with E.J. Willson claiming
that ‘There is some hidden intention
in these terms [of the contract].’32
The numerous deceptions that
underlie these building projects
at Lincoln Castle, during the
governorship of Merryweather,
partly reflect his management of
the gaol. Again Bamford serves as a
helpful source here. Imprisoned for
his involvement in the notorious
Peterloo riots in Manchester,
Bamford served twelve months at
Lincoln gaol:
All around the prison building I

have thus sketched arose high
stone walls, some parts of them
appearing to be of great age.
They comprised … an area of
about eight acres, one part of which was a large green in front of the gaol, on which 4.8 View of the
the prisoners for debt took exercise; in the centre of this green was a shrubbery, and Crown Court
the green was bordered on three sides by a long slip of garden ground, embracing from above the
the foot of the wall, appropriated to the use of the governor, and cultivated by the east gate (photo
more orderly of the felons. On the wall opposite the governor’s apartments was by author)
a round tower [Cobb Hall], on which executions took place; and an ancient keep,
called Lucy’s tower, in the rear of the jail – part of the original fortification – was
now kept locked, and was tenanted only by owls, and an immense number of snail
shells, which completely formed the floor. In a hollow at the foot of this tower were
seen the green heaps above the graves of felons who had died within the prison,
and of criminals who had been executed; and on a more level plot behind the Town
Hall [County Court], which building fronted the gates at the extremity of the yard,
was the place of interment for the debtors, some with stones and inscriptions, and
others with only the green mantle of their mother earth lapping over them … .
High above the gates and prison walls, at a short distance outside, rose the towers
of the venerable and magnificent cathedral. The Lady tower contained a pearl of
bells which were only rung twice a year; on Lady and Michaelmas days. They were
the sweetest-toned bells I have ever heard … the tower of the great bell Old Tom …
boomed forth the hours to us, as they too slowly joined the eternity of the past.33
4.9 View of the In addition to the activity of cultivating gardens the castle also contained,
west towers of according to Bamford, some rather gruesome features including a ‘curiosity shop’
Lincoln Cathedral
for displaying ‘instruments of murder’ used in executions.34 What we can ascertain
from the grounds
of Lincoln Castle from these accounts, and our knowledge of Lincoln Castle during this period, is
(photo by author) a strange mixture of the macabre and the tranquil. The castle would have served
as a constant reminder to the prisoner of his own impending and brutal end,
whether enacted in the public and humiliating spectacle at Cobb Hall (clearly
visible from the castle yard) or his forced deportation to the colonies. At the
same time, the setting underscored the deprivations to his liberty through the
monotony of confinement, relieved only by the tantalizing views of the cathedral
and the sound of its bells.
Bamford’s portrayal of life in the castle yard sits somewhat uneasily alongside
a representation of the new County Hall, published in 1837, which depicts the
building in a verdant landscape with a roaming peacock. Here, the setting of
judicial deliberations is presented as an Arcadian landscape – even a walled
Garden of Eden (an ironic metaphor for a prison yard). It seems likely that the
author of the illustration was consciously drawing upon a double – if strangely
contradictory – connection; firstly the personal legacy of Merryweather (who
we know owned a peacock referred to earlier), and secondly the prevalence
of this species of bird in Early Christian symbolism to evoke rebirth and the
redeemed soul.35
The function of the castle, from the early eighteenth century, as a holding point 4.10 Anonymous,
for felons awaiting deportation to the colonies and ‘plantations’, may well have View of County
Hall (c. 1837)
been partly due to its location within striking distance of Brayford Pool to the south,
showing peacock
a busy inland port since Roman times.36 The good navigation system of the River in the foreground.
Witham and Fossdyke Canal (the oldest canal in Britain) that connects Brayford (From the Local
Pool to Boston to the east and Hull to the north (via the River Trent), gave Lincoln Studies Collection,
a strategically important location in the East Midlands. Before the introduction of Lincoln Central
the railways, rivers and canals were the principal means of transporting goods to Library, courtesy
of Lincolnshire
and from Lincoln, which also included prisoners. This activity was also personal to
County Council)
Merryweather who was a shareholder in the Witham Navigation Company, and
personally took charge of accompanying criminals by river and canal to seaports
bound for Australia and elsewhere.37 His involvement in this company may have
been prompted by an invention he submitted for a patent in 1816, which was a
‘means of propelling boats and vessels through the water’.38
This broader geographical context of Lincoln Castle further underlines the
emerging institutionalisation of incarceration during this time; the gaol benefited
from the improved trading and communication routes to the colonies, at the
same time as the growing efficiency of sentencing felons and committing them to
permanent exile. These developments also closely paralleled more effective methods
for hanging criminals; the most well-known, which was first introduced at Lincoln
Castle Gaol in the nineteenth century, was the so-called ‘long (or measured) drop’.39
4.11 View of the During the time of Bamford, Lincoln Castle did not contain a chapel, an issue that
Chapel at Lincoln was the subject of on-going complaints by the magistrates. However, Bamford’s
Castle Gaol,
description of the view of the cathedral towers, with the periodic sound of chiming
designed using the
‘Separate System’
bells, would no doubt have served as a reminder to the prisoners of the rituals of
(photo by author) worship during their exercise in the castle yard. With the introduction, however,
of the ‘separate system’, participation in the life of the prison entailed a very
different restrictive and repressive regime. This is most provocatively conveyed in
the construction of a chapel within the prison building, where each inmate was
required to sit in isolation from his fellow prisoners, with only the view of the
chaplain conducting the sermon. This arrangement resulted in a design where
prisoners were confined to their own compartment – more redolent of a series of
stacked wooden coffins than a layout of choir stalls or church pews. The separate
system was soon, however, abandoned at Lincoln, as elsewhere in England, as a
result of its inhumane treatment of prisoners, resulting in cases of insanity and
even suicide. It also, coincidentally, signalled the end of Lincoln Castle as a make-
shift gaol; felons were transported to a new purpose-built prison to the east of the
city in Greetwell Road.
Conclusion
My examination of the history of judicial and punitive practices at Lincoln Castle

and Cathedral, through their architectural/spatial adaptations, topographical
relationships and shifting territorial jurisdictions, provides an intriguing story of

the changing meanings of justice and their various forms of deliberation. It is a
story that is both remarkable – in its complexity and spatial richness – and at the
same time disturbing in the contradictions and violations it reveals. Underlying
the investigation is the principle that comparative history can provide a lens
to reveal the way certain buildings, over a period of time, variously serve as
spatial registers of justice/injustice, even when these are not made legible or
explicit through ritual or corporate action. Beyond, however, the performance of
individual spaces as settings for specific judicial proceedings (such as the modern
courtroom), the transitional or adaptive spaces of cities, that accommodate
both formal and informal renderings of just/unjust acts (sometimes arising from
the influence of undeclared or conflicting political, religious and ideological
agendas), provide the most productive settings for such an enquiry. What we
have learnt from this investigation is the manner in which architecture and urban
space are ‘implicated’ in the pursuit of justice, or conversely how they can just
as effectively operate in covert ways to facilitate acts of injustice in the guise of
legitimate authority.
The ambiguity of this relationship is made all the more apparent today with
the location of the Lincoln copy of Magna Carta in the prison building, where
it was transferred in the twentieth century. Displayed in close proximity to the
chapel, referred to earlier, we are reminded in this relationship of both the
historical distance travelled, between the formalization of law for human rights
and the development of institutional methods of punishment and confinement,
and the binding topographical and symbolic connections between castle and
cathedral, civil law and canon law, testified in the history and associations of the
‘Lincolnia’.
notes
* With special thanks to Brian Taylor for useful sources and for permission to refer to parts
of his unpublished dissertation ‘This Disgraceful Thraldom: John Merryweather Keeper of
Lincoln Castle 1799–1830’.
1 In 1390, for example, the sheriff of the castle took action against the city mayor for
interfering with the affairs of the Bailey, a situation that was not to be fully resolved
until the 19th century. E.I. Abell and J.D. Chambers, The Story of Lincoln: An Introduction
to the History of the City (Wakefield, 1971), p. 179.
2 Sir Francis Hill, Medieval Lincoln (Stamford, 1990), p. 126. Finally, in 1845 both bailey
and close became parishes of the city. Ibid., p. 101.
3 Ibid., pp. 124–7.
4 C.B. Estabrook, ‘Ritual, Space, and Authority in Seventeenth-Century English Cathedral
Cities’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, XXXII:4 (Spring, 2002): 593–620, esp. 593.
5 Abell and Chambers, Lincoln, p. 181.
6 In some instances the roof space behind the triforium of medieval cathedrals was used
as a makeshift prison. I am grateful to Professor John Hendrix for this information.
7 Nicholas Bennett, ‘The ‘Wynd’: A Cathedral Prison’, in Philip Buckler, Gavin Kirck,
Nicholas Bennett, Mary Lucas and Anne Coltman, Lincoln Cathedral: A Journey from Past
to Present (London, 2010), p. 51.
8 Bennett, ‘The Cloister and Chapter House’, ibid., pp. 96–109, p. 106. Furthermore,
‘Up until the outbreak of the civil war … sacred and secular authorities
appropriated one another’s sites and symbols to underscore status and claim
legitimacy.’ Estabrook, ‘Ritual, Space, and Authority in Seventeenth-Century English
Cathedral Cities’, p. 593.
9 Sir Francis Hill, Georgian Lincoln (Cambridge, 1966), p. 22.
10 Ibid.
11 Significantly, this is taken from the 1st of the 63 clauses in the Magna Carta. Quoted in
Claire Breay, Magna Carta: Manuscripts and Myths (London, 2002), p. 28.
12 Ibid.
13 By the seventeenth century the whereabouts of the Lincolnia was unknown, probably
as a result of the turmoil wrought by the Civil War, only to be rediscovered in 1800 by
the Public Records Commissioners.
14 Buckler, Kirck, Bennett, Lucas and Coltman, Lincoln Cathedral, p. 102.
15 Ibid.
16 In Early Christian tradition the narthex, located at the west end of a basilica,
constituted the most ‘secular’ part of the church, from where the uninitiated or
catechumen could witness – but not participate in – the Eucharistic mass. This status
of the west end may have contributed to the decision by the clergy to house the
prison in the north-west tower at Lincoln.
17 Buckler, Kirk, Bennett, Lucas and Coltman, Lincoln Cathedral, pp. 128 and 131.
18 This interpretation was used in a different context, to explain the symbolic
intentions for the design of the Palazzo dei Tribunali in Rome by Donato Bramante in
the early sixteenth century. Nicholas Temple, renovatio urbis: Architecture, Urbanism
and Ceremony in the Rome of Julius II (Abingdon, 2011), p. 116. Significantly, the
Lincolnia was later moved to the room above the Galilee Porch where it was shown
hanging on a wall in an oak frame. The decision to display the parchment document
in this room may have been intended to recall its earlier role as a courtroom
before the Reformation, where the chapter undertook ‘truly to minister the office
of stewardship of the Galilee’. Buckler, Kirk, Bennett, Lucas and Coltman, Lincoln
Cathedral, p. 131.
19 Hill, Georgian Lincoln, p. 40.
20 Buckler, Kirck, Bennett, Lucas and Coltman, Lincoln Cathedral, p. 18.
21 Quoted in Hill, Georgian Lincoln, p. 138. We have accounts, from the early eighteenth
century, that testify to the political dimension of the proposed demolition of the
spires, which some considered to be an act of vandalism. Ibid, p. 41.
22 Lucas, ‘The Close’, p. 18.
23 Abell and Chambers, Lincoln, p. 166.
24 Hill, Medieval Lincoln, p. 91.
25 Ibid., p. 100.
26 Hill, Georgian Lincoln, p. 260; Hill, Medieval Lincoln, p. 102.
27 Stephen Wade, Hanging at Lincoln (Stroud, 2009), p. x. The frequency and extent of
hanging as a practice during the late Georgian period is indicated by records; up
until 1800 about one third of all prisoners in the castle were hanged in these public
settings.
28 Brian Taylor, ‘This Disgraceful Thraldom: John Merryweather Keeper of Lincoln Castle
1799–1830’ (unpublished dissertation), p. 43.
29 Samuel Bamford, Passages in the Life of a Radical, ed. Henry Dunckley (London, 1893),
p. 313.
31 A description of Smirke’s design can be found in J. Mordaunt Crook, Lincolnshire
Architectural Society Reports, ix (1962), p. 151.
32 Quoted in Hill, Georgian Lincoln, p. 260. Originally published in Lincolnshire Notes and
Queries, x (1908–1909), p. 19.
33 Bamford, Passages in the Life of a Radical, vol. 2, Chapter XXXVII.
34 Ibid.
35 In 1828, the governing body of Lincoln Castle ordered that all the animals be removed
from the gaol. Merryweather records in his diary that he complied with this order,
‘except for a peacock for which he could not find a satisfactory asylum for a very
old pet’. This may explain the presence of a peacock in the illustration, as a kind of
testimony to Merryweather’s governorship of the gaol. Lincolnshire Archives Office,
Keeper’s Journal, CoC5 1–1 (16 October 1828). For a study of the symbolism of the
peacock in Early Christian iconography see Andre Grabar, Christian Iconography: Study
of Its Origins (London, 1981).
37 Taylor, ‘This Disgraceful Thraldom’, p. 3.
38 In the event his ‘invention’ was not successful. Taylor speculates that Merryweather’s
application for a patent may have been a ‘… ploy to entice the new steam packets
on the River Witham to become more efficient and pay more tolls to the company of
which he was a shareholder’. Ibid., p. 20.
39 First introduced by William Marwood in 1872 at Lincoln Gaol, the ‘long drop’ was
regarded as a quicker and more effective method of execution. It was ‘designed to
dislocate the cervical vertebrae and rupture the spinal cord…’ V.A.C. Gatrell, The
Hanging Tree: Execution and the English People 1770–1868 (Oxford, 1994), p. 46.
part 2
Courthouses and Courtrooms
5
Back to the Future?
The Challenge of the Past for Courthouses of Tomorrow
Linda Mulcahy
Introduction
At the 2009 conference in which the

contributors to this book gathered the
architect Stephen Quinlan delivered a plenary
lecture on the recently built and much
discussed Civil Justice Centre in Manchester
designed by Denton Corker Marshall.
This new court complex is the largest to
have been built in England since the Royal
Courts of Justice were completed in 1882.
The glass fronted court complex, with its
nine storey atrium and gravity defying
protruding ‘fingers’ (Fig. 5.1), could not
provide a more stark contrast to George
Edmund Street’s ornate gothic revival
building in the Strand. But what was most
significant about Quinlan’s presentation for
the purposes of this chapter was that the
first comment in response to it came from an
architectural historian who was concerned
that the Manchester civil justice centre was
not recognizable as a courthouse. Devoid
of the form, signs and symbols associated
with this established building type,
Quinlan’s critic claimed that England’s most
important new court building rendered the notion of ‘courthouse’ meaningless. 5.1 Manchester
The idea that courts are, and should be, instantly readable is far from being a Civil Justice Centre
controversial one. Whilst recognizing a variety of forms adopted by designers in (photo by author)
her authoritative account of the history of the English law court, Clare Graham
surmises that one of the key characteristics of modern courthouses is that by
1914 their planning was highly distinctive.1 In their recent review of historic
English courts for English Heritage Brodie et al. have also claimed that law
courts are designed to be recognized externally and understood internally.2 In
this chapter, I argue that these assertions suggest a certainty about the settled
nature of design which is easily disrupted when subjected to closer scrutiny.
While it has been suggested that our ideas about what constitute a court are
now quite fixed my analysis suggests that the concept of a courthouse to which
these authorities allude is actually a very recent invention. Moreover, even if
it can be claimed that there is now a recognizable template for courthouse
design, I contend that it is one which is in urgent need of review. As reforms of
the legal system place increasing emphasis on informality, and the idea of the
virtual trial explored by Emma Rowden elsewhere in this collection becomes
a reality, I question the legitimacy of confidence in the ongoing relevance of
existing templates.
The debate about Manchester Civil Justice alluded to above raises important
questions about the very concept of ‘courthouse’ and the role that the places
in which justice is done have played in our civic landscape over time. The
topic has been much neglected. Whilst close attention has been paid to
public buildings types such as churches, castles, or town halls this has been to
the detriment of studies of the courthouse. When justice facilities have been
studied the focus has tended to be on prisons as the contributions to this
collection make clear. Technical accounts of historic courthouses which focus
on aesthetic convention or style such as those provided by English Heritage,
the Pevsner guides and the Victorian County Histories are informative but
tell us very little about the social or political significance of the buildings
described. Contemporary architectural historians have been more interested
in going behind an appreciation of technique and style to an understanding
of the symbolism and political ideology underpinning design but much of
what exists focuses on particular courts of national significance and very few
accounts bring the history of court design up to the present.3 Despite this,
there are inherent tensions in design briefs for courthouses which make them
particularly ripe for analysis. Their position as democratic spaces in citadels of
authority make them an ideal subject for detailed research about the rhetoric
and reality of public space in modern societies. 4
A complex history
In contrast to the expectation that we should be able to recognize a courthouse

with ease research suggests that for much of the history of court design the idea
of a courthouse as a distinct building type was meaningless. For many centuries
responsibility and influence on design and build was dispersed amongst a range of
people and institutions with different ideals, interests, ambitions and procedures.
The Challenge of the Past for Courthouses of Tomorrow 73
The presence of a number of parallel legal

systems until the late nineteenth century
meant that a plethora of bodies such as
the church, Chancery, the police, guilds,
boroughs and local manors funded and
oversaw courtroom design within distinct
legal jurisdictions. The fact that courts did
not sit permanently, and that the judicial role
was frequently combined with political and
executive functions, meant there was no call
for a sole purpose building for trials.5
The result was that for many centuries
there were no custom built courthouses,
only houses which happened to host courts.
Accommodation was makeshift even for the
‘national’ courts held in Westminster hall.
Local trials were held in buildings used for
a multitude of purposes such as castles,
churches, public houses, manor houses,
assembly rooms, county halls and guildhalls
depending on their status, jurisdiction and
where there happened to be space. When
town or county halls were utilized the
common practice during the Assizes was to
hold the civil court in the first floor chamber and the criminal court in the open 5.2 The layout
market space below.6 These features of early courts have important implications of the courts at
Westminster after
for courtroom design. Court furniture had to be simple, as well as easy to
the Whaddon
dismantle and carry and space was commonly sectioned off by little more than manuscripts
simple oak beams or benches. It has been contended that for much of the history (courtesy of
of English legal systems it was difficult to find anything other than rudimentary Emma Rowden)
design of the interior of courtrooms.7 Figure 5.2 shows the organization of
a fifteenth century court which provided a model for interior layout for many
centuries. This demonstrates that medieval courts were much more sociable than
their modern counterpart. The defendant stands shoulder to shoulder with his
lawyers and spectators walk freely around three sides of the court.
The trend towards purpose built and sole use courthouses began from the
late eighteenth century onwards. As law claimed a more autonomous role in
modernity, court business increased, large sections of the population migrated
to towns and litigation burgeoned courts were increasingly held in locations
designed specifically for the purpose. The proportion of sole use purpose built
courthouses remained low in the eighteenth century with early examples
including Thomas Rogers Middlesex county sessions house (1779–82); Beverley
Sessions Court (1805) and Carlisle Assize courts (1808) but in the nineteenth
century 18 of the 40 courts built for the Assizes were built for purpose.8 The
paucity of templates for design, however, meant that architects of the period
had very little to guide their planning with the result that new build was born
into something of an architectural vacuum.9 By the beginning of the nineteenth
century those few purpose built courthouses and rooms which did exist were not
always considered suitable models for the more ambitious projects which began
to be envisaged.10
Despite the shift towards the purpose built and sole use courthouse it
remained debatable whether the buildings which housed the courts during
this period were instantly recognizable as having a judicial function. Like all
other building types of the nineteenth century, courts became grander and
increasingly likely to be seen as major architectural commissions. But as
with all public buildings the external design varied with fashion. Preferences
for the neo-classical courthouse in the late eighteenth and early part of the
nineteenth century gave way to a renewed interest in the gothic courthouse in
the nineteenth century. Courthouses often appeared more austere than other
public buildings, and architects might argue that a sober Doric or Ionic column
was more suitable than a Corinthian, but many of the great symbolic sole purpose
courthouses of the nineteenth century such as Alfred Waterhouse’s Manchester
Assize Courts, the Victoria Law Courts in Birmingham or the Royal Courts of
Justice were ostentatious.11 Stripped of the royal coat or arms or symbols
of justice these buildings could be read as fulfilling any one of a number of
public functions.
It is to the interior of courthouses that we must look to identify the birth of a
new and increasingly sophisticated building type which was distinctive. In the
early years of their development the interior of the sole purpose courthouse
was dominated by the courtroom. John Carr’s elaborate Assize courts at York
(1773) and Robert Smirke’s more sober courts at Maidstone (1824) demonstrate
that early designs for purpose built courts dedicated the bulk of floor space to
courtrooms with separate rooms to house administrators and waiting rooms
located on the periphery. As the purpose built law court gained in popularity in
the nineteenth century the internal configurations of the courthouse changed
5.3 Final plan

for main floor
of Manchester
Assize Court, after
Waterhouse as
reproduced in
The Builder, 25
February 1865,
p. 136 (drawn
by author)
drastically. New facilities such as waiting rooms, robing rooms, dining facilities
and clerks accommodation became common. A new emphasis was also placed
on segregating different genders and categories of court users in the environs
of the courtroom. With its separate entrances, dedicated circulation routes and
range of separate rooms for use by different participants Alfred Waterhouse’s
Manchester Assize courts (see Fig. 5.3) was to represent the most complex
experiment in internal planning of the age and influenced many of the courts
built in the latter part of the nineteenth century.12
An increasing interest in segregation and segmentation is also evident within
the courtroom. The large central table which had dominated the courtroom
since medieval times reduced in size during this period to become a small
desk for the clerk who sits in front of the judge (see Fig. 5.2). It was replaced
by rows of seating for the lawyers. Advocates came to be situated away from
their client and with their back to them following John Soane’s ‘innovation’
at the Westminster courts in the early nineteenth century. An increasingly
obvious demarcation of the spaces for each category of participant in the
trial also became evident. Balconies for spectators became common as did
partitioned areas for the judge, jury, witnesses and defendant. The increasing
fortification of the dock proved popular as the area set aside for the defendant
was transformed from a simple bar in the pre-Victorian era to a high sided
wooden enclosure approached from cells underneath the court. What is most
interesting about these developments is that, somewhat ironically, as English
society moved from feudalism to democracy the courtroom and courthouse
became less sociable and evolved into a highly segmented arena in which
everyone was given a place which reflected their status (see Figs 5.2 and
5.4). The increasing sophistication and distinctiveness of internal planning
was such that Graham has argued that by 1914 it could be characterized as
‘fossilized’.13
The new purpose built and increasingly grand courthouses which emerged
from the late eighteenth century onwards clearly served important political
functions which have been explored more fully elsewhere.14 The trend was
certainly encouraged by lawyers and architects as a means of securing public
affirmation of their still fragile status.15 It has also been suggested that there are
close links between the reformed legal system of the nineteenth century which
increasingly served the interests of a free market and the building programmes
which served to aggrandize the role of law in modernity championed by the
new mercantile classes. The many symbolic courthouses constructed during
this period on which resources were lavished also reflected a desire to imbue
a new sense of civic pride. This is particularly evident in the monuments to law
constructed in the newly emerging industrial cities of the north and midlands.16
The new trend towards grander and more prominent courthouses has also been
linked to increasingly radical politics of the era and the propensity towards civil
unrest. In addition to the glorification of the achievements of industrialists the
new monuments to law can be read as being motivated by a desire to instill fear
in the working classes who populated the new cities.
Centralization of design
Confidence about the distinctiveness of court design by 1914 needs to be

treated with some caution.17 Whilst an ideal type might have been recognized
by architects and policy makers there is evidence that this was not always
reflected in the courthouses constructed. When the Beeching Commission
was set up in 1971 to look into the state of the Assize system it reported that
many courts continued to share facilities with other public bodies. Indeed,
the Commission raised serious concerns about the lack of segregation of
participants in the trial and absence of a fortified dock in many shared buildings.
They were particularly troubled by the ‘common practice’ of accused, litigants,
witnesses, jurors, police officers and even solicitors and counsel having to
jostle together in ‘embarrassing proximity’ in halls and corridors which were
often stacked with paraphernalia associated with other uses of the building
such as dismantled staging, parts of a boxing ring, or the music stands of a
brass band contest.18 The resulting report demonstrates that not only was the
sole use courthouse far from being the norm but that models which Graham
suggests were dominant had not been applied across the Crown estate. As a
result it could be argued that it was not until the 1970s that design became
standardized in the way she anticipates.
Variation in practice as late as the 1970s can be explained by the fact that until
the Beeching Report building for the Assizes was largely the responsibility of the
County in which courts were held. This inevitably led to considerable variation
in design. Historically this had meant that in some areas a rich benefactor might
fund the building of an impressive monument to law, money might be raised
on the local rate or raised by public subscription and in others still the local
populace might find their courts neglected because of lack of funds or political
will. Despite the longevity of such arrangements by the late twentieth century
these practices were being questioned as outdated and inefficient. This provided
policy makers and designers with an opportunity to promote the merits of
centralized planning. The result was that the reforms which followed in the wake
of the Beeching report led to the birth of the first centralised planning guide and
the launch of the largest centrally co-ordinated court building programme in the
history of courthouse design.
It was those involved in the construction of the Magistrates courts who pioneered
the idea of common design specifications from the 1960s onwards but the shift
towards centralized guidance was also fuelled by the need to avoid duplication of
work in the design specifications being issued as part of the new court-building
programme.19 Few public building initiatives have been as extensive as the post
1960s court construction programme. Motivated by concerns about overcrowding
in the Crown Courts, the programme lasted from 1972 until 1996 and cost in the
region of £500million. One hundred and thirty nine schemes were completed in
that time and 382 new courts built. In addition, twenty-eight combined court
complexes containing up to 20 courtrooms were created.20 Such was its importance
that commentators have referred to it as one of the largest monumental building
programmes since the pyramids or as

the last major contribution by central
government to Britain’s city centres.21
The design guide which emerged
in parallel with the new building
programme also broke new ground.
Drawing on the earlier work of the
Greater London Council and the Home
Office, civil servants, architects and the
judiciary were encouraged for the first
time to translate their presumptions
about court architecture into a set of
universal and centralized templates to
guide all designers.22 Whilst recognizing
that the law is a ‘field well known for
strong individualism’ and ‘strong local
judicial tradition’ the production of
the Guide was a deliberate attempt to
provide a standardized and rational
base for the rapid compilation of briefs
which gave a clear understanding of
the design issues to be addressed.23 Successive editions of the Court Standards 5.4 The
and Design Guide have been produced over recent decades and it is now keep prescribed layout
of the modern
constantly under review.24
courtroom in
The social significance of centralized planning was undoubtedly the a Crown Court
challenge it provided for policy makers and designers to consider how a late (courtesy of
twentieth courthouse in a democratic society should look and be experienced. Emma Rowden)
The design guide and building programme claimed a desire to break with the
past by promoting new visions of the legal system in which the focus was on
equality rather than retribution or authority. Practices were certainly ripe for
reform. By the time the structure and design of the Assizes came to be reviewed
by the Beeching Commission there had been very little new build since the
nineteenth century. Seismic shifts in the political and social context in which
design of public buildings took place had occurred in the intervening period.
The introduction of universal suffrage and post-war shifts in the social contract
heralded the birth of an era in which public institutions, including the legal
system, were expected to be more accountable to the general public than they
had been in earlier eras.
Significantly, the early part of this period corresponded with the highwater mark
of penal welfarism in British social policy and there appears to be some reflection
of the shift away from the goal of retribution in the new claims being made in the
Design Guide. While the architectural ambition and monumentality of Victorian
design continued to inspire architects of the period there was also an acceptance
that the messages conveyed by sombre hierarchical courthouses of the nineteenth
century lacked resonance in the modern age. In particular it was recognised that
courthouses of the past had rarely reflected concern for the comfort, convenience
or dignity of the working classes. Modern designers began to argue that there was
a need for a new approach to court design which reflected the fact that sovereignty
was increasingly seen as vested in the masses.25 In the words of Brown the challenge
for court designers of the period was ‘… the resolution of the dialogue between the
individual and State – the rulers and the ruled – and a building which symbolizes
the health and viability of such a social contract’.26 Debates about this ‘democratic
turn’ were highly visible in the field of architecture. The simple undecorated lines,
geometric forms and attention to function encouraged by Modernist designs for
courthouses provided a stark contrast with the neo-classical or gothic form and
deliberately drew on ideas of rupture with the past.
At an international level buildings such as Le Corbusier courts at Chandigarh
(1950–57) where the majesty of law is represented by massive concrete pylons
proved revolutionary in their subversion of traditional design concepts.27 In an
Australian context Paul Katseiris also names the building of the High Court in
Canberra (1975–80) with its use of high ceilings and flat courtrooms as the moment
when judicial buildings in the country attained their contemporary voice.28 In a
UK context achievements were more modest but courts such as those built in
Plymouth (1961–63) aimed to achieve an appearance of lightness and dignity as
a foil to the oppressive mass and solidarity of the adjoining Guildhall which had
housed the county and magistrates courts since being opened in 1874. Viewed
through such fresh perspectives the Assize system with its many historic buildings
which reflected the authority of law were dismissed as antiquated and oppressive.
Courts of this era can also be characterized by less pretentious court interiors
which consciously resisted the conventional and superficial trappings of pomp and
civic dignity.29 The interior of courtrooms became noticeably simpler and flatter
and there was less evidence of hierarchy in the vertical dimensions of the room
together with a conscious rejection of the sort of excessive detailing so loved by
Victorian architects. The ‘wedding cake’ interiors of nineteenth century courtrooms
with their central well and theatre like qualities were rejected during this period in
favour of courtrooms in which additional height was only used for the judicial dais
and the back row of jurors. It is clear that contemporary commentators continue
to entertain the expectation that architectural programmes for courthouses can
strive towards a range of symbolic and spatial functions which engender respect
for justice without mystique, intimidation or the exacerbation of conflict.30
A democratic turn?
Despite these changes, shifts in attitudes towards courthouse design in the UK

are more apparent than real. Indeed confidence in the design templates for the
interiors of courtrooms reproduced in the Court Standards and Design Guide is
such that it is asserted:
The courtroom layouts are the result of careful consideration by numerous user
groups. They incorporate specific and well-defined relationships between the
various participants by means of carefully arranged sight line, distances and

levels. It has been found that attempts by individual’s designers to improve on
these layouts have rarely been successful and consequently these layouts are to
be adopted in all cases.31
A closer analysis of the Court Design Guide suggests that the goals of accessibility
and equality are more frequently discussed in relation to the exterior of courts
than they are the interior. The importance of architectural creativity is recognized
by the Design Guide but its aspirations are largely limited to the façade and
entrance hall. As regards the courtroom, it makes clear that the expectation
is that architects should continue to design courts with an eye to tradition and
prescribed order. The government have stressed that whilst always looking for
innovative designs the scope for innovation does not extend to the freedom to re-
engineer core aspects of design.32 Viewed in this way the approach suggested by
the Design Guide continues to be a nostalgic one in which designers of courtroom
interiors should contain aspirations towards progress or change. Courtrooms are
seen as having authentic, fixed and unproblematic identities in which the placing
of bodies in particular ways is no longer contestable. Is it really the case that the
internal design of the courtroom has reached such a peak of perfection?
It could be argued that whilst the building programmes of recent decades
have engineered a symbolic break with the past, the opportunity to radically re-
think how the design of modern courthouses can best reflect the new respect for
egalitarianism, dignity and due process was avoided. Despite a flattening of levels,
very little has changed within the courtroom where spatial practices dating back
to the medieval era and nineteenth century remain the norm. I argue that this calls
for a fresh questioning of much hallowed assumptions about how the relationship
between the State and individual should be reflected in the spatial configurations
of the trial.
In the limited literature available commentators have suggested that a
discourse of potential disorder constantly permeates negotiation about court
design and that humanist instincts towards accessibility voiced by designers
can all too easily be dismissed as soft progressive yearnings. Brown, who
chaired the committees which produced the early design guides, has argued
that the presence of articulate high status users of the buildings who veer
towards a conservative approach to design made it extremely difficult for
architects to suggest fresh ways of thinking about circulation routes or the
public interface with officials.33 Even more evident is the way in which a security
agenda poses a potent challenge to the idea of the courthouse as an open,
public and readable space. Reflecting on his experiences of consulting with
different groups of staff about design he concludes that police, social services
and probation staff prefer to draw strict boundaries around their sphere
of operations and that unspoken hostilities are discernible in discussions
about the spaces where their respective zones meet. Brown has argued
that the security advisers, with all their paraphernalia of secrecy, obsession
and rigidity of attitude have transformed into modern day ‘form makers’
alongside architects.34 Reflecting on such issues Robert Fulford has concluded
that the distinction between ‘correct’ architecture and the architecture of

corrections has become increasingly blurred.35
A key theme to emerge from the recent history of court design is the desire
for complete control over the public space of courthouses. Such is the rise of
the centralized planner that in a US context Wong is confident enough to make
reference to the ‘profession’ of judicial space management which he goes on
to describe as both an art and science.36 Seen from this perspective the Court
Standards and Design Guide can be viewed as evidence of the plethora of
techniques employed to stage manage interactions. The Guide is a Foucauldian
scholars dream. At over a thousand pages long the document contains a series
of illustrations and text which prescribe in minute detail how the internal space
of all publicly funded courthouses should be configured. Even the most cursory
reading of the text reveals the guide’s concern with the minutiae of signifiers in
the courtroom which is suggestive of the late twentieth century shift towards
cultures of control in penal policy.37 Much of the Guide is dedicated to discussion
of discrete circulation routes within the courthouse and segmentation of space
within it. It contains detailed guidance about the materials which should be used
to build and fill the court as well as their quality, size and position. It has sections
on signs; safety; air; water; acoustics; furniture and furnishings; finishes and
materials; alarms; information technology and sustainable development. We are
informed of the correct size of the advocate’s desk, the appropriate depth of the
glass in a secure dock; the positioning of each category of user; recommended
floor and ceiling finishes and the type of wallpaper to be used in the court offices.
One emerges at the end of reading the guide with a detailed knowledge of such
things as the size of the mirror to be positioned in the judges’ private toilets and
the number of toilet roll holders to be installed there.
Significantly, a new emphasis on ‘sightlines’ means that modern day surveillance
of the public is also facilitated through the detailed prescription of who should be
able to see whom within the courtroom. The focus of the Guide is as much on the
visibility of spectators as it is the visibility of proceedings and provides a particularly
good example of the ways in which law as physical compulsion has been replaced by
the simple economic geometry of seamless surveillance. Spectators are expected
to have a clear view of the judge but destined to get no more than a ‘general view’
of the proceedings. Indeed, it is specifically noted that they should have their field
of vision restricted. While axial visibility is imposed on them, they suffer from lateral
invisibility in ways which clearly associate the public with danger. So for instance,
it is prescribed that those sitting in the public gallery should have the minimum
possible direct eye contact with the jury in order to reduce the risk of intimidation
of jurors. Moreover, a glass screen between the modern dock and public seating
area is expected to be obscured to a height of 1525 mm above the floor level so
that the public are prevented from seeing the defendant while they are seated.
It would seem that design now plays a more pronounced role that ever before in
managing the movement and behaviour of participants in the trial in ways which
can impact on their ability to participate in it. Observation has become distinct
from participation and viewing from accountability.
The spatial configurations of the courthouse have led researchers to argue that
design continues to be complicit in the degradation of defendants and spectators
in the criminal trial.38 There is also an emerging jurisprudence on the issue. The
2000 decision of the European Court of Justice in the cases of T and V v United
Kingdom made clear that the layout of a Crown court in which two youths were
tried contributed to the undermining of their right to a fair trial under article 6 of
the European Charter of Human Rights. More recently, Justice Bongiorno’s decision
in the Australian case of Benbrika 12 to have a secure glass dock dismantled
because it undermined the presumption of innocence indicates the direct
relationship between how we organized space with notions of due process. These
issues become more urgent of consideration still when one considers that in the
US, arguably the most security conscious nation in the world, even the most violent
of defendants regularly sit next to their counsel immediately in front of the judge
and the public sit on the same level with full view of all the other participants in
the trial.39
Producers of the modern Design Guide can remain confident that they
have perfected models of containment unconceived of by their forebears.40
The complete segregation of clearly defined categories of participant in the
trial, the creation of private zones within the courthouse and courtroom,
detailed specifications as regards sightlines and the physical separation of the
press and jury from the public are all architectural embodiments of control in
which notions of ‘visibility’ could be seen as a ruse. It might also be argued that
although the courtroom has become flatter in recent decades with less emphasis
on overbearing symbols of power there is also a possibility that discipline and
surveillance in the courtroom has become so subtle that these crude symbols of
force can now be dispensed with. Contrary to the rhetoric employed by policy
makers the architectural apparatus imposed by the Guide can just easily be read
as a vehicle for creating and sustaining power relations as it can a site where
equality is valued. The sophisticated forms of segregation and surveillance
employed allows things to be arranged in such a way that the exercise of power
is not added on from the outside but is subtly present in ways which increases its
efficiency and transforms ‘participants’ into docile spectators.
notes
1 Clare Graham, Ordering Law: The Architecture and Social History of the English Law Court
to 1914 (Aldershot, 2003).
2 Allan Brodie, Gary Winter, Stephen Porter, The Law Court 1800–2000: Development in
Form and Function (London, 2001).
3 Graham, Ordering Law; David Brownlee, The Law Courts: The Architecture of
George Edmund Street (New York, 1984); Josef Sharon, The Supreme Court Building
(Jerusalem, 1993); T. Bürklin, J. Limbach, and M. Wilkens, ‘With a touch of
Internationality and Modernity’, in The Federal Constitutional Court of Germany:
Architecture and Jurisdiction (Basel, 2004); Katherine Fischer-Taylor, In the Theater of
Criminal Justice: The Palais de Justice in Second Empire Paris (Princeton NJ, 1993). See
also Linda Mulcahy, ‘The Unbearable Lightness of Being? Shifts Towards the Virtual
Trial’, in Journal of Law and Society, vol. 35(4) (2008): 464–89; and Linda Mulcahy,
Legal Architecture: Justice, Due Process and the Place of Law (London, 2011).
4 David Tait, ‘Democratic Spaces in a Citadel of Authority’, in Architecture Australia, vol.
98(5) (2009).
5 Graham, Ordering Law; Mulchay, Legal Architecture: Justice, Due Process and the Place of
Law (London, 2010).
6 The Assizes were the most senior regional courts and were overseen by judges from
Westminster who travelled to the regions for this purpose. The Assize system lasted
from the twelfth century until 1972.
7 Graham, Ordering Law.
9 David Watkin, The Buildings of Britain: Regency – A Guide and Gazetteer (London, 1982).
10 Christopher Chalklin, English Counties and Public Building 1650–1830 (London, 1998).
11 Linda Mulcahy, ‘Architectural Precedent: Manchester Assize Courts and Monuments to
Law in the Mid-Victorian Era’, in Kings Law Journal, vol. 19 (2008).
12 Mulcahy, ‘Architectural Precedent’.
13 Graham, Ordering Law, p. 3.
14 Mulcahy, Legal Architecture.
15 Martha McNamara, From Tavern to Courthouse: Architecture and Ritual in American Law
1658–1860 (Baltimore MD, 2004).
16 Graham, Ordering Law; Mulchay, ‘The Unbearable Lightness of Being’.
18 Royal Commission on Assizes and Quarter Sessions, Written evidence submitted to the
Commission under the chairmanship of Lord Beeching, Royal Commission on Assizes and
Quarter Sessions, 1966–69 (London, 1971), p. 47.
19 Magistrates Court Design Guide 1970. See also Consultative memorandum on the
design of the courts, 1970; the Crown and County Courthouse Design Manual 1975.
Brown, F. (1977).
20 SAVE Britain’s Heritage, Silence in court: The Future of the UK’s Historic Law Courts
(London, 2004).
21 Paul Rock, The Social World of an English Crown Court (Oxford, 1993).
22 F. Brown, ‘Preface’, in Magistrates Courthouses: Design Study 1977 (London, 1977), p. iii.
23 Not all jurisdictions followed this lead in developing standardized templates for
courthouse design although the issue continues to be debated in jurisdictions
such as Australia and France. Home Office and Greater London Council, Magistrates
Courthouses: Design Study 1977 (London, 1977), p. 5; J. Brown, ‘Design for Law and
Order: A general survey’, in Architects Journal, June 1980.
24 The current version of the guide is the most comprehensive to date and provides
standardized templates for all Magistrates, County and Crown Courts. Her Majesty’s
Courts Service, Court Standards and Design Guide (London, 2010).
25 M. Black, ‘Representations of justice, A photographic Essay’, in JOSCCI, number one,
www.uow.edu.au/arts/jiscci. <Last accessed November 2009>.
26 Brown, ‘Design for Law and Order’, p. 1191.

27 See further <http://www.highcourtchd.gov.in/buildingview1.htm>.
28 A virtual tour of the High court can be taken at: http://www.hcourt.gov.au/about_04.
html, P. Katsieris, ‘The Design of the Commonwealth Law Courts Building, Melbourne’,
in JOSCCI, number one, www.uow.edu.au/arts/jiscci. Last accessed November 2009.
29 Brown, ‘Design for Law and Order’, p. 1199.
30 Kim Dovey, and J. Fitzgerald, ‘Open court: Transparency and Legitimation in the
Courthouse’, in Becoming Places: Urbanism/Architecture/Identity/Power (London, 2010).
31 Her Majesty’s Courts Service, Court Standards and Design Guide (London, 2010).
32 Department for Constitutional Affairs, ‘Public private partnerships and the PFI’, www.
dca.gov.uk/courtbuild. Last accessed August 2005.
33 Brown, ‘Design for Law and Order’.
34 J. Brown, ‘The Law of Architecture: Glasgow Sheriffs Courts’, in Architects Journal, 11
February (1987): 32.
35 Robert Fulford, ‘Correct architecture and the architecture of corrections’, Globe and
Mail, 19 September 1998). See <http://www.robertfulford.com/Courthouses.html>.
36 Judicial Administration and Space Management: A Guide for Architects, Court
Administrators and Planners, ed. F. Michael Wong (Gainsville, 2001).
37 David Garland, The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society
(Chicago, 2001).
38 Pat Carlen, ‘Remedial Routines for the Maintenance of Control in Magistrates’ Courts’,
in British Journal of Law and Society, vol. 1, no. 2 (1974): 111–17; Pat Carlen, Magistrates’
Justice (London, 1976); Rock, The Social World of an English Crown Court; Paul Rock,
‘Witnesses and Space in a Crown Court’, in British Journal of Criminology, vol. 31(3)
(1991).
39 Linda Mulcahy, ‘Architects of Justice: The Politics of Court House Design’, Social and
Legal Studies, vol. 16(3) (2007).
40 Court Standards and Design Guide, 2010.
6
Lecture Theatre: Echoes of the Palais de Justice
in Legal Education
Keith Crawford
Institutional Authority and Legal Education
States rest upon institutions both physical and social such as the Houses of
Parliament, the Arc de Triomphe, the Palais de Justice, the National Health
Service, Social Security, or a Court of Appeal; they instil a sense of permanence
and stability. The eighteenth century gave rise to the notion that law1 and
architecture2 could be used as devices for social engineering: ‘laws come to the
aid of morals: the enlightened temple of justice forms a salutary contrast to the
dark lairs of crime.’3 This revolution in thought climaxed in the French social
and political revolution of 1789–99, was internationalised through conquest,4
and provided ‘the issues of liberal and radical-democratic politics for most of
the world’.5 The revolutionary period offers an object lesson in how to use the
institution to assert authority.
This paper draws a line between two of the most important physical
institutions in French legal methodology; the Palais de Justice in France, as an
embodiment of the authority of textual law, and the modern day French lecture
theatre. It highlights similarities in the techniques used to express authority
in the different buildings, and the impact on students of teaching them in
spaces that emphasise the supremacy of the speaker and the notion of the law
as factual, discoverable truth. It is intended to serve as a warning before we
consider using a Magistral style education in England to meet the demands of
an increasingly large student body, and also to highlight the importance of the
choice of the space in which we practice law.
The Failure of Revolutionary Institutionalisation
The French Revolution is best understood as a series of ‘uprisings, purges,

coups, and reactions’ with each faction, having seized power, striving ‘to stop
the Revolution, to consolidate it around the ideals and institutions on which the
regime rested’.6 Legal institution was as quick to rise as to fall, with revolutionary
regimes ‘enacting nearly 15,000 statutes, and then making half a dozen attempts
to embody them in a homogenous code’.7 Architectural institutions also proved
easier to destroy than to build. The academies were abolished as ‘the last refuge
of all the aristocracies’,8 but plans for temples of reason and monuments of the
revolution never left the drawing board and the architect found himself, as
Jean-Jacques Lequeue once famously scrawled, ‘drawing to save myself from
the guillotine. Everything for the fatherland!’9
The first problem was that architecture requires time and money, and the
revolutionary regimes were both short lived and bankrupt: ‘throughout the
decade successive regimes were too unstable, money was too scarce, and ideology
shifted too rapidly for ambitious urban projects.’10 The second was that architecture
requires patronage, which prior to the revolution meant the aristocracy; a fact that
led many designers into exile, execution or imprisonment. Institution requires
stability before it can maintain it.
Calls for revolution gradually gave way to ‘an overwhelming demand for “a Man
on Horseback” to restore order, regularity and prosperity’.11 Napoleon Bonaparte,
immortalised as just such a man by the painter Jacques-Louis David, took five years
to turn his three man coup into a one man empire, reconciling his ‘increasingly
monarchical power with the maintenance of the ‘social achievements’ of the
Revolution’12 by taking advantage of the ‘absolute concentration of authority’13
created by the revolutions extermination of the feudal balance of power.
The institutional legacy he used to create this remains imprinted on France
today,14 from the civil code and the legion d’honneur, to the Arc-de Triomphe, the
Madeleine, the Bourse, the portico of the Chambre des Députés and the Colonne
Vendôme, all created under the direction and often quite specific guidance of
Napoleon himself. He had observed early in life that ‘if I were the master of France,
I would make Paris … the most beautiful town that could exist’,15 but this says
less about his appreciation of the aesthetic than about his understanding of the
nature of power: ‘A new government needs to dazzle and amaze … . The moment
its splendour fails, it falls.’16 Napoleonic architecture may be ‘derivative and
monotonous’, but it is not art critics he sought to please.17 He referenced classicism
because of the sense of permanence that comes with antiquity; ‘I became the arch
of the old and new alliance, the natural mediator between the old and new order
of things.’18 He was dazzling his audience with the spectacle of the old to maintain
the stability of the new.
The Palais de Justice
Napoleon’s greatest legal legacy is the achievement of the centuries old dream
of a single code of law for all of France, ‘to bring the Revolution to a close while
maintaining most of its achievements, to reinforce and reconstruct the fabric of
society, and to increase the power of the state by unifying it and centralising the
echoes of the Palais de Justice in Legal Education 87
6.1 Salle de
Audience 1880.
Félix Narjoux,
‘Paris: Monuments
élevés par la
ville 1850–80:
Volume 1/Edifices
administrif/Edifices
Judicaires’ Vve A.
Morel (Paris, 1883),
available online at
the BnF website
ark:/12148/
bpt6k86627r
(accessed 25 Jan
2010) – Chapitre
Premier – Page
37 – la salle
d’audience
administration’.19 His empire may have fallen at Waterloo but the code endured,
physically incarnated in new courts built specifically for ‘veneration for the written
codes and their unbending application’.20 The pinnacle of the embodiment
of textual law occurred in the 1880 reconstruction of the Palais de Justice, part
of Napoleon III’s Haussemanian redevelopment and still the working supreme
court of France. A modern visitor will find that other than for the installation of
microphones and bullet proof glass the space is virtually identical to when it was
constructed.
Hierarchical Axis of Power
The room is constructed as ‘a long rectangle set up like a basilican Catholic

church, so as to maximize the longitudinal axis that culminated in the judges’
tribune’.21 While the prosecutor sits elevated alongside the judge, indicating his
status as a magistrate and representative of the state, the defence sits in a lower
position diametrically opposite the jury.22 The social structure of the room is a
clear expression of state authority, ‘physically constructed as a contest between
two visibly unequal entities: the individual defendant versus society, represented
by the magistrates and, temporarily, by the jury’.23 The focus of this display is the
presiding judge, who leads the inquisitorial trial, conducting, questioning and
directing the oral proceedings as a whole.24 An escalating gradient of grandeur
takes us from one end of the room, where the audience sit on plain benches, to
the other, where the judges sit on ornate chairs in front of decorated panels. Their
6.2 Diagram of
the Layout of the
Court (diagram
drawn from visit
to Palais de Justice,
7 October 2009)
costumes evoke the tradition of high ranking magistrates receiving ‘their red robes
as hand-me-downs from the king … to signify the immortality of sovereignty …
In this sense red-robed magistrates made a competing bid for sovereignty not
only with lawyers, but also with the spectators and jurors whose public status was
signified by their lack of uniform.’25
It is hard to believe that this court expresses Abbé Siéyès’ notion that all
sovereignty ‘resides essentially in the nation.’26 Instead it is brilliant subversion
of the principle of publicity, embodying the Enlightenment belief that emotion
must be suppressed by rational reflection; that the textual is superior to the oral
and gestural.27 Thus justice must be removed from the public into the hands
of a responsible sovereign power for, as Michel Foucault suggests, ‘“fear of the
uproar, shouting and cheering that the people usually indulge in, the fear that
there would be disorder, violence and outbursts against the parties, or even the
judges.” Before the justice of the sovereign, all voices must be still.’28
Complaints that the oral trial was too theatrical seem to rest on concerns that
‘spectators were treating the trial as an entertainment for themselves, distancing
themselves from the debate between the rights of the defendant and those
of society and thereby evading application of its stern moral lesson to their
own lives’.29 Viewing the judge from a similar position to that of the witness
or defendant when giving testimony, the audience is intended to experience
judgment and be chastised through the defendant (and to some extent through
the witnesses as well). We are reminded of Foucault’s ‘regulated mechanism of
an ordeal: a physical challenge that must define the truth; if the patient is guilty,
the pains that it imposes are not unjust; but it is also a mark of exculpation if he
is innocent.’30 Trials teach ‘the public how to apply that general set of principles
which constituted the codes in contingent daily life’.31
In this sense we see the distinction between the adversarial and the inquisitorial
trial is not simply the difference between ‘a dramatic thing put to legal use’32 and
a system focussed on ‘collegiality, conversation, and consensus – not dramatic
confrontation’.33 The drama of the court of the civil code is lodging sovereignty in a
different place: ‘the oral, antagonistic courtroom is set up for viewing and hearing
a seemingly balanced battle between prosecution and defence. The expert,
inquisitorial courtroom is set up to enhance the authority of the judge or the system
of justice he enforces.’34 Inquisitorial justice ‘implies a hierarchical axis of power
flowing from the knowing judge to his subject’;35 ‘the magistrate constituted, in
solitary omnipotence, a truth by which he invested the accused; and the judges
received this truth ready-made.’36
Echoes in the Lecture Theatre
This is a picture of the main amphitheatre in the law faculty at the University
Paris II Pantheon-Assas, one of the two halls used to deliver both graduate and
undergraduate level law courses. Notice the elevated position of the professor’s
bench, the straight lines flowing from the back of the theatre to the front, and the
large flanged structure focusing audience attention to the centre. Amphitheatres
have their roots in ‘the psychological advantages of assembling people in an
enclave where they could see each other and share common emotions’, a principle
applied by revolutionaries in an effort to ‘succeed in bringing back a sense of
morals’.37 Students typically note feeling overwhelmed, intimidated, and small.
The lecture theatre is very, almost too big, the quality of the sound is very unequal
depending on your place and the distance between seats and the small tables are
thin which is pretty uncomfortable to take notes during long or intense classes.
(Student, France)
The first thing that strikes me: the theatre of Assas is huge. A multitude of
students: it’s not very reassuring! (Student, France)
The second amphitheatre shares major qualities of the first, but with a significant
addition. This remarkable fixture is not an anomaly but rather a French university
tradition known as la chaise. Its presence mimics or even exaggerates that of the
judge’s bench, creating an unavoidable impression of the superiority of teacher
to student. Teachers express the concern that a small table would look ridiculous,
6.3 The French Lecture Theatre and ‘La Chaise’
but La chaise is so grandiose it actually obscures the view of

the speaker; in one interview the teacher spoke of students
who would not recognise him outside of the lecture theatre.
This is not the only element borrowed from the court that
emphasises the alien authority of the speaker:
You should know that, until 1968, we would deliver the

course in a robe, a red robe; a ceremonial robe. Some of
my colleagues still teach in this robe. For some people this
perhaps places more authority at their disposal. It is a change
from the 1968 revolution that we could come in a suit – but
everybody wears a tie, for example. It is out of the question to
come to deliver a course, for anyone at our university, which
is very traditional, in a T-Shirt or a Polo – it is forbidden.
(Teacher, France)
The robe is a replica of the one worn by the magistrate, in

which the red evoked royal sovereignty and ‘consisted of a
uniform, which concealed the individuality of the wearer’s body and assimilated 6.4 A French
him to a professional ethos’.38 We can compare this image of the French lecturer Law Lecturer in
in his robes to that of the English lecturer I observed teaching insolvency law in his Formal Robes
the UK:
Frankly I don’t feel as though I should try and generate any sense of authority, I’m
just somebody who knows quite a bit about certain given areas. I am there in the
first place to tell the students a little bit about those areas, but after that it ought
to be a dialogue … this idea of authority, of being the father figure, from whom all
knowledge is imparted and is authoritative, is wrong. (Teacher, UK)
6.5 The French

and the English
Law Lecturer
Both French and English staff spoke of a need

to balance authority and accessibility, the
need for students to be prepared to question
what the teachers told them. This is much
more difficult to communicate for the French
teacher, when both the physical and social
space him into a position of no longer being
an individual but rather being a mouthpiece
for the law, and for positivist truth.
Students in Smaller Groups
I would have to repeat my course seven times

for a group of thirty, which means, I have to
repeat my course forty times; I refuse to do it!
(Teacher, France)
Many of the practical problems to do with

teaching large numbers of students the same
course stem from a desire to hold on to these
traditional methods of teaching; this teacher’s
legitimate concern that they would have to
repeat the same course forty times would
become meaningless if they only had to record
it once and post it on a website. A growing
number of institutions now do exactly this,
allowing students to access lectures at their
convenience. If you can resolve the intellectual
property issues then the best remaining
argument for maintaining the traditional
lecture is its value as an authoritative spectacle.
A very different type of teaching of
insolvency law can be illustrated at the
University of Nottingham. Here, the teacher
works in front of a small group. She stands
on the same level as the other students, with
no barrier between her and them. During
the lesson there is dialogue; questions back
and forth between staff and students, and
at one point she stops and says: ‘what I think
doesn’t matter – what the marker thinks, what
the marker’s opinion is, makes absolutely no
difference to your result and is unimportant
6.6 Pictures from the French and the English Law Lecture regarding what your opinion is.’
The structure of the room facilitates this sort of interaction, although we should 6.7 The French
note that the students still scribble down notes intensely, and that the room is still Insolvency Law
Tutorial or ‘TD’
full of laptops. Nottingham has the liberty to teach like this because insolvency law
is an optional module with fewer students: what is important is that this difference
makes a quantifiable difference to what the students experience as the nature of
the law.
Returning to France, the insolvency students from the grand amphitheatre get
their opportunity to question a member of staff in what is known as ‘TD’, with a
group of around twenty-five to thirty students. This teacher apologised before the
class, explaining that this was a particularly bavard or rowdy group. Perhaps I have
spent too much time in English secondary schools, but I found them exceedingly
well behaved and well mannered! There was a more interactive set of students in
the TD session, sitting at the front and centre as is frequently the case with less
communication-apprehensive students. The quality of answer and response was
telling. A great deal of time was spent reading out sections of the law, questions
were answered by reciting pre-prepared responses from the computer, and there
was a great deal of frantic tapping at the laptop. This was not a forum for debate;
it was a forum for clarification. The teacher’s best efforts to encourage debate are
limited by the format.
For the French students this is their best opportunity to test their answers,
because this is the smallest group and the most interaction they will ever
experience. For all modules at the University of Nottingham, both those taught
in large lecture theatres and small group sessions, students also receive bi-weekly
tutorials. Groups of not more than eight have the opportunity to question the
tutor in their office.39 This sort of space allows the teacher, should they wish, to
overcome the student’s desire for the right answer and force them into debate. As
the students have the opportunity to pose questions in the normal lecture, they
can afford to take more risks in the tutorial. It is not that simple; the pressures of the
quest for the golden bullet are not abandoned at the door; but the structure of the
room certainly makes it easier to achieve.
Another important justification for the limits on debate in the French system
is the structure of the course. The style of education radically changes in the final
6.8 The English

Insolvency Law
Tutorial, in the
Tutor’s Office
year, the ‘M2’ year, by which time the size of the student body has been significantly
reduced by the rigorous system of testing and examination and teaching is
conducted in groups much more like the TD group shown above. The suggestion is
that, having provided a solid grounding in the law, students can now be taught to
debate and question in this final year.
The argument has some merit, but we must remember that the only students
who reach the M2 phases are those who have successfully progressed through
the highly competitive stages before it: stages that favour the communication
apprehensively, that encourage a linear approach, that prefer accurate reference
to creative analysis. Traditionally people with a constructivist learning pattern take
longer to establish foundation knowledge but their greater experimentation at an
earlier point allows them to develop more thorough and detailed knowledge at a
later date. These sorts of people are more likely to be eliminated by early testing
that focuses on repetition of fact. Is it credible that upon arrival in the final year of
their education, after years of testing and examination, students with more direct
learning styles will suddenly abandon techniques that have served them so well?
You have to do it in a way that we, the academics, think is appropriate to

enhancing the students learning abilities and the students learning experience.
So whilst they say ‘can we have sample answers to absolutely everything that
has been set for the past 25 years, and can we have one to one feedback on our
exams with written details,’ and so on, we will tend to say no because we don’t
think that works … . The students, I hope and I actually believe, by the time they
actually get into the third year they do tend to appreciate and to come round
to our way of thinking, probably because by that time they may have done a
little bit of vacation work, so they’ve seen what they have to do in practice, and
they’ve seen how what we are trying to do can prepare them for that in a more
appropriate way than simply saying ‘Right, ok, this is the absolutely cast iron
road to the two-one.’ (Teacher, UK)
English Consumer Demand for a Palais style education
English legal education is experiencing significant pressures to adopt more of a

Palais style system.
Higher education typically produces a student who is: curriculum driven; …

used to a classroom setting in which instructors instruct and learners learn;
used to working towards pre-set educational objectives; used to being assessed,
rewarded, or penalized by external evaluation.40
I study law because it opens up numerous opportunities without closing any

doors. Lawyer, Jurist, Politician, Entrepreneur, Accountant, Auctioneer; these
options interest me. These studies to some extent allow us to access many careers.
(Student, France)
I thought it would be useful during my training contract, especially due to the

current financial situation. (Student, UK)
The students are paying customers … [League tables and spoon feeding
students] have simply become a part of schooling now. It drives the education
agenda below the higher education level. We just have to resist it. (Teacher, UK)
Having speculated their future incomes on loans to pay tuition fees, students
come with expectations they want to be fulfilled. The opinions they give are
scored through the National Student Satisfaction Survey, which are incorporated
into university league tables that influence student recruitment. Student tutor-
feedback forms are taken into account for the promotion and retention of staff.
There are significant financial benefits to giving students what they want.
Like Medicine or Teaching, Law is a subject commonly studied with career
objectives in mind. After years of education structured around examination,
students must become highly proficient in the skills of successfully sitting them in
order to reach law school. Their expectation is to be shown how to pass through
the next set of exams in order to move on to the world of work:
They require more buoying up these days. They require more feedback, more
constant reassurance, they like to look very much for rules – rules that are concrete,
rules which you can predict and comply with. So they are looking for formulae
in relation to legal problems, legal questions, and legal principles. I think that
probably comes out of the way they are taught at school – they are taught to look
for rules. In law of course there is no such magic bullet. (Teacher, UK)
Although students will often make requests for more tutor contact, once they are
in the room the questions are often along the lines of ‘will this be in the exam’ or
‘what is the right answer?’ Studying law is stressful. The students arrive seeking
reassurance that there is a right answer. The magistral approach is better for
achieving this impression, especially for the sorts of students that have made it
this far.
Communication Apprehension and Learning Outcomes
A long standing criticism of examination driven learning is that once they move
into employment students ‘flounder outside the structured learning environment
to which they have been accustomed’, that they are ‘ill-equipped to deal with
aspects of the workplace such as problem-solving, decision making, working in
a team, or learning for themselves’.41 Students are aware of the need to develop
these skills, but sitting in the amphitheatre they receive mixed messages:
To have a good mark, you must be serious (learn your lessons regularly), to have a
good memory and to work on your thinking method. You must also be informed
about the current events. Our teachers will want us to think on our own little by
little, by using the tools they give us. (Student, France)
A good law student must have a ‘well made mind rather than a well stocked
mind.’ Basic knowledge is of course required. But what is important is also to have
an ability of thinking, and to make connections between the different areas. In
our working life, we’ll have to think globally. (Student, France)
In business law one must teach that which you practice. If you stay in the books
and in the text of the law alone you will miss the meat of the subject. So I try to
breathe life into my teaching with some practical examples, but in the exam I
don’t ask them to speak of practical things, it is necessary to talk of other things.
(Teacher, France)
It’s about instilling strong analytical skills and strong skills of evaluation.
Insolvency is highly technical, and then there is this over-arching policy idea; so
I’m looking for that … , a lively appreciation of the tensions that bedevil this area
of law. That’s what it’s all about; conflict resolution, and how it goes about that,
and whether the structures and the regimes are fair. I’m looking for that solid,
analytical underpinning, but whatever they write above and beyond that is of
great interest to me. (Teacher, UK)
To have a good mark: cramming, and sometimes thinking. (Student, France)
Student participation has long been considered essential to ‘learning, motivation,

and problem solving ability’, but the large lecture theatre renders this virtually
impossible:42
The teaching in France is type we call ‘Magistral’, the idea being that it is in a great
amphitheatre with three or four hundred students, and the professor delivers his
course, but no dialogue is possible … the students hesitate to come and see us,
6.9 French
law students
studiously take
dictation onto
their laptops
hesitate to discuss, and truly, they have to take their courage in their hands to come
… I have always given good access, amiably discussed and voluntarily responded
to their questions, but for them, it is not easy. (Teacher, France)
Students who are communication apprehensive, who would prefer to access

knowledge through delivery than debate, have a strong preference for Magistral
style teaching.43 While they feel more comfortable in the lecture theatre, more
independent students experience a ‘negative affect which can interfere with
learning’.44 The combination of dictation, examination, then response to surviving
student’s preference (where those who have survived are those who profited
from the situation we have created), creates an inevitable feedback loop. We
should recall this when we look up at the field of students, tapping our dictation
into their laptops. It is known that ‘information that is not actively processed, but
merely “recorded,” is harder to retrieve from storage, less available for application
to new situations, and more easily forgotten’.45 The student’s poor learning habits
are simply the rational response to the educational environment they have been
put into. Like the audience at the Palais, they have learned the superior morality of
repetition and silence.
Alternatives to the Palais
The Palais de Justice is a living embodiment of Napoleon’s distrust of an

independent judiciary and the notion of the law as an objectively discoverable
truth. A consequence of replicating this in the lecture theatre is it encourages
communication apprehension and a linear approach to knowledge unsuited

either to academia or practice. The use of magistral lecture theatres is by no means
unique to French education but the vivid connection between their legal tradition
and their legal education clearly illustrates their impact on the student and upon
legal method. The growing pressure to somehow both adopt similar practises in
English education, and at the same time promote student interaction, should be
resisted. I shall conclude by recommending two alternatives:
1. Bulldoze the lecture theatres and replace them with cafés and study spaces.
In the twenty-first century placing all lectures on the internet alongside
reading lists is simple and economic, facing up to a reality recognised since
the 1960s; ‘the professor is too valuable to become a technician, snapping
the projector on and off. His class time should be spent imparting special
knowledge to his students.’46 Textual learning can be performed by the
student in their own time, making it possible to use the maximum available
staff time for interaction.
2. There is evidence supporting the notion that ‘statements by teachers, rather
than questions, lead to a higher cognitive level of student response’. The
lecture theatre is an excellent venue for making statements. Interviews
with staff and students tend to reveal that they believe positive feedback
and encouragement stimulates discussion and debate, but the evidence in
support is mixed.47 One of the remarkable features of education at Paris II
was that a large number of high quality student lead discussion groups;
if we don’t help them the students learn to help themselves. It would be
a bold experiment to remove support, to stop taking questions, to end
tutorials and written feedback, and leave the students to challenge what
they are being told in the informal spaces where most effective learning
occurs.48
Both of these alternatives are more cost-effective than the current hybrid, not
least due to a reduction of staff time spent reading from a script, and encourage
the learner to develop skills of independent inquiry. They are also unlikely to
be popular with students, who should be reminded that sooner or later when
learning to ride a bike you have to take the stabilisers off; the revolution is over,
the state is more than stable enough, and we need lawyers prepared to question
what they are being told.
The implications of how we physically institutionalise law are not limited to
student pedagogy. Do the courts we use induce communication apprehension in
witnesses for a criminal trial? Will holding creditor meetings for an insolvent firm
in the courthouse lead to different commercial outcomes than if we hold them
in hotel conference rooms? What about if the administrator wears a formal robe?
Are lawyers trained in one type of space better suited to certain types of legal
task: lecture theatre lawyers for human rights, or Socratic lawyers for commercial
arbitration, or vice versa? It is important to be clear that there are likely to be tasks
for which the magistral lawyer is better suited! If the law is a tool to achieve targeted
outcomes, then the places where law is enacted are as much a part of the law as the
words from which it is formed. Those seeking to correct unwanted outcomes must
look beyond the letter of the law into the spaces where it comes to life.
notes
1 ‘During the Revolution people were much more interested in using the legislation as
a means of social engineering.’ Jean-Louis Halperin, The French Civil Code, trans. Tony
Weir (Oxon, 2006), p. 2.
2 ‘The objectives of social improvement and social control had to be taken into
consideration when laying out ground-plans and dividing up space. There was already
on inkling of the twentieth century notion of the architect as a social engineer.’ James
A. Leith, Space and Revolution: Projects for Monuments, Squares, and Public Buildings in
France 1789–1799 (Québec, 1991), p. 16.
3 Anthony Vidler, Claude-Nicolas Ledoux: Architecture and Social Reform at the End of the
Ancien Régime (London, 1990), p. 135, citing Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, L’architecture
considérée sous le rapport de l’art, des moeurs et de la legislation (Paris, 1804), p. 3.
4 See Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution 1789–1848 (London, 2008), pp. 115 and 117.
5 Ibid., pp. 73–4.
6 Leith, Space and Revolution, p. 308, p. 53.
7 Paul Johnson, Napoleon (London, 2003), p. 110.
8 Allan Braham, The Architecture of the French Enlightenment (London, 1980), p. 252,
quoting Jacques-Louis David.
9 Anthony Vidler, Claude-Nicolas Ledoux: Architecture and Social Reform at the End of the
Ancien Régime (London, 1990), pp. 373–4.
10 Leith, Space and Revolution, pp. 305 and 308.
11 Johnson, Napoleon, p. 16.
12 Jean-Louis Halperin, The French Civil Code, trans. Tony Weir (Oxon, 2006), p. 19.
13 Johnson, Napoleon, p. 31.
14 Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution, p. 98.
15 Allan Braham, The Architecture of the French Enlightenment (London, 1980), p. 210.
16 Max Gallo, The Sun of Austerlitz, trans. William Hobson (London, 2004), p. 5.
17 Braham, Architecture of the French Enlightenment, p. 256.
18 Gallo, The Immortal of St Helena, title page, quoting Napoleon at St Helena in the
Memorial.
19 Halperin, The French Civil Code, p. 9.
20 Katherine Fischer Taylor, In the Theater of Criminal Justice: The Palais de Justice in
Second Empire Paris (Princeton NJ, 1993), pp. 69–70.
21 Fischer Taylor, In the Theater of Criminal Justice, p. 13.
22 Ibid., pp. 11–12.
23 Ibid., p. 12.
24 Ibid., p. 12.
25 Ibid., p. 33.
26 Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution, p. 80.
27 Fischer-Taylor, In the Theater of Criminal Justice, p. 27.
(London, 1991), pp. 35–6.
30 Foucault, Discipline and Punish, p. 41, referencing Ayrault, LIII, chapters LXXII and LXIX.
32 Richard Harbinger, ‘Trial by Drama’, 55/3, Judicature (Oct 1971): 122.
34 Ibid., pp. 10–11.
35 Ibid., p. 6.
36 Foucault, Discipline and Punish, p. 35.
37 Leith, Space and Revolution, pp. 22, 43.
39 It is worth noting, as an example of the continuing pressures towards increasing
class sizes, that [when I started my LLB] in 2004 the maximum size of tutorials was six
students, not eight.
40 Candy and Crebert, p. 577.
41 P.C. Candy and R.G. Crebert, ‘Ivory Tower to Concrete Jungle: The Difficult Transition
from the Academy to the Workplace as Learning Environments’, The Journal of Higher
Education, 62 (1991): 570, 572.
42 Claudia E. Nunn, ‘Discussion in the College Classroom: Triangulating Observational and
Survey Results’, The Journal of Higher Education, 67 (1996): 243–66, esp. 243.
43 McCorskey and McVetta, ‘Classroom Seating Arrangements: Instructional
Communication Theory versus Student Preferences’, Communication Education 27
(March 1978): 570–92.
44 Ibid., p. 110.
45 Nunn, Discussions in the College Classroom, p. 245.
46 Warren L. Hickman, ‘Campus Construction for Academic Survival: The Importance of
the Curriculum in the College Building Program’, The Journal of Higher Education, 6
(1965): 322–30, esp. 327.
47 Nunn, Discussions in the College Classroom, pp. 246, 258–9.
48 Candy and Crebert, Ivory Tower to Concrete Jungle, p. 573.
7
Virtual Courts and Putting ‘Summary’ back into
‘Summary Justice’: Merely Brief, or Unjust?
Emma Rowden
Introduction
The use of videolinks in courts is often heralded as the beginnings of so-called

‘virtual’ courts, as evident in a recent pilot undertaken in the United Kingdom.
While the option to participate in courtroom hearings from remote locations via
videolink has been available in many countries for over two decades, the overall
effects of this change in procedure on the experience of justice remains relatively
unknown. This chapter will argue that existing practices of participating in
court processes from a remote location risk proceedings being perceived as
procedurally unjust as fundamental aspects of the judicial process are potentially
undermined by current ‘virtual’ – or what might more aptly be termed ‘distributed’ –
courts.
Widespread remote participation in court processes is occurring internationally,
often justified through a mix of pragmatic and ethical rationales. Reducing the
need for transport which is costly and degrades the environment, improving
access to justice for people living in remote areas, attempting to reduce the
trauma associated with giving evidence for child and vulnerable witnesses,
minimising security risks associated with moving those on remand, enabling
access to experts who would otherwise be unavailable – all have been put forward
to suggest that videolinks will help create a more efficient and effective justice
system.1 It is generally accepted that the use of videolink technology within the
adversarial system has the potential to redress some imbalances, and to improve
overall access to justice. However, I argue that the way videolink technology is
currently implemented in many jurisdictions – as typified in the Virtual Court
pilot discussed below – reveals that the important role of the built environment
in supporting successful court processes is grossly underestimated.2 The chapter
ends by discussing alternative ways to conceptualise the role of environmental
design within the trend towards what I term ‘remote court participation’, in order
to address some of these concerns.
The Virtual Court Pilot
In May 2009, Justice Secretary Jack Straw announced the arrival of the ‘Virtual
Court’ in the United Kingdom. Established as a pilot, the first instance linked
Charing Cross Police Station with Camberwell Green Magistrates’ Court in South
London, and was proposed in order to speed up the processing of minor offences.3
Cases under the new system would be heard within hours of the defendant being
charged, and a plea of guilty could see sentencing handed down on the same day,
all without needing to leave the police station where the person was first taken
into custody. Initially a voluntary programme requiring informed consent from
the defendant; the pilot became compulsory for all first hearings ‘within certain
parameters and conditions’.4 Such moves prompt important questions such as: if
a person appearing before a Magistrate in the UK Virtual Court Pilot does not ever
physically encounter a courtroom, but only the inside of a police station, is it a
problem?
It was obviously important for the Ministry of Justice to prove that the Virtual
Court pilot would have no detrimental impact upon the quality of court procedure.
According to the official press release from the Ministry of Justice:
Virtual Courts are exciting as they have the potential to transform how the justice
system deals with crimes. Cases will be resolved more quickly, improving the
service given to victims, witnesses and defendants, and justice will be faster and
more efficient, without any loss of quality.5
The projected cost savings were not insubstantial.6 However, one wonders whether
people who have appeared in court under this new system would agree with the
Ministry’s claims of no ‘loss of quality’. The implicit assumption underlying this
rhetoric is that videoconferencing technology is benign and neutral, and can be
easily inserted into existing conditions and used without significantly altering the
nature of the experience.
Growing Concerns
It would appear that the assumptions the Ministry of Justice made equating speed
with an improved service were not shared by those subject to the new system.
Within the first weeks of the pilot going live, there was a large amount of criticism
levelled at the Virtual Court pilot by lawyers representing their clients under this
new procedure:7
… solicitor Robin Murray said the system placed lawyers in the impossible
position of having to choose between being in court to defend their client
or being with them at the police station. He also told the BBC that it left the
defendant isolated. ‘He won’t be able to see his family and friends who normally
would turn up for a court hearing if they wanted to support him,’ Mr Murray said.
‘I think it is an isolating feature – the fact that you are almost taking part in a
remote video game. It rather depersonalises the whole process.’8
Virtual Courts and Putting ‘Summary’ back into ‘Summary Justice’ 103
Roger Smith, Director of legal human rights organisation Justice, expressed

concerns that virtual courts could undermine the gravitas of judicial proceedings,
commenting:
… I have concerns about it being used to sentence somebody. Being summoned

before a TV screen is not the same as being summoned before a court … Being
arrested, taken to a police station and then on to court is a shaming process. It
is an extremely unpleasant experience to stand in a dock and be told by a judge
that you’re going to receive a sentence. There is a danger that this process would
be debased by being made to look like a reality TV game.9
Eighteen months after the pilot was initiated, criticism from the legal profession
continued unabated, with one solicitor calling the pilot the ‘Facebook of the
criminal justice system’ emphasising the difficulties in establishing empathy over
the link and the practical problems in achieving effective advocacy for clients.10
Concerns raised include the difficulties posed when the lawyer’s experience of
defending their client is fundamentally altered. With transmission of body language
and non-verbal cues less effective over the link, defence lawyers are faced with an
‘invidious choice’, having to opt either for the ability to have quiet asides with their
client, or the advantage of being face-to-face with the Magistrate.11 More recent
commentary questions the ability of virtual courts to adequately create trust and
confidence in the criminal justice system given the clear disadvantages that the
pilot imposes on the defendant and their counsel.12
The idea that the Virtual Court is potentially unfair towards the remote defendant
was picked up by the recently published official evaluation of the pilot.13 The
evaluation identified that the physical separation of defendants (and sometimes
their solicitors) made it harder for communication before and during hearings,
raising some concerns for practitioners. Furthermore, the report found that some
judicial officers found it more difficult to impose their authority ‘remotely’, and:
‘perceived that defendants took the process less seriously than they would if they
appeared in person.’14 Recently expressed concerns hinted that many defendants
who appeared under this system were confused and uncertain about what exactly
it was that they were taking part in. In the words of one UK lawyer describing the
experience of some of their clients: ‘a couple of them haven’t even realised that
they’re in court at all; they just haven’t taken it in.’15
Economic questions aside, the key question now facing the Ministry of Justice is
how many of the above concerns can be ironed out and addressed by changes to
the way in which the pilot has been designed and operates, and what aspects, if any,
are perceived to be inherent to remote participation, and potentially unresolvable?
For instance, one reason for the criticism of virtual courts as ‘isolating’ is that the
technology at present is only focused on conveying official court business. Contact
with ‘family and friends’, as simple as an encouraging smile or nod, are significant
social interactions that the court as a public setting affords, but which are not
necessarily a high priority for court administrators consumed with providing an
efficient and expedient system for handling a busy Magistrate’s caseload. The
opportunity for dialogue between others involved in the process is also missed,
as unplanned encounters in lifts, corridors and waiting areas, where money saving
negotiations can take place, are lost.16 While it is clear that concerns such as these
might be addressed with improved design of videolinks to encompass a wider
range of verbal and nonverbal communication and more interactions between
different types of participants, associations with an experience that is unreal,
‘depersonalised’ and like a video game – are perhaps less easily reconciled.
Virtual – or Merely Dispersed?
In some ways the tag ‘virtual court’ that has been ascribed to the pilot seems to
be a misnomer. This procedure is not substantially different from how a court
that currently uses videolinks might operate and hardly involves the immersive
avatar-filled cyber-environments that the term virtual court might imply. Perhaps
apprehensions expressed about virtual courts have more to do with the term
‘virtual’ itself. In many ways – perhaps mistakenly – the virtual is seen as tightly
linked to the relatively recent advances in computer technology, yet as many
authors point out, the virtual as a concept is really nothing new.17 The ubiquitous
acts of writing, reading, or looking in a mirror have all variously been described as
ways in which virtual spaces have long been a part of our embodied existence. By
contrast, the terms virtual reality and virtual environments emerged recently, and
are closely tied to the computer technologies that allow them to occur.18
Virtual, by definition, seems inevitably to connote lack. Our associations with
the word are such that when we describe something as ‘virtual’, it seems to involve
a level of trickery in regards to perception, or, that while the end result may be the
same there was something different or lost in the process. Some have argued that
when speaking of the virtual in its current application to describe technologically
mediated communications distinctions between the terms real, actual and virtual
need to be made, and that we need to create a clearer understanding about the
relationships between them.19 For most people, the real is strongly associated with
concreteness, tangibility and reliability, whereas the virtual is seen as insubstantial,
intangible and unreliable. However, the actual (concrete) and the virtual
(insubstantial) can both be real and constitute a person’s reality. As such, the virtual
in this context, needs to be seen as being opposite to ‘actual’ (concrete) rather
than ‘real’. Perhaps until the term ‘virtual’ reaches this semantic shift, and shakes
itself from associations with fiction (the simulated, the fake, and the unreal), the
term virtual court will always imply something is lacking, and infer unauthenticity.
Perhaps in some ways the term ‘distributed court’ is more apt to describe what
is actually achieved both in the United Kingdom pilot, and in other so-named
operational ‘virtual courts’, to avoid these unwanted associations.20
In order for a virtual – or distributed – court to work effectively, a level of
trust in the mechanism by which justice is dispensed and a confidence that all
participants are being treated equally and with respect, whether appearing in
person or remotely, needs to be established. Associations with fiction then may
be seen to undermine the role of the court as a symbolic entity, and may in turn
unsettle its authority. Authenticity implies legitimacy, and establishing legitimate

authority is of critical importance to generate public trust that court processes are
fair and just.21 Feelings of remoteness and alienation, coupled with difficulties in
communication and engagement between participants described by critics of the
United Kingdom’s pilot would seem to foster distrust, rather than a belief in the
legitimacy of the authority of the court.
New Ways of Understanding the Impact of Remote Participation
The widespread use of videoconferencing technology has facilitated a major shift

in what we see as the boundary of the physical court and the place for conducting
legal procedure, mirroring more closely our experience of ‘court’ not as a single,
discrete object or process, but as a ‘multi-faceted entity’.22 Courts, it may be said,
operate simultaneously on a symbolic, a structural and an embodied level, and
in combination they contribute to our collective notions of justice.23 They are
experienced by the citizen as the locus of law, by the members of the courtroom as
a communally performed ritual, and individually as a participant with a specific role
to perform (as witness, defendant, lawyer, judge, as court officer, as jury member,
or as a representative of the press or of the public, family or friends of the parties
and so forth).
An initial analysis would suggest that there are significant implications that
the current use of videolink technology has on all three levels of experiencing the
court. The question we then need to ask is does the adoption of technology in
this way improve things? And to obtain an adequate answer, we really need to
ask the question in different ways: how has the introduction of video mediated
communication altered the experience of being a participant and can each
participant adequately perform their role in court? Can the participants still
understand the social context and the court rituals in which they are partaking?
And does widespread use of video-mediated communications in this way affect
our collective understanding of the symbolic function of the court within society?
7.1 Remote Court

Participation, and
the shift from the
court operating
on a single site,
to multiple sites,
significantly alters
the structural
dynamic of court
interactions
(drawn by author)
There are a number of issues raised in the Virtual Court pilot discourse with
regards to what is perceived to happen when a court process is altered by the use
of video-mediated communication. Firstly, the technology allows for a splitting of
place – the highly-structured performance setting of the court is now effectively
operating simultaneously in two discrete locations: the courtroom in the
courthouse, and the remote room which in this instance is in a police station. From
an architectural perspective, a major concern with current videolinks is that the
environment remote participants find themselves in is often at odds with that of
the courtroom itself. Remote participation spaces are often described as extensions
of the courtroom – and yet, more often than not, the places in which remote
participants are located are small, windowless, bland, with only a chair and the
video-technology itself; and it would seem the virtual court pilot is no exception.
Perhaps if the design of the remote space achieved a similar sense of import and
dignity evident in a courtroom, the sense of gravitas might not be as muddied, nor
the sense of ‘unreality’ as sharp, as when court proceedings are perceived through
the frame of an anonymous remote space. Linda Mulcahy further questions the
lack of attention paid to spaces in which remote participants are linked to court,
stating: ‘the importance of architecture and design is marginalized if not completely
denied’.24 In one study that included opinions of remote participants about the
environment in which they participated, 27 per cent disliked the videolink room,
most often likening it to a box or a cupboard.25
An interesting feature of the discourse to date is the way that communication
technologies allowing remote participation in court processes are being conceived
of, and discussed. Audio-visual technology is often revealed as merely another
tool but not as something that is an integral or active part of the interaction
itself. This is a view contrary to recent work undertaken by Actor-Network and
assemblage theorists who re-conceptualise the interaction between human and
nonhuman actants, attempting to dismantle previous notions of nonhuman parts
of the assemblage as passive or inactive.26 According to Actor-Network Theory,
videoconferencing technology – with its cameras, screens and audio-visual
equipment – as nonhuman elements have a capacity equal to humans to influence
the nature of connections, meanings and processes. In light of these perspectives,
two recent studies stand out as identifying potential ways forward in the analysis of
the effects of communication technologies on court processes and the role of the
built environment in the enactment of justice.
Lanzara and Patriotta examined six courtrooms that piloted the use of
video-cassette recorders (VCR) to document proceedings as a supplement to
transcription, seeking to understand the impact of introducing this technology
on the behavioural response of courtroom actors.27 They viewed these videotaped
court proceedings through the lens of assemblage theories that conceived of the
activities of the courtroom as a kind of knowledge-creation, whereby knowledge
is always performed and negotiated.28 Lanzara and Patriotta found that judges
and other relevant actors had to redesign their habitual routines, which abruptly
displaced them from established ways of thinking and acting in the court.29 In
order to create a successful record of the event on the VCR, the judicial officers
needed ‘to develop the kind of sensitivity and skill that belongs to a film-maker
rather than a man of law’.30 Lanzara and Patriotta noted that some were better than
others at adjusting to the new media, suggesting that where the VCR was ignored
or where experimentation was inadequate, matching the real and recorded events
were rarely an issue, compared to when there were no interruptions nor detection
and correction of errors during the recording process, the quality of the video as
a result was very low.31 When these interventions were successful and an accurate
VCR recording was achieved, however, they were identified by the researchers as
instances of making and remaking organisational knowledge in the courtroom
setting.32
Most relevant for the study of videolink use in courts, Lanzara and Patriotta
highlight the effects of the screen and cameras in terms of its capacity to make
explicit the fabricated nature of the trial, as an event ‘fashioned by and within a
medium’.33 For them, the VCR disrupts traditional practices and challenges the
existential fixedness of the scene.34 By describing the activities of the courtroom
as an assemblage, Lanzara and Patriotta enable a different perspective on the
insertion of new technologies – the VCR, cameras and screens – into the existing
phenomenology and everyday practices of the court. This approach is useful as
it provokes a rethinking of how those parts problematise existing relationships
and activities in the performance of justice, which – rather than being fixed, pre-
determined and certain, are exposed as already contingent, performative and
emergent. Ultimately, such a perspective is dependant on how the technology
itself is viewed – not as an inert and unbiased medium through which justice is
enacted (as it ever was), but as actively transforming the court’s performance of
justice-in-the-making.
Such a perspective of new communication technologies is not, however,
common amongst court regulars. In Christian Licoppe and Laurence Dumoulin’s
research for instance, they observed the way in which the court participants of
their study considered videoconferencing as ‘relatively transparent with respect to
courtroom interaction’, commenting that:
… interviewees repeatedly claimed that as long as the audio and video technology
was working, and that the participants could see and hear one another through
the screen, manage next-speaker selection, and ask questions that elicit relevant
answers, judicial business could proceed as usual – irrespective of how strange the
scene of distributed hearing might appear to courtroom professionals.35
The reported views of their participants – that the technology is unproblematic

– are refuted by Licoppe and Dumoulin, who state that: ‘communication
technology is not transparent. It makes a difference’.36 This is a conclusion
reached by the researchers after a careful analysis of a particular instance of
a distributed, videolinked hearing, where the familiar ritualistic opening of:
‘[T]he hearing is now open. [Y]ou may be seated,’ was unceremoniously
omitted.37 Its absence went – rather surprisingly – unnoticed by participants,
so much so that in posthearing interviews, even when confronted with the
videorecording of the hearing in question, participants failed to identify
anything as different or amiss unless heavily prompted by the researchers.38 In

their analysis, Licoppe and Dumoulin revealed that the task of the opening line, to
signal to all participants that the hearing itself had started – was being achieved
by other means. A ‘roll call’ of relevant participants performed at the beginning
of the videolink by the judge functioned in a similar way to the conventional
opening statement in the discrete court setting – so much so that to utter it at
the point where it would have seemed appropriate to do so, would achieve little
more than what verbal and nonverbal resources had already accomplished.39
For Licoppe and Dumoulin, then, technology makes a difference ‘as it is part
of a network of social and material, linguistic and non-linguistic agencies,
which shapes the activity setting and the relevance and force of the linguistic
performances occurring within it’.40 The utility of certain phrases, under the new
videolinked court regime, render them no longer useful, so they are dropped
without comment.
Communication technologies in the courtroom are not conceived of here as
a transparent force, but a transformative one. Such readings compel us to pose
the following questions: are we aware of how the use of these technologies
transforms the interactions taking place? Do we think these changes are positive
and lead to fair proceedings? And if not, how might other parts of the network
be manipulated or employed to enable the performance of hearings and trials
that are procedurally fair? I argue that the built environment – as nonhuman
parts of the network, or, as integral components of the assemblage – need to be
viewed as having a similar capacity as the inserted communication technologies
to influence perceptions of procedural fairness in both distributed and discrete
court proceedings. As such, more attention needs to be paid to the effects of
changing the environment of remote court participants. The advantage of
Actor-Network and Assemblage theories for this task is that they not only try to
account for the influence of nonhuman entities – in this context, both the built
environment and audio-visual technologies – but that they account for them in
a non-deterministic way.41
Conclusions
Inserting audio-visual technology into the courtroom involves disrupting long-

established and complex social and physical relationships. In some instances,
such as for vulnerable or child witnesses, it has been well documented as a
positive disruption, for others, unless there is serious consideration as to what
these disruptions imply, it is possible that this results in a step backwards.
Seemingly trivial decisions such as the location and décor of a remote room,
the size of the screen, the angle of a camera and the position of a participant,
may nonetheless prove to be critically important to perceptions of fairness.
Particularly, the important role of the built environment to provide social
information, by way of ‘behavioural cues’ has been overlooked in the design of
remote court environments.42 An unstudied approach to the design of remote
court spaces and the insertion of audio-visual technologies into existing

courtrooms that does not take into account these subtle but accumulative ways
in which video-mediation alters the dynamics of the interactions taking place
and the individual’s experience of court, then ‘no loss of quality’ may well be
impossible to achieve.43
The court is not then, a transparent space in which adjudication happens and
in which form does not impact upon either process or outcome. Court spaces are
not only an intrinsic part of the enactment of justice being done and ‘being seen
to be done’, but they can also be seen as a reflection of the socio-political context.
By simple shifts of place, location or ornamentation, a person’s position within
the space can transform them from the margins to being at the centre of the
action taking place, it can enlarge or curtail their voice and it can convey respect
and dignify a person, or alternatively, degrade them. As Pierre Bourdieu claims:
‘… the feeling of injustice or the ability to perceive an experience as unjust is not
distributed in a uniform way; it depends closely upon the position one occupies
in the social space’.44 As such, any account of spatial changes to court practices
must take into account the diversity of perspectives from within the social space.
If we are focused on analysing the impact of altering the setting of the court
on perceptions of justice and procedural fairness – a key question we need to
ask before we proceed is: how can we adequately capture the myriad ways in
which the setting of the court can influence the way the court is perceived by
the individual, by the group and by society as a whole? How can we view the
court in a way that encompasses the courtroom acting as a performative space,
the hearing as a symbolic event, or the way in which the court space can help to
define roles, mark boundaries and transform status?
The Virtual Courts pilot was portrayed at the time of its implementation by
the Chair of the London Criminal Justice Board as a major advance in court
procedure, helping face the challenge to put ‘summary’ back into ‘summary
justice’.45 The major risk, however, is that brevity might be sought at the expense
of fairness, and that the right to a fair process – inherent in the true legal use
of the term ‘summary justice’ – may in fact be subverted by the bureaucracy’s
attempt to save time and money. While such issues are perhaps more acutely felt
in the context of lower courts with their high volume caseloads, such questions
are pertinent for remote participation throughout the judicial system. How we
measure whether remote participation is occurring in a satisfactory manner is
important, and needs to engage with the complex ways in which we relate to
our courtrooms and courthouses, and the actions that take place within them.
Clearly, in some instances, the ability to participate in court processes remotely
has redressed pre-existing imbalances within the system – such as its use for
vulnerable and child witnesses to give evidence – and its use has no doubt
eased the trauma of court participation for many people in these groups.46
But while ‘access to justice’ is often cited as the key reason for implementing
videoconferencing technology and promoting the concept of virtual courts,
real access to justice will only be achieved when remote participation does not
equate to diminished participation.
notes
This research was funded by the Australian Research Council Linkage Project Gateways to
Justice: Improving Video-mediated Communications for Justice Participants (2008–2010).
1 Joyce Plotnikoff and Richard Woolfson, Preliminary Hearings: Video Links Evaluation
of Pilot Projects (London: The Home Office, 1999), pp. 54–8; Plotnikoff and Woolfson,
Evaluation of Video Link Pilot at Manchester Crown Court (London: The Home Office,
2000), pp. 47–8; Michael D. Roth, ‘Laissez-faire Videoconferencing: Remote Witness
Testimony and Adversarial Truth’, UCLA Law Review, 48/1 (2000–2001): 190–91; Anne
Wallace, ‘Virtual Justice in the Bush: The use of court technology in remote and
regional Australia’, Paper presented at the 3rd Conference on Law & Technology,
Malaysia (11–12 November 2008); EU Council Working Party on e-Justice, Guide on
Videoconferencing in Cross-border Proceedings (Brussels: Council of the European Union,
2009); Reid Howie Associates, Vulnerable and Intimidated Witnesses: Review of Provisions
in Other Jurisdictions (Edinburgh: Scottish Executive Central Research Unit, 2002),
accessed 12/11/09: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2002/07/14989/8012;
Anne Wallace and Emma Rowden, ‘Gateways to Justice: The use of videoconferencing
technology to take evidence in Australian courts’, Proceedings of the 9th European
Conference on eGovernment (London, 2009); Adam Brett and Lawrence Blumberg,
‘Video-linked court liaison services: forging new frontiers in psychiatry in Western
Australia’, Australasian Psychiatry, 14/1 (2006). In Australia it has even been suggested
that videolinks may save lives. See: Nicholas Perpitch, ‘Bail videolink could have saved
life’, The Australian, 15 June 2009, 4; Coroner’s Court of WA, Inquest into the Death of Mr
Ward (File No 8008/08), no. 70–71 (2008).
2 It is generally accepted that use of videolinks has improved the quality of justice by
providing access to evidence that would otherwise be unavailable. In a recent study,
39 per cent of young witnesses interviewed would not have given evidence at all,
had remote participation not been available. Plotnikoff and Woolfson, Measuring Up?
Evaluating Implementation of Government Commitments to Young Witnesses in Criminal
Proceedings (London: NSPCC, 2009), p. 9.
3 BBC News, ‘London hosts first virtual court’ (27 May 2009). Minor offences can result in
a two year prison term.
4 Ministry of Justice (UK), News Release: Jack Straw: New Virtual Courts Launched and
Intensive Community Payback Extended (12 May 2009); Catherine Baksi, ‘Solicitors Raise
Confidentiality Concerns in Virtual Court Pilot’, The Law Gazette (24 September 2009).
As at 16 December 2009, the pilot became compulsory in all pilot areas. Baksi, ‘Chaos
Predicted Over Virtual Court Pilot’. The Law Gazette (16 December 2009); Criminal
Justice Board (UK), The Virtual Court [promotional DVD] (undated, c. 2008); Rowden,
Wallace, and Goodman-Delahunty, ‘Sentencing by videolink: Up in the Air?’, Criminal
Law Journal, 34/6 (2010): 366.
5 Ministry of Justice (UK), News Release.
6 Prior to the establishment of the pilot, it was estimated that the change in procedure
could deliver benefits in excess of £10 million a year if rolled-out nationwide. See:
Ministry of Justice (UK) News Release. The official evaluation of the pilot reveals the
cost-benefit scenario to be overstated. Ministry of Justice (UK), Virtual Court Pilot:
Outcome Evaluation, Ministry of Justice Research Series 21/10 (2010).
7 Baksi, ‘Defence solicitors shun pilots of virtual court’, The Law Gazette (4 June 2009).
8 BBC News, ‘Solicitors boycott virtual courts’, 31 July 2009.
9 Roger Smith, as quoted in the London Evening Standard (2007).
10 Bruce Reid, solicitor advocate quoted in Michael Peel, ‘Jury still out on ‘virtual courts’.
Financial Times, 3 November 2010.
11 Michael Peel, ‘Jury still out’; Rowden, Wallace and Goodman-Delahunty, ‘Sentencing by
videolink’.
12 Frances Ridout, ‘Virtual Courts – Virtual Justice?’, Criminal Law & Justice Weekly 174 (25
September 2010): 603.
13 One of the four main objectives of the Virtual Court Pilot: Outcome Evaluation was
to assess ‘whether the Virtual Court process was no less fair than a traditional court’.
Ministry of Justice (UK), Virtual Court Pilot: Outcome Evaluation, p. iii.
14 Ministry of Justice (UK), Virtual Court Pilot: Outcome Evaluation, p. vi.
15 Bruce Reid speaking on ABC Radio National, ‘Virtual Courts and the Technological
Revolution’, The Law Report, Broadcast 12 April 2011. Reid further explained of his
clients’ difficulties in understanding the Virtual Court process: ‘I would estimate at least
ten per cent of my clients have mental health difficulties, and at least another 20 per
cent will be recovering from overindulgence in alcohol, or withdrawing from various
forms of narcotics, drugs and sometimes both.’
16 Julienne Hanson, ‘The architecture of justice: iconography and space configuration in
the English law court building’ arq: Architectural Research Quarterly, 1/04 (1996): 59.
17 Elizabeth Grosz, Architecture From the Outside: Essays on Virtual and Real Space
(Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2001), p. 79; Ali Yakhlef, ‘We Have Always Been Virtual:
Writing, Institutions, and Technology!’, Space and Culture, 12/1 (2009).
18 The term virtual, as it is applied to computing, emerged according to the Oxford
English Dictionary around 1959, and in relation to virtual reality, around 1987. See:
OED definition of ‘virtual’ adj. (and n.) Second edition, 1989; online version November
2010. Accessed 3/01/11: http://www.oed.com:80/Entry/223829. Earlier version first
published in New English Dictionary, 1917; Yakhlef, ‘We Have Always Been Virtual’, p. 81.
19 Edward Castronova, Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games
(Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2006), pp. 285–94; Rob Shields, The Virtual (New
York: Routledge, 2003), pp. 34–5.
20 The term distributed court is preferred over ‘virtual court’ as it implies the distribution
of the court space over several locations, without the implied ‘insubstantial’ or
‘fake’ connotations of the term ‘virtual’. While I came to the term distributed court
independently, it seems that the phrase has already gained currency in academic
circles. For instance, a variation of the term was applied recently in a French study
of videoconferencing use in courts to describe a ‘distributed hearing (see Christian
Licoppe and Laurence Dumoulin, ‘The “Curious Case” of an Unspoken Opening Speech
Act: A Video-Ethnography of the Use of Video Communication in Courtroom Activities’,
Research on Language & Social Interaction, 43/3 (2010): 211–31, and the phrase
‘distributed courts of law’ appears on Professor Licoppe’s research website). My use
of the term refers to the phrase adopted by Sherry Turkle from marketing discourse
‘distributed presence’, or how one can be ‘in several contexts at the same time’, in
Anne Friedberg, The Virtual Window: From Alberti to Microsoft (Cambridge MA: MIT
Press, 2006), p. 235. ‘Distributed presence’ also appears in William J. Mitchell, Me++:
The Cyborg Self and the Networked City (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2003), pp. 143–241.
A term that might also be used is ‘dispersed space’, see Kazys Varnelis and Anne
Friedberg, ‘Place: The Networking of Public Space’, in Networked Publics, ed. Varnelis
(Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2008), pp. 15–42. In my definition, the distributed court
has one sitting judge, as distinct from the example given in the Australian Family Law
Act that defines a court constituted by two or more judges sitting at the same time
but in different places linked by audio-visual technologies as a ‘split court’, stating: ‘for
the purposes of determining which law to apply in proceedings in which a split court
is sitting, the Court is taken to be sitting at the place at which the presiding Judge is
sitting.’ Family Law Act (1975), s27/3.
21 Kim Dovey, Becoming Places (London; New York: Routledge, 2010), p. 125.
22 Stephen Parker, Courts and The Public (Melbourne: Australian Institute of Judicial
Administration Incorporated, 1998), p. 23.
23 For a similar description of the tripartite nature in which we encounter architecture see
Thomas A. Markus, Buildings and Power: Freedom and Control in the Origin of Modern
Building Types (London: Routledge, 1993), pp. 21–2.
24 Linda Mulcahy, ‘The Unbearable Lightness of Being? Shifts Towards the Virtual Trial’,
Journal of Law and Society, 35/4 (2008): 480.
25 Plotnikoff and Woolfson, In Their Own Words: The Experiences of 50 Young Witnesses in
Criminal Proceedings (London, 2004), p. 38.
26 Jonathan Murdoch, ‘Inhuman/nonhuman/human: actor-network theory and prospects
for a nondualistic and symmetrical perspective on nature and society’, Environment
and Planning D: Society and Space, 15 (1997).
27 Giovan Francesco Lanzara and Gerardo Patriotta, ‘Technology and the Courtroom: An
Inquiry into Knowledge Making in Organisations’, Journal of Management Studies, 38/7
(2001): 943.
28 Ibid., pp. 944–6.
29 Ibid., pp. 945–6.
30 Ibid., p. 953.
31 Ibid., p. 954.
32 Ibid., p. 954.
33 Ibid., p. 965.
34 Ibid., p. 965.
35 Licoppe and Dumoulin, ‘The “Curious Case”’, p. 212.
36 Ibid., p. 230.
37 The opening is a judicial convention rather than prescribed by law. However it
also performs two specific functions: it establishes the beginning of the hearing in
question (a performative utterance that marks everything subsequent as legally
relevant), then the second turn ‘you may be seated’ resolves the practical problem
that arose with the judge’s entrance (Licoppe and Dumoulin, ‘The “Curious Case’”,
pp. 214–16).
38 Ibid., p. 227.
39 Ibid., p. 221, 227. Ironically, the ‘roll call’ is uttered as a way of re-establishing the
order that was previously performed by the court space – in essence, ‘the spatial
arrangement of persons and artifacts’, the symbols that indicate roles, hierarchy
and deference – are being performed verbally instead by the judge (Licoppe and
Dumoulin, ‘The “Curious Case’”, p. 219).
40 Ibid., p. 229.
41 Scott McQuire, Personal Communication, 7 August 2011.
42 For further discussion on this point, see: Rowden, Wallace and Goodman-Delahunty,
‘Sentencing by videolink’.
43 A.B. Poulin, ‘Criminal justice and video conferencing technology: The remote
defendant’, Tulane Law Review, 78 (2004): 1089–167.
44 Pierre Bourdieu, ‘The Force of Law: Toward a Sociology of the Juridical Field’, trans. R.
Terdiman, The Hastings Law Journal, 38 (1987): 833.
45 Tim Godwin (Chair, London Criminal Justice Board), in London Criminal Justice Board,
The Virtual Court.
46 No doubt improvements could be made here also. See Mulcahy, ‘The Unbearable
Lightness of Being?’; Wallace and Rowden, ‘Gateways to Justice’.
8
Constitution Hill: Just Space or Space of Justice?
Zarina Patel and Clinton David van der Merwe
It is ‘architecture’ that drives the development of this site [Constitution Hill]:

it will be a place that embodies the Constitution and its possibilities – and
perhaps also its frailties.1
Introduction
South Africa’s post-1994 period of legislative and policy reform has been shaped
by the objective of democratising society with an explicit commitment to
reversing injustices. Theorising and testing the limits and potential of social justice
in a post-apartheid context remains an underexplored area in urban studies.2
Here, we engage with the relationship between the spatial form and symbolism
of Constitution Hill and conceptions of social justice. As urban geographers,
we assume that spatial changes in the urban fabric of the post-apartheid city
landscape cannot be understood purely in physical terms. Whilst addressing a
history of socio-economic exclusion has physical dimensions, ‘becoming a city
that all citizens can feel part of’3 must engage with what it means for citizens
to belong; as well as the values and intentions of the planners and architects
designing spaces for citizens to ‘be’ in. We have argued that spatial change in a
city landscape4 is underpinned by particular motivations and values that inform
the pattern of development and redistribution of resources: human, social,
economic and environmental capital.5 The relationship between spatial change,
accessibility and sustainability are therefore dependent on how discourses of
justice inform design as well as the extent to which society can identify with
these elite-led designs.
We respond to Parnell and Pieterse’s6 claim that the challenge of the post-
apartheid city is one of physically as well as psychologically incorporating
marginalised groups into the city.7 In promoting justice, urban regeneration
projects, including the development of the Constitution Hill precinct, are based
on these objectives.8 Decreasing visitor numbers,9 the under-utilised public space,
and the alienation from the site expressed by neighbouring residents10 indicate
that Constitution Hill is failing to provide a space that socially and psychologically
resonates with the public or even spatially integrates the city. These trends are
contrary to both the development vision for the site, and to the social justice ethos
of the Court. We question the extent to which the re-design, form and function of
Constitution Hill are framed by notions of justice; the accessibility of this framing for
visitors to the site; and the potential this might have for the social and psychological
integration of citizens into transformed urban spaces. These three questions then
lead to conclusions regarding the relationship between the spatial attributes of
design and form in the theorisation of social justice in urban regeneration.
We interviewed visitors to Constitution Hill,11 to assess the extent to which they
were able to identify signifiers of justice in the design of the precinct. Justice and
sustainability were found to have purchase at the policy level, with limited public
resonance, furthermore interviews with architects, social historians and heritage
specialists, with an interest in inner city Johannesburg generally, and Constitution
Hill specifically were held – to assess the extent to which they consider it possible
for justice to be reflected through the physical design, and the effect that this
might have on people using and interacting with such value-driven spaces.
Theorising Social Justice
Understanding the social injustice of apartheid is a straightforward task,12 however,

theorising justice in a post-apartheid context is less clear-cut. Visser identifies
three strands of social justice theory having a key influence on South African
policy.13 Firstly, the policy emphasis on the satisfaction of basic human needs, and
in particular the poorest and most marginalised members in society (‘Rawlsian
Justice’). The prioritisation of the prospects of the least advantaged, with the
rider that there should be no losers, is a central feature of the theory of justice
expounded by John Rawls.14 Whilst South African policy sectors including housing
and the delivery of key basic services have a clear Rawlsian approach, policy areas
such as land restitution are interpreted as adopting a process-based Nozickian
understanding of justice.15
Robert Nozick16 supported the entitlement of persons to benefit from their
‘holdings’, which might have been historical. With the rectification of historically
unjust land transfers then, the second expression of justice interprets the mere
equalisation of resource inputs to be inadequate; redress through positive
discrimination is required to achieve justice (as opposed to equality). The third
key strand relates to a number of forms of empowerment, the development of
a culture of human rights and inclusion of difference as principles enshrined in
the Constitution, and hence pervading all policy, are reminiscent of Iris Marion
Young’s focus on the politics of difference.17
Young therefore shifts the focus from the material and physical effects of
political economy in a cultural direction, where social justice involves ‘equality
among groups who recognize and affirm one another in their specificity’.18 The
extent to which previously marginalised groups are able to feel psychologically
Constitution Hill: Just Space or Space of Justice? 117
and physically integrated into a development would resonate with Young’s

politics of difference approach to justice. In summary, the common concerns that
characterise these approaches include: the distribution of the means of human
well-being; (in) equality; and the structure of society and its institutions.19 Social
Justice is therefore concerned with distribution of resources, power relations and
equitable access to decision-making.
History of Constitution Hill
The development of the 95000m2 Constitution Hill Precinct in the early 1990s,
chosen as the site for the new Constitutional Court, was a unique collaboration
between national, provincial and local government. The call for the development
of the new constitutional court20 saw the Johannesburg Development Agency
(JDA) (within its broader urban regeneration strategy for the City of Johannesburg),
conceptualise and develop the precinct. The symbolic, political and historical
significance of the site has been preserved as a museum and ‘campus for human
rights’ with the Fort, Number 4 (the African Jail) and the women’s prison as national
heritage sites. The women’s prison houses the Commission on Gender Equality,
whilst the Human Rights and Youth Commissions of South Africa are also based
at the precinct. The symbolism of being the site of the highest court of the land is
made more poignant in the context of its historical role in upholding systems of
injustice, and the physical or spatial role the site played in racially dividing the city
and its peoples.
Originally a military garrison, built in 1892 by Paul Kruger’s Boer Republic, the
Old Fort was ultimately a place of surveillance, control and defiance,21 an Afrikaner
garrison against the threat of British access to the gold reefs. The outside of the
Fort was camouflaged as an impenetrable hill, within which secretive activities
were carried out, with the façade and its grand Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek coat
of arms facing inwards. The Fort soon became a jail in 1893 for petty criminals and
traitors to ‘Afrikaanerdom’. In the early 1900s, the Fort became a British bastion and
a place where Afrikaners were humiliated and forced to surrender arms.22 Spaces of
incarceration burgeoned under the British with the building of Section 4 and 5 (the
‘native gaol’) in 1904, and the women’s prison in 1910.23
In 1964, the prison complex became a National Monument which was used to
house criminals and political prisoners until 1987, in contrast to Robben Island,
which was used to incarcerate political prisoners, the Fort held all sorts of people
– political prisoners including Mandela (1958 and 1963) and Gandhi (1906 to
1913), and most political activists opposing the state.24 However, the majority of
people held on the site through the last century were common criminals without
any ‘iconic value’ in the freedom struggle, criminalised under the colonial and
apartheid race laws, including pass offenders, curfew breakers, beer brewers,
and people arrested under the Immorality Act:25 people who in a just society,
would never have been imprisoned.26 The prisoner profile and the injustice of
their incarceration set the scene for the Constitutional rights that the Court now
8.1 Plan indicating location of Constitution Hill (map by Wendy Job)
8.2 Graph indicating declining visitor numbers to Constitution Hill (graph by Clinton van der Merwe)
upholds. R460-million27 was invested in the development of this site to produce

buildings and spaces dedicated to upholding justice, opened on Human Rights
Day, 21 March 2004 by President Thabo Mbeki. The precinct is located northeast
of the CBD of Johannesburg (Fig. 8.1). The high-rise apartment blocks of Hillbrow
constitute a neighbourhood of over one hundred thousand people, ‘most of
whom are immigrants from other parts of Africa’.28 This neighbourhood is currently
served with only one library with twenty seats in it,29 with other public services
being similarly inadequate. Although once prosperous, these neighbourhoods
are now neglected sights of social malaise. Constitution Hill is therefore an island
in a sea of social and economic inequality.
Since its inception, the precinct has had thousands of both local and international
visitors; however numbers have been decreasing (Fig. 8.2). Many reasons account
for this decrease in visitor numbers (as will be discussed below), although experts
flag poor marketing and lack of advertising, as chief causes for this concerning
trend.30
Spaces of Justice?
The focus on a historical site of injustice, and its transformation both in terms
of its ‘practice’ and ‘inhabiting’31 allows for an analysis of space as a medium of
power.32 Constitution Hill is regarded as a site of South Africa’s emancipation, with
the Constitutional Court giving effect to the rights and freedoms of all citizens.
The extent to which the values underpinning justice are reflected at the site are
analysed by: The physical accessibility of Constitution Hill to be a thoroughfare
that would integrate the city as public space for people to use and interact with
on a daily basis, is discussed, and we reflect on the broader planning context that
shapes the distribution of resources that have a direct bearing on the effectiveness
of Constitution Hill as an integrating node.
Power relations
Here we examine the extent to which a narrative of justice is being reflected in

the physical design of the Constitution Hill precinct. The symbolism of cases and
justice performed under a tree, an African expression of justice in action (Fig. 8.3),
is reflected in the architecture of the foyer to the court, with its wire and bead
tree sculptures suspended from the ceiling. This powerful symbol is followed
through and captured in the identity of the court. The walkway through the art
gallery to the Court is a majestic stairwell, the height and openness suggests
transparency, a fundamental constitutional value. The journey to democracy and
freedom is captured in the various art forms that are exhibited to articulate and
represent South Africa’s varied heritage. These art forms were selected from a
range of local artists, not biasing any specific genre, medium or group of artists,
to ensure that the diversity of South African society and histories are reflected.
8.3 View of the Constitutional Court’s Foyer (photo by David Viljoen)
8.4 View of the doors to the Court Building (photo by David Viljoen)
8.5 View of the

human rights
inscribed on
the entrance
wall (photo by
David Viljoen)
The 27 human rights, cornerstones of the Bill of Rights, are carved into the 9-m
timber doors of the Court in sign language, Braille, as well as South Africa’s eleven
official languages (Fig. 8.4).
The basic human rights (Human Dignity, Equality and Freedom) were handwritten
into the concrete (Fig. 8.5) by each of the eleven Constitutional Court Judges
(including Justice Yacoob who is blind), thereby reinforcing the consultative and
public feel of justice as well as embracing the politics of diversity. The decision to
locate the Court in the inner city reflects the dual role of the court – activist and
evangelical.33 The intention was for the Court to be ‘of the people, with the people
and for the people’.34 In designing a Court that is approachable and accessible,
the design team has ensured that they did not use typical state dominating and
power-based architecture. Some architects35 argued that in ensuring that the
Constitutional Court has not taken on the proportions and symbolism of buildings
such as the Reichstadt, they have created a space that lacks in the ‘reverence’ that is
required for the highest Court of the country. The extent to which understandings
of ‘reverence’ are shaped by the pervasiveness of Colonial Victorian architectural
style typical of other state buildings is unclear here.
Nonetheless, Constitution Hill has been described as ‘whimsical’,36 ‘sentimental’,
‘theatrical’,37 ‘a spectacle and a tourist attraction’.38 One architect describes the
space as being ‘contrived’ and ‘over designed’.39 This architect went on to argue
that the mixed postmodern narrative serves to dilute its effectiveness. Striking the
balance then between mechanisms to reflect diversity and confusing the message,
are a clear challenge. The interior design of the Court Chamber embraces several
aspects of South African heritage through the use of cowhides as the upholstery for
8.6 View of
the cow hides
that embellish
the Judges’
bench (photo by
David Viljoen)
the judges’ bench and seats, which reflect African culture and endemic notions of
justice (Fig. 8.6). The bricks that make-up the chamber were taken from dismantling
the previous Awaiting Trial Block. Within the walls of this site’s past oppressive and
hurtful history, people’s pleas are today being heard, their rights protected and
justice served.40
Keeping the old alongside the new is evidenced on the ‘plaza’ where sections of
the Awaiting Trial Block have been preserved to reflect its historical significance. The
remains of the Block have been renamed the ‘Towers of Justice’, ‘reflecting the ying
yang of oppression and freedom’.41 Section 4 is kept in its original form, although
the Awaiting Trial block was removed (to create the Constitutional Square or plaza),
with sections of the Awaiting Trial block’s stairwell being kept as reminders of the
grim past. The women’s prison is now open as a museum reflecting the oppressive
aspects of Apartheid on women.
Intersecting the Court buildings on one side and Section 4 (the Prison) on the
other are the ‘Great African Stairs’, juxtaposing the old oppressive past against the
new Democracy and freedom of the present. Built using the original bricks from
the Awaiting Trial Block, visitors walk through the suffering of people imprisoned
at this site. The tower of the Constitutional Court building can be seen through
the restrictive and entrapping mesh of the solitary confinement. Sections 4 and 5
have been kept in their original form as much as possible, so that the brutality of
prison life is reflected on the walls of cells – through such mediums as the graffiti
of prisoners.
The research found that in an attempt to reflect the diversity of society, the
design (including architecture, use of symbols and function of spaces) reflects
a range of narratives. The approach to the design of Constitution Hill resonates
with Young’s approach to justice, with a focus on the politics of difference being
a central factor shaping design decisions. Here historical, cultural, political,
economic and even difference in relation to disabilities is consciously reflected in
the art and architecture of the site. In comparing Robben Island to Constitution
Hill, Gevisser makes the following observation: ‘this site [Constitution Hill] is more
messy, ambiguous, less clear-cut in terms of the psychic and political terrains it
seems to take us into …’42 The dominant narratives that are reflected include: the
tree; low key architecture, re-use of old materials, the art gallery housing a diverse
range of genres, political struggle, and the use of and marketing of the iconic
political prisoners. Although the objective of the mixed narrative is to ensure
that there are elements that could resonate with all in society, respondents have
identified the lack of a clear story line as a factor distracting the public from the
use of and purpose of the space.
The re-fortification of Constitution Hill
One of the key objectives of the design of the precinct is to ensure the integration
of the city and its citizens. The frontage of the court building suggests that
everyone’s heritage in South Africa is equal by acknowledging (in the various
colours of the flag) all eleven official South African languages. Constitution Square
is open and expansive, indicating that all people have the right to space and
opportunity, simultaneously celebrating diversity. The symbolism of opening up
this historically impenetrable space and providing the public with access to the
highest court of the country is significant. However, despite claims of Constitution
Hill having become an ‘integrated, multipurpose and multidimensional space’43
a visit here reveals a barren space, devoid of any public life. In effect, the site has
not fulfilled the objective of being a ‘place of pilgrimage, the place where you
touch the holy stone of the “South African miracle’’ ’.44
Respondents put forward a number of explanations for the low and decreasing
public interest in the site. Firstly, high levels of crime in South Africa together with
the notorious reputation of the areas adjoining Constitution Hill result in car-
bound middle class South Africans visiting the site only to attend a function or to
bring international visitors. Dirsuweit confirms that the citizens of Johannesburg

fear public spaces as arenas of crime.45 Visitors have a dual purpose of visiting the
court, but also to get a sense – from the safe distance of the ramparts – of life in
inner city Johannesburg.46 Furthermore, for the people living around Constitution
Hill, fear about personal safety prevents them changing their known commuting
patterns. Connectivity and access points into the precinct are not considered to
be serving the needs of pedestrians in the area.47
A significant point raised by architects interviewed is that the South African
public is largely ‘illiterate’ with regards to architecture.48 The architects argued
that visiting Constitution Hill to reflect on the symbolism in the architecture and
the narratives presented is consequently not an area of interest for the majority
of South Africans. ‘If asked to stereotype what the typical South African valued
about their country, seldom will the built environment and urban centres feature
as key identifiers. Natural landscapes, wildlife and open spaces are more likely to
be listed as valued attributes.’49 As one interviewee stated: ‘Of course the public
is architecturally illiterate. Not only is architecture a specialist discipline with
its own history and values, its own forms of knowledge, expensive to train for,
buildings are also the product of design, a highly subjective, creative process.’50
The discussion on ‘architectural literacy’ does however raise questions about the
extent to which the autonomous architect is in touch with the diversity of points
of resonance within a varied public, as well as the responsibility of the architect
to engage with these diverse publics in the design phases.
Whilst the arguments presented by respondents above reflect on factors
affecting the physical accessibility of the site, of significance too is the
psychological access to the site.51 The focus on the historical injustice of this site
is perhaps of diminishing interest and significance to the youth of South Africa,
who share an optimistic future filled with the promise of opportunity from the
hosting of the FIFA Soccer World Cup in 2010.52 For older South Africans who
do still have memories of the Old Fort and who indeed were incarcerated there,
those painful memories and experiences need a different form of healing. The re-
fortification of the site and the failure to psychologically incorporate the public
into this space therefore has as much to do with physical design, as it has to do
with symbolic accessibility and memory.
The fact that Constitution Hill is an elite island surrounded by a sea of
immigrant communities, many of whom do not have legal standing in
Johannesburg, and who were subject to violent xenophobic attacks provides a
further example of non-physical barriers in accessing the site. Observations that
the site serves the interests of the elite, to the exclusion of the poor resonates
with a Rawlsian understanding of (in)justice. The focus on history and redress
with respect to the themes reflected in the museum and art installations, as
well as the principles informing the broader urban regeneration programme
that this precinct falls within, reflect a Nozickian approach to justice. Dirsuweit
and Schattauer characterise urban regeneration projects such as this one
as being shaped by neoliberal strategies that serve to further entrench the
divides between the rich and the poor.53 Dirsuweit describes Johannesburg as
a ‘fortress city’ where urban developments exclude a cross section of classes.54 In

discussing the accessibility of Constitution Hill, it is clear that this site too has
become re-fortified.
Planning Context
Decisions about how resources are allocated must be considered in the context
of the broader planning environment. Here, the planners and architects have an
important role to play in determining the limits and interpretations of justice.
Whilst a number of architects are sympathetic to the need to knit the physical
and social aspects of the city together, the participants argue that ‘a building
is only as good as the client’.55 Whilst an architect described the Court as an
‘architectural masterpiece’, she cautions against the notion of an architect having
agency in shaping the values of society. Instead she highlights that ‘architects
provide services to clients, who commission them and determine what will or will
not be built. … It is all about power and money. The extent to which it reflects
social values is the extent to which (a) those values are well formulated and (b)
those with power and money are prepared to invest in them.’56
The architects all agreed that the vast expenditure of public funds on the
development of the precinct is appropriate and in keeping with the stature of
the Constitutional Court. However, all participants argued that although the
development is based on laudable sentiments and objectives, it fails to integrate
the city, or to shape the values and aspirations of society. One of the architects
argued against attributing a causal relationship between designed space and the
shaping of social values.57 ‘More needs to be invested in the site to make it more
viable and to complete the subsequent phases of the development which have
a greater potential to create and sustain positive public spaces’.58 Simultaneously,
more needs to be invested in the surrounding neighbourhoods to assist the
integration from the outside.59 Gevisser has shown that the people of Hillbrow are
not interested in the values of the Constitution per se, but in ‘how those values
are going to improve their lives’.60 Their experience is one of living in an under-
resourced city, with negative public spaces. A key challenge for the site therefore is
to ‘ensure that it does not fade, that it remains relevant and alive in people’s minds’.61
To remain relevant, he argues, the site must respond to what’s happening
in the society around it rather than ossifying a particular moment of liberation.
Three factors were identified as limiting the potential of Constitution Hill:
criminality, zoning restrictions,62 and lack of an ethic of developing public open
spaces.63 Firstly, concern (and perhaps paranoia) about personal safety and
dealing with crime through the creation of barriers has resulted in ‘South Africa
having more linear meters of fencing than the rest of the world put together’.64
In order for integration to occur, fences must come down, and cannot form the
basis of design. Given this history, innovative ways of increasing accessibility to
the site and transparency regarding its function need to be integrated into the
design, if the site is to function as part of the city.
One of the ways in which accessibility could be enhanced is through the creation
of mixed-use zones. However, the zoning restrictions and land-rights inhibit the
creation of mixed zones. Women who were previously incarcerated in the Women’s
Jail have requested space on the square from which they can sell crafts informally.
Despite the potential of this proposal for re-dress and its tourist potential, this
proposal was turned down by the City Council, as informal trading on the site is
prohibited through the zoning restrictions of bylaws.65 South Africa, unlike Europe,
does not have a tradition of creating open, positive public urban spaces that provide
places where people can interact. The City’s vision for public spaces is restricted to
soft interventions including the development of pavements and lighting, which
alone do not provide a magnet to attract the public. Participants indicated that
activities such as coffee shops, bookshops, exhibitions, sale of local crafts, etc,
would serve to attract public on an ongoing basis, as opposed to exhibitions based
on prison life.66 However, the activities identified for the creation of viable public
spaces will serve to favour and attract middle-class visitors, which could reinforce
the alienation of the neighbouring communities from the site.
In addition, Gevisser raises some pertinent questions: ‘In a place like inner-city
Johannesburg, can public space be secure and accessible at the same time? Can it
be attractive to tourists without being removed from the city by security booms
and white-gloved officials …?’67 This reinforces the need for a holistic strategy that
looks beyond the site (physically, psychologically and symbolically) in its efforts
to address questions of accessibility. One of the architects argued that ‘space
cannot bring parties together … assembly is a political matter.’68 The responsibility
for increasing accessibility and integration cannot be the sole responsibility of
architects, but must be prioritised as part of a bigger strategic plan for the site and
its surrounds involving a range of stakeholders. The discussion on the planning
context reveals the multiple objectives being expressed by architects, clients, the
city authorities and planners’ informing what is possible with regards to the spatial
layout and design of the site. This is juxtaposed with the objective of providing
a space for all citizens to interact, with the reality of having developed public
spaces for elite and South African consumption, to the exclusion of the immigrant
communities surrounding the site.
Conclusion
The relationship between the potential of the site to physically and psychologically
integrate the city at Constitution Hill has been shown to defy a linear causal
progression. The postmodern mix of narratives and symbols is perhaps a reflection
of the lack of commitment at both the levels of policy and practice to any one
theoretical interpretation of justice. This is not to argue that there should be a
single interpretation of justice – how can there be, in a diverse society? Although
Constitution Hill can provide a just space, it cannot serve as an icon of justice, as
justice cannot be embodied in a static entity, it must be practised. It is the practice
of the Court itself therefore that will have a greater potential to shape the values
of society. The vision for Constitution Hill at its inception was to create a space
of emancipation, and to re-dress an unjust history. However, in its actualisation,
it is experienced as a ‘whimsical tourist attraction’, from which neighbouring
communities feel alienated. In the progression from vision to implementation,
the influences of power and money have served to dilute and deflect from the
intentions of the site. The study shows that architects are having to perform
under a number of restrictions that work against shaping developments that can
influence the public’s values, some of which are historical, and others that require
attitudinal shifts within institutions of government (as the client). Whilst the
architectural literacy of the public was identified as a further factor inhibiting the
public’s appreciation of this ‘architectural masterpiece’, the study raises questions
regarding architects understandings of the public(s) they are designing for.
We argue therefore that architects and planners need to take on a more activist
role and greater responsibility for shaping just futures in a post-apartheid context.
Neighbouring communities have been shown to feel excluded from the space –
whilst access points, crime and zoning restrictions play a role in deterring visitors
to Constitution Hill, we argue the inaccessibility of this monument to justice is
both psychological and physical. Theorising justice therefore must engage with
questions dealing with history, memory and aspirations for alternate futures. Given
that politics plays a key role in determining peoples’ engagement with space, the
sustainability of the site rests with developing a detailed understanding of the
values, needs, expectations and aspirations of a diverse public.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to our interviewees. Earlier versions of this chapter were presented at the
Architecture and Justice Conference (University of Lincoln in 2009); the Planning
Africa Conference (Durban, 2010), as well as departmental seminars at the School
of Education, University of the Witwatersrand and the Geography Department at
the University of Sheffield. Funders who have supported these conferences, and
who supported Zarina Patel during her sabbatical from the School of Geography,
Archaeology and Environmental Sciences at the University of Witwatersrand to the
University of Sheffield include: The National Research Foundation, The Carnegie
Corporation of New York, The Oppenheimer Trust and the British Academy. The
University of Witwatersrand, Faculty of Humanities is gratefully acknowledged.
Thanks to Wendy Job (UJ Cartographic Unit) for the map and David Viljoen
(photographs). Any errors or omissions remain our own.
notes
1 M. Gevisser, ‘From the Ruins: The Constitution Hill Project’, Public Culture, 16 (2004):
507–19.
2 D.M. Smith, ‘Social Justice and the (South African) City: Retrospect and Prospect’, South
African Geographical Journal, 86 (2004): 1–6.
3 L. Bremner, ‘Reinventing the Johannesburg Inner City’, Cities, 17/3 (2000): 185–93.
4 Zarina Patel, ‘Understanding environmental change in South African Cities: A
landscape approach’, Transformation, 57 (2005): 24–40 and C.D. van der Merwe and
Z. Patel, ‘Understandings of urban regeneration, heritage and environmental justice at
Constitution Hill, Johannesburg’, Urban Forum, 16 (2005): 244–58.
5 W.J.T. Mitchell (ed.), Landscape and Power (Chicago and London, 1994) and C. Nash,
‘Landscapes’, in P. Cloke, P. Crang and M. Goodwin (eds), Introducing Human Geographies
(London, 1999), pp. 217–25.
6 S. Parnell and E. Pieterse, ‘Developmental Local Government: The Second Wave of post-
apartheid urban reconstruction’, Dark Roast Occasional paper Series No. 1 (Cape Town,
1998).
7 D. Hallows and M. Butler, ‘Power, Poverty and Marginalised Environments: A
conceptual framework’, in D.A. McDonald (ed.), Environmental Justice in South Africa
(Cape Town, 2002).
8 Constitution Hill, Constitution Hill Development Company: Business Plan (2012–2013)
(Johannesburg, 2011).
9 Constitution Hill, interview held at the CH Precinct, Johannesburg, South Africa, June
2009 and Constitution Hill (2011).
10 Gevisser (2004).
11 C.D. van der Merwe and Z. Patel, ‘Understandings of Urban Regeneration, Heritage
and Environmental Justice at Constitution Hill, Johannesburg’, in C.M. Rogerson and
G.E. Visser (eds), Urban Tourism in the Developing World: The South African Experience
(Piscataway NJ, 2007), pp. 293–306.
12 Smith (2004).
13 G.E. Visser, ‘Social justice and post-apartheid development planning: reflections on
moral progress in South Africa’, International Development Planning Review, 26(4)
(2004): 359–76.
14 As cited in Smith (2004).
15 Visser (2004).
16 As cited in Visser (2004).
17 Ibid.
18 As cited in Smith (2004), 2.
19 Smith (2004), 2.
20 Constitution Hill (2011), 2.
21 Gevisser (2004).
22 Ibid.
23 J.R. Shorten, Die Verhaal van Johannesburg (The Story of Johannesburg) (Johannesburg,
1970).
24 Gevisser (2004), 514.
25 In 1949, the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act had previously banned interracial
marriages.
26 Gevisser (2004).
27 £37,313,575.00 in 2012.
28 Gevisser (2004), 517.
29 Ibid., 517.
30 E. Naude, personal communication during a meeting at BLUE IQ, Johannesburg, South
Africa, 27 September 2011.
31 J.M. Jacobs and P. Merriman, ‘Editorial: Practicing Architectures’, Social & Cultural
Geography, 12/3 (2011): 211–22.
32 A. Stanley, ‘Just space or spatial justice? Difference, discourse and environmental
justice’, Local Environment, 14/10 (2009): 999–1014.
33 Gevisser (2004).
34 Ibid., 511.
35 Architect Interview, 10 November 2009.
36 Heritage Specialist Interview, 19 October 2009.
37 Historian Interview, 9 November 2009.
38 Architect Interview, 24 February 2010.
42 Gevisser (2004), 514.
43 JDA (2009).
44 Gevisser (2004), 518.
45 T. Dirsuweit, ‘From Fortress City to Creative City: Developing Culture and the
Information-based Sectors in the Regeneration and Reconstruction of the Greater
Johannesburg Area’, Urban Forum, 10/2 (1999): 183–213.
46 Historian Interview, 9 November 2009.
48 Ibid.
51 Parnell and Pieterse (1998) and Parnell (2005).
53 T. Dirsuweit and F. Schattauer, ‘Fortresses of desire: Melrose Arch and the emergence of
urban tourist spectacles’, Geoforum, 60 (2004): 239–247.
54 Dirsuweit (1999).
55 Architect Interviews, 9 and 10 November 2009.
57 Ibid.

60 Gevisser (2004), 511.
61 Ibid., 512.
65 Heritage Specialist Interview, 9 November 2009.
67 Gevisser (2004), 517.
9
The Architecture and Operation of the
Imperial Chinese Yamen*
Peter Blundell Jones
This investigation began as one of a series of case studies exploring the links
between architecture and ritual, looking at the way meanings are established and
perpetuated through use and custom, with the aim of discovering the extent to
which the process is universal as opposed to specific to period and culture. The
topic of the Chinese yamen or law court was instigated by discovery of Liuhong
Huang’s Complete Book Concerning Happiness and Benevolence published in 1694.1
This detailed account of the role and duties of the seventeenth century Chinese
magistrate, the effective ruler of a provincial city, provides a wealth of information
about the ritual operation of the yamen, his official residence and seat of
government.2 Although we cannot fit Huang’s descriptions to precisely the buildings
and cities in which he operated, the architectural form of the yamen was relatively
standardised. Djang Chu, translator of Huang’s English edition published in 1984,
chose to include a map of Ping Xiang (see Figure 9.1) to show a yamen in its city.3
This shows the city as conventionally viewed from the south, in the ideal feng-
shui position with mountains behind to the north and a river flowing around its
south edge. City wall and gates could hardly be more prominent, and right at the
centre bounded by its rectangular wall is the yamen, presented as a gate and a
couple of halls straddling the centre line or axis,4 with a screen wall in front, and
a connection to the south city gate. This depiction reveals not only the central
axial position and hierarchical importance of the yamen in relation to other public
buildings, but also the way it exists as a city within a city like the Forbidden City
in Beijing, the grand model it imitates. The resemblance is not only spatial and
architectural but political, since the magistrate was the agent of the Emperor, and
in some crucial ways he was regarded as invested with the Emperor’s quasi-divine
power.
In contrast with Chinese temples and palaces, the architectural importance of
yamens seems to have been little recognised. After the collapse of the empire in
1911 many were demolished or converted for other uses, while later under Mao
they were reminders of a defunct and hated regime. Relatively few have survived
9.1 Ping Xiang and its Yamen 1872. Redrawn by author from a traditional
Chinese map reproduced in Huang 1984 as note 1 below
9.2 Left: original Chinese version of Neixiang Yamen as redrawn by Pengjin Liu 1998
Right: Author’s diagram picking out the main spatial progression
The Architecture and Operation of the Imperial Chinese Yamen 133
1. Main gate
2. Paifang (a purely ceremonial timber structure)
3. Screen wall at the other side of the street
4. First court
5. Place to tie up horses
6. Prison
7. Gate of Death
8. Hostel for eminent guests
9. Temples of Earth God (right) and of Yamen God
10. Second gate
11. Principal court
12. Paifang
13. First hall and seat of judgement
14. Liberal departments: Civil Office, Revenue, and Rites
15. Martial departments: Punishment, Military, and Works
16. Gate to second court
17. Second court
18. Magistrate’s seat
19. Intermediate court
20. Gatehouse to residence
21. Third court
22. Third Hall and residence
23. Private garden entered to west of hall
24. East hall for magistrate’s family
25. Revenue Department
26. House of the Guards
27. Houses of Magistrate’s Assistants
28. House of the secretaries
29. Police Department
and some have even been rebuilt recently as a cultural record. One of the best 9.3 Keyed plan
preserved is at Neixiang in central China, and is here taken as the primary object of the Neixiang
Yamen
of study, relying on a plan redrawn by Chinese scholars following traditional
conventions, and on photographs taken on a visit in 2009. The proviso should be
added that the buildings were restored according to what remained and could be
reconstructed, but are presented as a museum as if in a constant and static state.
A preserved drawing from around 1700 reveals that there have been changes,
for example in the progression of roof types, so the restored version does not show
Neixiang yamen quite as it was in the late seventeenth century. But it had been in
existence at least since 1300, and was broadly similar in organisation for planning
was strictly standardised. Written records suggest that some aspects of the ritual
use of space date back as far as Confucius at 500 bce,5 for it followed a longstanding
tradition reflecting the long established centralised state even if every dynasty also
saw changes.
The plan drawing (see Figs 9.2 and 9.3) which in the Chinese style includes
elevations, gives a convenient overview. The yamen occupies a rectangular
enclosure orientated north-south and divides into three bands vertically, the
central band containing the principal courtyards with the main functions.
My added diagram (see Fig. 9.2 Right) picks out the centre line crossed by the
gatehouses and main halls depicted in black. These constitute the primary spatial
9.4 View outside

the main gate
(photo by author)
progression, starting from south at the bottom. The sequence of photographs

permits a visual journey up the axis (see Figs 9.4–9.13).
We start with the gatehouse, but this is already set behind an open ceremonial
wooden paifang and complemented by a screen wall across the street, so its impact
would have been greater than just the building shown, the combined elements
forming a public square as a point of transition between general public space
and the territory of the yamen. Here the magistrate could make declarations and
administer punishments. The first gate is a three-bay building with central passage,
and as the entrance is approached, one sees through to the first courtyard beyond.
To left are inscribed stones declaring the virtue of justice, to right a ceremonial
drum, memory of the real drum which used to gather the townsfolk in emergencies.
The gate provides the public face for the whole institution and has a large roof
with a swinging ridge, the gables decorated with a series of ornamental animals.
The inscription declares the importance of the administration, likening it both to a
pillar supporting the sky and to having feet firmly on the ground.
As we pass through, we encounter the first court with stables and prison on the
left, temples to local gods and hospitality buildings on the right. Important visitors
can tie up their horses at the series of carved posts to left: nobody would ride on
through the second gate. The central path is paved with special marble raising it
above the surrounding court. It is slightly convex to cast the water to the sides and
to prioritise the central line of pavers as the magistrate’s ritual route. Continuing
on axis, we approach the second gate, and we see that the paved route continues
unabated beyond it. The second gatehouse is much like the first, again its roof
decorated with ornamental animals.
There are side gates as well as the central one, and that to left is called the
gate of death because this is where condemned criminals left the court for the
9.5 View northward along the main axis taken just inside the first gate (photo by author)
9.6 View outside the second gate (photo by author)

9.7 View inside the second gate, facing the paifang with the hall beyond (photo by author)
9.8 View of the main hall where judgements are given (photo by author)
prison, whose entrance is signalled by the flank wall just visible at the left edge.
The second gate marks the entrance to the central and most important courtyard
where trials were held and other political business conducted. It was at this gate
that the magistrate, on first arrival, was obliged to swear a solemn oath that he
would perform his duties honestly and correctly, an oath made in the presence of
all his assistants and the important people of the town, but addressed to the God
of the Inner gate. It is described by Huang as a key ritual of taking office.
Passing through the second gate we see that the axis progresses to the steps
of the first hall, the first five bay wide building in the series, but before reaching
that point it must pass through a stone paifang, a kind of purely ceremonial gate
common in China for tombs and memorials, using the dead material stone as
opposed to the once live wood. It is inscribed with characters meaning ‘justice
brings clarity and light’, and carries an admonishment to the magistrate to behave
in an honourable manner. This element does not appear in Huang’s description
and may belong to a later era. The paifang initially obscures the view of the main
hall, which is revealed as we proceed.
The axial route leads up six steps onto a stone platform beyond which is the seat
of judgement. This is the largest hall with the highest roof, placed at the very centre
of the whole complex. Here the magistrate presides as defendants and witnesses
are brought before him, and here also many other public duties are carried out. We
reach what seems to be the termination of the main axis with his desk. He sits at
the centre on a raised dais, before a painting of sun and water which represents the
yang energy of the emperor as the son of heaven and the wholeness of his empire
stretched out between the four seas. The inscriptions translate ‘Cheating people
is cheating God. Don’t cheat yourself. Betraying people is betraying your country.
How can you do this?’
9.9 View of the

magistrate’s seat
completes the first
part of the axis
(photo by author)
This sequence of pictures along the centre line gives some idea of the scale of
the spatial progression, but only covers so far the front half of the complex, and
only the middle one of three progressions of courts. Referring to the plans, other
elements can be identified. Flanking the central court to right and left are the
administrative offices for the six departments of government bureaucracy, the
martial ones on the left (west) and the liberal ones to right (east). Moving from
gate to hall, those on the left are Punishment, Military Affairs, and Works, while
on the right are the Civil Office (appointments), Revenue, and Rites (including
the examination system). The presence of these offices surrounding the court
indicates how inseparable administration was from law-keeping, the magistrate
being the governor, as used to be the case with the Lord Mayor of London. Apart
from his role as judge of the local court he was also the organiser of the constables
and militia, the collector of taxes, and the head of the local bureaucracy. He was
responsible for public works and maintenance, disaster relief, and for the local
part of the horse-based postal system. He was also the supplicant in public
worship, making regular observances at various temples, particularly those of
Confucius and the City God where he had to perform rites on the 1st and 15th
of each month.6 The Emperor, as Son of Heaven, was considered responsible for
natural forces and undertook calendrical rituals to assure the fertility of the crops.
As his agent, the magistrate assumed local responsibility, and Huang sincerely
believed that his actions during his period of office had averted climatic disaster.
This was not disconnected from the keeping of the law, as lawbreaking was
regarded as a disruption not merely of human but of cosmic harmony.
The magistrate was both judge and detective, and a large part of Huang’s
book is given over to questions of detection, motives for crime, dealing with
forensic evidence, and so on. There were no lawyers to argue cases adversarially,
and witnesses were given a surprisingly uncomfortable time, sometimes even
tortured. On the other hand there was a high moral ideal of probity for magistrates,
as people who by their own merit reached a very high level in the national civil
service examinations. These were not concerned with law and administration,
but expected an intimate knowledge of the Confucian classics and an ability to
compose appropriately elegant poems, just as Oxford and Cambridge used to
be based on Greek, Latin and theology. Huang, having climbed this scholarly
ladder, comes across as a moral and humane person full of advice about how to
deal with corruption and moral degradation of all kinds, determined to maintain
both social and cosmic order. Although his powers over his own locality were
great, even permitting summary executions in certain cases, he was constantly
answerable to his superiors, obliged to pass capital cases to the superior yamen
and to report on many kinds of issues. He suffered a full and merciless inspection
of his books and premises every three years. He was expected both to preserve
the peace and to keep the local economy in balance. Huang’s book is full of
cautionary tales not only about detecting and preventing sharp practice among
inferiors but also about dealing tactfully and cautiously with superiors.
Everyday court proceedings were held primarily in the courtyard and were
something of an ordeal for the litigants and witnesses, as all were expected to
kneel for long periods in the open air.7 For sessions held at noon, after lunch,
the magistrate’s dais was brought to the front of the hall so that he could more
directly overlook the courtyard. Occupying his position of power on the axis
and sitting in his grand chair on the dais, he not only enjoyed the advantage
of height but also the full enclosure of the hall and the elaborate protection
of its main roof, as opposed to the persons brought before him. Cases were
listed strictly in order, and waiting litigants lined up at the front gate, the
magistrate having examined the paperwork in advance and marked up for
himself the pertinent points. Within the hall he was accompanied by a scribe to
document proceedings and two runners standing at attention in the left side,
one of whose duties was to handle tallies, the other to prepare ink. A further
runner in the courtyard organised the participants and set labelled tablets on
the ground within the court to mark the places where litigants should kneel:
plaintiffs at the east corner, defendants at the west corner, and witnesses
centrally inside the inner gate on a raised area of pavement. When a case was
set to proceed, the runner would report the presence of the parties to the
magistrate, and on gaining his approval would call them to take their places.
Lictors were instructed to stand by and to bring in and display instruments of
torture if necessary, as a useful threat against reluctant defendants and lying
witnesses.8 The magistrate himself carried out the interrogation using a series
of seven tactics of detection, called the hook, the raid, the attack, intimidation,
browbeating, comparison, and compelling. His essential aim was to determine
the truth before imposing judgement, and a substantial portion of Huang’s text
concerns how to achieve this while disarming the various kinds of subterfuges
and stratagems regularly attempted by lawbreakers.
The main hall and its court were used for many other things besides trials. Tax
prompters and payers were expected to assemble there, and Huang devised a
system of reward and punishment, giving early payers special rosettes and letting
them march out accompanied by music, while those in arrears were made to
kneel alongside the central path in the court and were even flogged.9 Taxes were
counted in the hall, the silver chests being brought in and set behind the dais,
with chest clerks and revenue clerks on hand to weigh contributions and report
them in a book, which was finally signed in red by the magistrate himself.10 The
twice monthly roll call of rural police was carried out in the courtyard,11 and also
that of escaped slaves about to be sent elsewhere.12 The prison where they were
kept awaiting deportation was in the corner to the right of the hall, close by.13 The
magistrate could use his hall and court also as the site of munificence, handing
out food to the poor on the first day of the month and winter clothing in the
tenth month.14 It was the place where the people met the government, and they
were constantly expected to show the magistrate the greatest respect. Huang
advises that interviews of militia heads – locally important people – should be
carried out not in the main hall but more tactfully at the entrance gate ‘so that the
candidates need not kneel before the magistrate’.15
It was crucial to the power of the magistrate that he lived on the premises and
in a secret zone seen only by a few privileged people. He must have appeared in
9.10 View of
door to the inner
realms, back on
axis but behind the
magistrate’s seat
(photo by author)
public quite frequently, but only on official business always accompanied by his
many minions, and treated with great deference. For his court appearances he
could slip into his place in the hall from behind, for the axis of the yamen extends
beyond the first hall into increasingly private realms.
Immediately behind the magistrate’s desk is another door and raised paving
carries through to the elaborate gateway of the second court and hall, this time
with a threshold to step over followed by double doors which can be closed
to enforce passage around the side. It seems likely that the double doors were
opened only for the passage of the magistrate and his peers, while lesser persons
stepped to right or left. Within the court the axial path continues, still raised and
defined with special paving, but diminished in width.
At the end is a second desk at which the magistrate can preside, again facing
south. This court was used for cases of a more special character and meetings
with important persons. Again the magistrate could slip in from behind,
and again the axis continues. After a narrow cross street linking the lateral
parts of the complex comes another small court but this time with a building
across it as a doorway to the residence. The building fills the court with a roof
returning along the sides, in contrast with previous roofs which were treated as
independent.
9.11 View of the second court, for meetings and special cases (photo by author)
9.12 View of the small court leading through to the magistrate’s residence, again on axis (photo by author)
9.13 View of the courtyard of the magistrate’s house leading to the final hall (photo by author)
9.14 View of the way through to the garden, again facing north but to the west side (photo by author)
The inscription translates ‘Rectitude, Discretion, Diligence’. This door leads to the
third and final court and the third hall opposite which is the magistrate’s house.
Here only family and friends were admitted – apart from servants. The middle room
was used for everyday life and private meetings, the end rooms as bedrooms. The
magistrate’s family had further accommodation in the side pavilion to east. Even
here there are inscriptions encouraging probity, such as ‘Even family members
have to face the law’, and ‘Even old friends have to obey the rules’. Progress on axis
is arrested here, with no rear exit from the third hall, but there is a garden behind
reached by walking around the west side and passing through an octagonal
doorway. The typical Chinese garden was treated in an informal way like a scaled-
down landscape, its irregularity contrasted with the strict orthogonal layout of the
rest of the complex. As it was enclosed by a continuous high wall with no openings,
the magistrate and his family could only reach the outside world by finding their
way back southward through the entire complex. This must have made it all seem
very deep and well protected.
The entire complex was both surrounded by a masonry wall with protective
capping and subdivided by such walls. The contrast between the protective
character of the freestanding masonry wall and the open building, all roof and
columns with no lateral enclosure, epitomises the special quality of Chinese
architectural space. Their primary building tradition was carpentry, in which timber
columns support a complex layered roof and any partitions are secondary. This
leaves the building comparatively open, freestanding away from the enclosing
wall, which belongs instead to the ground. Chinese architecture has therefore
always been very much about the roof and the logic of its assembled structure,
with elegant interlocking joints avoiding nails. Lacking diagonal bracing, they
relied on the joints for stiffness, piling timber on timber rather than triangulating
with trusses as in the West. Dependence on timber meant rectangular buildings,
division into bays, a discipline of progressive assembly, and a strict sizing and
numbering of parts. The treatment and shaping of the roof was paramount, and
the connection between column and roof gave rise to bracketing as the main
ornamental treatment. This priority of the roof also meant that each roof was
treated as an entity and given separate form even when they were placed close
to one another. The open nature of the columns meant also that a hall tended to
be used in tandem with its outdoor room, the courtyard. In central and southern
China this suited the hot and humid climate, while by contrast the hearth and
chimney were absent.
Looking again at the general plan (Fig. 9.3), the whole complex has a structured
character in which each element finds its place according to principles of
concentricity, progression, opposition, and adjacency. Consider first centre and
periphery. The court lies at the centre of the yamen as the yamen lies at the centre
of the town and the town in its region, a nesting series. This parallels many cases
in pre-modern Europe and clearly has a defensive as well as a hierarchical role.
Added to this is a linear principle: the south-north axis as centre, which is stressed
by the progression of buildings, by the bilateral symmetry, and by differentiation
of height and material in the ground plane. The centre line or axis could hardly
be more strongly stated or be more clearly differentiated from the treatment of

the east-west connections. We have seen how effectively it allows development
of a sense of progression, acting as a route along which increasing layers signal
increasing importance as well as entry into more private and exclusive realms,
and where going forward is much more important than returning. Here again
there are comparable European precedents, but the orientation is more crucial. It
might seem at first only common sense to face south to enjoy the sun, but there
is much more. The Emperor, as Son of Heaven, had a special connection with
the sun and in consequence was expected to face south, an ancient custom, for
9.15 Author’s
which there are at least two references in the Analects of Confucius from 500 bc.16
diagram of the
Yamen plan to Some idea of the continuing significance of this connection in Huang’s time is
indicate the three his advice that a newly arriving magistrate must never make his first entry to
parallel bands, the town by the south gate, lest this cause too great a concentration of yang
north to top. The energy, bringing about a major fire in the city during his period of office.17
asterisk marks the
Orientation was important enough in China for nearly all building complexes to
centre and the seat
of judgement, the
be orientated south and for the siting of settlements, graves and temples always
square bottom to be considered in relation to the cardinal points, still reflected in the various
left is the prison, practices of feng-shui.18 They derive from ancient Daoist cosmology and its
and the double founding diagrams, Ho tu and Lo shu, which interconnect phenomena through
rectangle bottom the universal polarity of yin yang and the cycle of the five agents (wood, fire,
right the temples.
earth, metal, water), sometimes called elements. Without straying too far into
B indicates
symmetry, whilst this very complex subject, it suffices to say that the cardinal points are tied into
A/C indicates the space of the diagram as an essential fourness with five as centre, and that
less symmetry’ therefore connections are implied between them and many other phenomena,
such as seasons, numbers, animals, tastes and
sounds.19 Colours also correspond with them, so
north is black, south is red, east is blue and west
is white. In Huang’s book these are precisely the
colours of the caps of the militia who guard the
respective gates to the city.20
If the centre line produces the sense of
progression and layering south to north, it also
creates a tripartite field laterally. This has echoes of
the magic square as ideal city plan, and it is easy to
read the yamen’s court as the central square of nine.
The tripartite division also creates a clear hierarchy
between centre and side, so central band B has
the major functions while side bands A and C are
given to subordinate ones, the courts at the north
end for the houses of the magistrate’s deputies, for
example. But there is also a hierarchical difference
between east and west. East, which is the right hand
when proceeding up the axis, is more propitious
and important, so the treasury was on the east side
of the main hall balancing the records room on the
west, while next to the entrance the temples to the Yamen God and Earth God to
east stood opposite the prison to west. The symmetrical relationship of A and C
tends to throw things into pairs, but the propitious east and unpropitious west,
perhaps related to the rising and setting of the sun – a widespread if not cross-
cultural symbolism – differentiate them again. A telling cultural detail, again
going back to the Analects of Confucius, is that a man in mourning for his father
must not use the eastern steps to his hall for three years out of respect, but must
instead take those on the west normally reserved for guests. Precedence for east
over west is also reflected in many rituals described by Huang.
The above discussion has been concerned largely with space in plan, but
relative height is clearly important as platforms step up and down throughout
the yamen. It seems to be a cross-cultural principle that the magistrate sits on
the highest seat and at the end of the axis like European judges and monarchs: I
have yet to find a contradiction to this rule. Because the yamen complex is a chain
of courtyards the gates and thresholds punctuating them are extremely well-
differentiated, and there is both a great variety and highly specific designation
of threshold types. The architecture gains in colour and decoration where it gets
more important, and sinks to its most banal and basic form with the prison, though
even there gates are important, including that for those facing execution. There
is a prison god in a south-facing temple in the prison’s first court, and he should
be treated with respect. All this might be considered a very highly developed and
effective architecture parlante at a time when European architects only dreamed
and theorised about such a thing. Far from the Chinese having little architecture
worthy of note, as James Fergusson so naively claimed in the 1880s,21 they had an
immensely sophisticated architecture, rich in meaning. There was a standardised
set of building types defined by two interlocking disciplines: that of the carpenters
who had elaborately prescribed rules, even defined in written manuals, about bay
sizes, number of bays, elaboration of roof and jointing, propitious dimensions etc.
On the other hand there was the department of rites which prescribed colours
and ornaments, and even how many nails you were allowed to show in the face
of your door. With rules like that, and the possibility of prosecution and disgrace,
you would certainly have counted them. Such order and discipline in architecture
bring coherence and shared meaning, but they also reflect the oppression of a
dominant cosmology to which citizens were obliged to subscribe, accepting their
places in the hierarchy. Shared social order and its spatial manifestations can be
both a comfort and a tyranny.
notes
* With special thanks to Jianyu Chen for information, translations and arranging our
Neixiang visit.
1 Huang Liuhong, Complete Book Concerning Happiness and Benevolence published in
1694. English edition Tucson 1984, 655 pages, translated by Djang Chu and subtitled
A Manual for Local Magistrates in Seventeenth-Century China. It is the social source for
most of this chapter.
2 Ibid. Each magistrate was responsible for around 150,000 people: translator’s
introduction, p. 17.
3 Maps of this kind, following official conventions of representation, are preserved in
Chinese local records or gazetteers.
4 Peter Carl objected at the conference that ‘axis’ is a western and relatively modern
word, and I agree that this case needs distinguishing both from Cartesian axes and
Beaux Arts ones. The Chinese centre line, consistently orientated north-south, is
both an axis of symmetry and a register of progression, while the ancient Chinese
character for centre is an oblong horizontal body bisected by a longer vertical
stroke. The word axis remains nonetheless a convenient and familiar term of
reference.
5 Several mentions of spaces and spatial transitions in the Analects of Confucius accord
with later buildings. In Book III section 22 a screen wall is mentioned as a mark of
status; in Book VI, section 1 the Emperor is equated with facing south; Book IX, section
3 mentions the hierarchical importance of the dais; Book X, section 4 includes a long
description about how to behave correctly on entering the palace; and in Book XIX,
section 23, the height of the boundary wall is revealed as an index of status. See Arthur
Waley, The Analects of Confucius (London, 1964).
6 He was obliged to burn incense and say prayers on the first and fifteenth of each
month in the temple of Confucius and that of the City God, as well as at larger
seasonal observances: Huang, Complete Book Concerning Happiness and Benevolence,
p. 29.
7 That this was uncomfortable and humiliating is confirmed by further advice to spare
both the elderly and young women, and to keep them in a corridor or a secluded place
until required to give evidence, ibid., p. 272.
8 Ibid., p. 269. He tells of a case where the threat of torture proved effective in
producing a confession, but elsewhere admits (p. 278) the reduced value of false
confessions.
9 Ibid., pp. 194–8.
10 Ibid., p. 99.
11 Ibid., p. 414.
12 Ibid., p. 430. The slaves were a hangover from the military conquest by the Manchus
who had gained power half a century earlier, as explained in the translator’s preface,
pp. 12–15.
13 Right in this case presumably in relation to the sitting magistrate facing south, as
prisons were generally on the west side.
14 Huang, Complete Book Concerning Happiness and Benevolence, p. 553.
15 Ibid., p. 469.
16 Analects Book VI, section 1 translates ‘I should not mind setting him with his face to
the south’ which refers to making someone ruler. See Arthur Waley, The Analects of
Confucius (London, 1964), p. 115.
18 Much nonsense and many half truths have been published on this subject: for a
reliable and concise summary see Alfred Schinz, The Magic Square: Cities in Ancient
China (Stuttgart, 1999), pp. 416–19.
19 Much on this in Joseph Needham, ‘The Tao Chia (Taoists) and Taoism’, Science and
Civilisation in China, vol. 2 (Cambridge, 1956), pp. 33–164. See also Paul U. Unschuld,
Huang Di Nei Jing Su Wen: Nature, Knowledge, Imagery in an Ancient Chinese Medical Text
(Berkeley CA, 2003); especially the appendix ‘The Doctrine of the Five Periods and Six
Qi in the Huang Di nei jing su wen’, pp. 393–488.
21 James Fergusson, History of Indian and Eastern Architecture, Forming the Third Volume of
the New Edition ‘History of Architecture’ (London, 1899); see preface to the Chinese part,
pp. 685–90.
Part 3
Civic and Societal Order
10
Violent Stone: The City of Dialectical Justice –
Three Tales from Court
Jonathan Charley
The history of nineteenth century urban Europe is scarred and deformed by its
relationship with imperialism, slavery and colonial exploitation. This chapter
tells three interconnected stories about the pivotal role that Glasgow, Liverpool,
Brussels and their respective law courts played in this history, a dialectical history
in which reason was shadowed by ignorance, civilisation by barbarism and
monumental institutions by diseased hovels.
Glasgow – Sugar, Tobacco, and the Old Court
Legally, government by bureaucracy is government by decree, and this means

that power, which in constitutional government only enforces the law, becomes
the direct source of all legislation. Decrees moreover remain anonymous (while
laws can always be traced to specific men or assemblies), and therefore seem to
flow from some over-all ruling power that needs no justification.1
Like an unstoppable storm of creative destruction the bourgeois revolution

tore through the familiar terrain of town and country, spitting out the space-
time certainties of old lives and reassembling them in unrecognisable forms.
Vast new landscapes of production emerged out of ancient commons and
felled forests, whilst terrifying institutions crept out of the smog to categorise
and discipline the unruly and unwilling. And at the epi-centre of this urban
revolution were buildings devoted to the rule of law and the circulation
of money and commodities. In an unprecedented pageant of judicial and
pecuniary imagination, all manner of banks, trading houses, notary and
lawyer’s offices filled the streets of rapidly expanding cities, and in the midst of
all this sat the emblematic monarchs of modern political economy, the Stock
Exchange and Law Court.
Law and Money became inseparable twins and with their institutional merging
all the economic endeavours that financed the construction of the nineteenth
10.1 View of the century city, whether it was reaping tobacco, cutting sugar cane, manufacturing
County Court, cloth, building ships or smelting pig iron, in a flash of a quill pen and a wax seal were
Glasgow (photo
objectified as legal documents and commodities. Contracts were signed, property
by author)
rights were assured, tobacco smoked, sugar eaten, a wage paid, and slowly but
surely the real social origins of commodities became clouded in the mysteries of
the fetish world.
The monumental architecture of the nineteenth century played a crucial role
in this process of camouflage. Every city competing to become a fully-fledged
capitalist metropolis was required to elevate the houses of legal contract and
money to a status hitherto reserved for Cardinals and Royalty. ‘City Fathers’
accomplished this task with varying degrees of success measured by how well
such institutions dominated the city. For money they built temples to Mammon.
And for the law, no expense was spared. The bigger the better, for it was the job of
the new courts fashioned in glorious antiquity to confer the grandeur, authority,
and legitimacy that the bourgeoisie so desperately craved. It was also the court’s
task to silence incendiary talk about self-regulating communes and workers’ rights,
and to approve the legislation necessary to ensure the smooth progress of capital
accumulation.
One of the first examples in Glasgow of this new architecture of legal might was
William Stark’s sombre judiciary court and gaol built at the Saltmarket in 1809. Its
foundation was opportune because it coincided with a marked increase in threats
to civic order. Indeed a year after its inauguration the Glasgow Commission of
Police issued an alarm about roaming gangs of ‘Thieves, Rogues, and Vagabonds’
The City of Dialectical Justice – Three Tales from Court 153
who were posing a threat to both persons and property.2 Exacerbated by

repeated outbreaks of labour militancy, typhus and cholera, Stark’s court and
gaol soon proved inadequate to the task of meeting the disciplinary and punitive
demands of a rapidly expanding capitalist economy and metropolis. The solution
was to commission the construction of the monumental County Buildings and
Court Houses. Built nearby in the Merchant city in the 1840s at the height of
the Irish famine and the attack on Chartism, this old centre of government, itself
superseded by the City Chambers forty years later, bears few signs of its original
function and now houses boutique flats, up market shops, restaurants, and the
Scottish youth theatre. It is still surrounded by old merchant warehouses, but
these too have changed their use and are no longer scented with the odour of
tobacco and boiling molasses, but by perfumed real estate. Like many of the city’s
nineteenth century institutions, it is a neo-classical building dressed with giant
Corinthian and Ionic columns. Such facsimiles of the architecture of the ancient
world reflected the deeply held bourgeois conceit that they were somehow the
legitimate heirs to a democratic tradition that could be traced back to classical
antiquity.
Reaping the rewards of plantation and proletarian labour, the early nineteenth
century bourgeoisie liked nothing more than to imagine themselves dressed in
togas, defending private property and upholding laws of contract that declared the
capitalist and the labourer as ‘free’ and equal traders in commodities.3 Accordingly,
carved into the blond sandstone wall on its southern elevation that sits beneath
a raised portico of fluted columns, is a mixed up allegory of classical Greece and
the death of Jesus that represents bourgeois law and government as high-minded,
honourable and in tune with universal laws of nature and history.4 To reinforce
this vision of the timeless qualities of bourgeois justice, the sculpture features
an impressive cast of characters judging and dispensing wisdom that includes
disciples, sages, jailors, executioners, manacled prisoners, a prostrate man and a
mourning woman.
There is however a far more insidious connection between Glasgow’s merchant
class and the ancient world to which they aspired. Much of the wealth of the
Athenian Republic came from agricultural slavery. Plato even barred artisans
from the polis considering such labour to be the antithesis of what it meant to be
human.5 Similarly cognitively displaced in an unknown hinterland, the source of
much of the finance needed to construct the grand streets and mansions of the
merchant city came from the slave economy of the New World. In 1807, a group of
prominent merchants gathered in a local meetinghouse to discuss the foundation
of the West Indian Association to defend their commercial interests. Like their
Liverpool counterparts they were opposed to the abolition of slavery, expressing
both concern over the ‘comfort, health, and happiness of the negro population’ if
abolition was passed, and anxiety over ‘the effects of emancipation on a race prone
to indolence and idleness’.6
The pivotal role slavery and the plantation economy played in the development
of capitalism in Scotland have yet to be fully acknowledged. But the evidence
of Glasgow’s relationship is strewn across the city. One part of the city atlas is
composed of prominent family names. There is Buchanan of Buchanan Street,

owner of vast plantations in Virginia, who later became Lord Provost, along with
Ingram, Glassford, Dennistoun, Oswald, Mitchell, Speirs and Wilson, all of them
either tobacco, sugar or cotton merchants who saw no moral contradiction
between their belief in Calvinism and laissez faire economics and their activities in
the plantation economies of the southern United States and Caribbean. Dissecting
the urban grid are other names that without conscience commemorate the
locations of their estates. It is a roll call of colonial interests – Jamaica, Kingston,
Virginia, Plantation Quay, and the ghostly apparition of vanished Antigua. Together
they scatter the pink coloured streets with soap, fine cigars, chocolate, sweetened
tea and coffee; a culinary and confectionary mix of ‘sugar and spice and all things
nice’. That is what Empire was made of.
Liverpool – Fever Sheds, Famine and St George’s Hall
By taking the form of law, right steps into a determinate mode of being. It is
then something on its own account, and in contrast with particular willing and
opining of the right, it is self-subsistent and has to vindicate itself as something
universal. This is achieved by recognising it and making it actual in a particular
case without the subjective feeling of private interest; and this is the business of a
public authority – the court of justice.7
It is 1838, a mere eight years after the abolition of slavery. It is a momentous

period in British political history. Working class militants, bitterly disappointed
by the failure of the Reform Act of 1832 to introduce universal suffrage had
turned to revolutionary syndicalism. Owenite building workers in Birmingham
had drafted a plan to reorganise society along cooperative communist lines, and
the People’s Charter was about to be launched.8 And it is in the midst of this
proto-revolutionary shift in English political sensibilities, in spitting distance of
smokestack and dockyard chains that the Liverpool bourgeoisie embark on their
own quest to build their belief in the eternal nature of capitalist morality and
justice. Glaswegians claim their city as the second city of Empire. Bengalis claim
Kolkata. Scousers insist it is Liverpool. All of them have good reason. I stepped
out of Lime Street station in the low autumnal sun and was dazzled by what was
once the biggest and strangest civic building in Britain, a combination of concert
hall and court of law.9
It is true that when I visit medieval cathedrals, my mind jams with a
cacophony of sheep, indentured serfs, fearful labourers, maniac priests, and
tyrannical landowners. But I also see extraordinary spatial engineering, delicate
craftsmanship, and the building labour of love and devotion. Similarly here in
front of this homage to Athens the landscape glitters with the trowels of heroic
stonemasons whilst nostrils contract with the odour of choleric fever sheds.10
And as the city fathers sought immortality in the foundation of St George’s, they
commissioned the construction of prison cell and workhouse dormitory that
were planned with the same attention to detail as the hold of a slave ship. Here
capitalist reason is stripped bare. Planning the distribution of bodies on bunks 10.2 View of
as preparation for labour in sweatshop or plantation becomes a question of St George’s Hall,
Liverpool (photo
maximising the number of human commodities that can be crammed into every
by author)
cubic metre.
Simply obeying instructions in the same way that two hundred years later
they would plan housing estates and office blocks, architects and engineers
drew meticulous plans and sections in which individuals become abstract
blobs between lines. Meanwhile in a subterranean world of gloomy and banal
offices hidden up back streets and alleyways, armies of accountants, solicitors
and bank clerks compile inventories of every conceivable kind. Bureaucratic
administration is elevated in importance and becomes the essential modus
operandi of the ‘great game of expansion’, both domestically and abroad.
In a blink of the eye capital accumulation and conquest become logistical
operations that can be precisely detailed in leather bound ledgers and legal
documents. Neutralised in words and numbers, the administrators’ archives
conceal a rule which ‘out of sight and out of mind’, and therefore unrestricted
by social and ethical values, ‘exploded with the suddenness of a short circuit in
the phantom world of colonial adventure’.11
Confident that they were conducting God’s work and reassured by the
classical economist’s vision of a bourgeois utopia founded on the notion of
‘free’ wage labour, the Liverpool merchant class and bourgeoisie embraced
Hegel’s idea that law should be made universal and inviolate in the foundation
of a ‘court of justice’. Their conceit was breathtakingly audacious. With the
exception of Roscoe, all of Liverpool’s MPs at the turn of the nineteenth

century were either slave traders in their own right or defenders of the trade
in Parliament.12 Like Glasgow, Manchester and Bristol, Liverpool’s street names
and architecture heap praise upon the triangular trade and plantation system,
inadvertently reinforcing the argument that such economic activities provided
up to fifty per cent of the capital that propelled the industrial revolution and
funded the construction of the nineteenth century city.13 Only eight years
before the foundations for St George’s Hall were laid, civic leaders, merchants
and politicians drank a toast on the King’s birthday. Attired in the finest
Egyptian cotton and Syrian mohair, glasses brimming with Portuguese wine
and Jamaican rum, they clouded the drawing room with flumes of Cuban
tobacco. Staring through the window at the profiles of African children neatly
embossed in the entrance to a bank, they announced: ‘Prosperity to the African
Trade, and may it always be conducted with humanity.’14
Forty years later without malice or irony they carved their governing ideals
into the east elevation. In a burst of utopian delusion they declared the
foundation of a new ‘World supported by knowledge and right’, and of a society
in which ‘Justice is relieved of her sword by virtue and the scales of concord.’
Their ideal of a natural and God-given justice knew of no limits, for it was born
out of ‘righteousness and the crown of immortality’. Drunk on ideology they
proselytised from pulpits a concept of justice that was to be pure and untainted
by the trappings of ‘wealth and fame’. But words of ‘conscience and wisdom’
were not enough. The Greek goddess of blind justice, Dikē, and a supporting
cast of angels are summoned to command this cosmic ambition to plant the
kingdom of divine law on earth. Swaying in the folds of Grecian gowns, they
sport wreaths, wings, weapons, globes and scales. In a brilliant combination
of sculpture and text, the city fathers feminised and eternalised their concept
of law and justice as if such demonstrations of state power were in time with
history and at one with the universe.
Whilst the friezes of St George’s were unveiled to the public, Marx was
dying in London. His first writings on alienation and estrangement marked
the inception of St George’s, and the development of his critique of political
economy coincided with its opening. As discipline and punishment were
meted out to the sound of choirs and violins, Marx unleashed his concept of the
‘fetishism of commodities’ in which he describes a spectacularly upside down
world where the social relations between human beings assume the ‘fantastic
form’ of a relation between objects seemingly imbued with mystical powers.15
Fantastic indeed was the form of St George’s and its sister institutions, and
between law court where property was defended, and the stock exchange
where it was traded, there emerged ‘an enchanted, perverted topsy-turvy world,
in which Monsieur Le Capital and Madame La Terre did their ghost walking as
social characters and at the same time as mere things’.16 As they performed their
spectral dance they whispered the words ‘capital, land and labour’, a semantic
trilogy in which ‘the secrets of the social production process’, profit, rent and
wages were hidden.17 It was an ingenious act of camouflage reinforced by the
sacred words that decorated St George’s. The magician completes his trick,
‘Legal fetishism complements commodity fetishism.’18 The result was a new
and mysterious vocabulary of economic and juridical categories constructed
from ‘distorted, mystified mental images’, in which the reality of capitalist
exploitation was obscured in fog.19
And it was the same fog that provided much of the cover for dubious acts of
exchange in the sea ports of Britain, nowhere more so than in the Albert Docks.
During the 1890s, long after the ‘formal’ abolition of slavery, Liverpool had a
monopoly on all shipping to the Congo, and it was a clerk for one of the shipping
companies, despatched to Antwerp, that came across a horrible secret. The ships
being filled with commodities, were not listing in the water with the weight of
textiles and copper pans, but with guns and armaments. I too was on my way
from Liverpool to a Belgian city that reminds me of a ‘whited sepulchre’.20 Joseph
Conrad’s Marlowe in Heart of Darkness does not mention the city’s name, but we
know where it is, because he looks at a giant map on the wall in the Company’s
offices and realises, ‘I am going into the Yellow dead in the centre.’ How the
foreign secretaries must have argued over the colour to mark their possessions,
a grotesque parlour game in which the scramble for Africa became a board
game with dice and gun. Pink for the British, purple for the Germans, Orange
for the Portuguese, Green for the Italians, Blue for the French, and Yellow for
the Belgians.
Brussels – Rubber, Oil and the Palais de Justice
The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured
and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer,
the priest, the poet, the man of science into its paid wage-labourers … . It has
been the first to show what man’s activity can bring about. It has accomplished
wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic
cathedrals; it has conducted expeditions that put in the shade all former
Exoduses of nations and crusades.21
Still early on a damp morning the Grand Place was almost empty of the steady
stream of tourists who arrive throughout the day to admire the gothic Hôtel de
Ville and the opulent baroque homes of the merchants and guilds that laid the
foundations for Belgium’s claim to be the first industrialised economy in continental
Europe.22 Tucked away in a corner there is a bar where Marx, following his expulsion
from Paris, met Friedrich Engels. Peering at the framed views of the guild houses
that flank the square, Karl Marx puts pen to paper, and begins to draft one of
history’s most influential documents, the Communist Manifesto. As his infectious
and lyrically political narrative grows, the legacy of his youthful commitment to
legal struggle fades. By now he is convinced that the battle will not be won by the
rhetoric of courtroom gowns, but by the class struggle. He flippantly depicts the
law as an epiphenomenon of capitalist society’s superstructure, and the lawyer,
which was once his intended profession, as little more than a paid wage labourer.23
10.3 View of One hundred and fifty years later and I am standing in front of a small plaque on
Palais de Justice, the wall of the Maison de Cygne that commemorates his stay, pondering the irony
Brussels (photo
of predicting world revolution whilst surrounded by the extravagant architectural
by author)
display of capitalist economic and political invention.
A short walk from the Grand Place will take you past the Bourse and Opera House,
a convenient arrangement so that having first secured the deal and traded on it,
the bourgeoisie could relax to the sound of Richard Wagner and Giuseppe Verdi.
But my route proceeds down the hill to the old working class district of Marolles
with its terraces of red brick housing named after professions like cooper, carpenter
and sweep. Once out of the narrow streets linked by arched tunnels you have to
creep furtively lest you are spotted. Even then, there is little chance of remaining
concealed.
I stole a glance up an alley in the shadow of a modern council housing scheme
with an advert for David Lynch’s film Eraserhead (1977) glued to the lamppost. But
the Palais had seen me.24 It glowers with the same sepulchral silence with which the
Sacre Coeur in Paris sends shivers through the descendants of the communards.25
It is a grey and unforgiving monument to cruelty and murder. Inaugurated by
Leopold the II in 1883 at the very moment when his expeditionary forces delivered
gun and sword justice to the indigenous peoples of the Congo, it was the biggest
building constructed in the nineteenth century. It was even larger than St Peter’s
Basilica in Rome. As an unambiguous ideological expression of state power, it is no
surprise that Hitler admired the Palais and he instructed Albert Speer to draw it in
detail as a candidate for the new Germania plan for Berlin.26
As he dreamt of Brussels acquiring an Imperial crown, Leopold could rely on

Belgian taxpayers to foot the bill for civic buildings like the Palais. But to furnish
his private universe, the lavishness of which rivalled that of absolutist monarchs
and embarrassed visiting dignitaries, he required a source of revenue that was
unrestrained by the demands for political reform sweeping Europe.27 The Belgian
working class, that lived and laboured in some of the most miserable conditions
on the continent, were becoming increasingly militant and organised a wave of
strikes and riots in support of universal suffrage in 1886 and 1893. Both uprisings
were met with military force, mass arrest, and mounted gendarmes wielding
sabres. It was the same Belgian sabre that would glint and sparkle in the African
sun as Leopold II’s mercenaries’ dispensed punishment, severing the hands of
recalcitrant Africans who ignored demands to increase the production of rubber
and who refused to accept European authority over their lands. From the very
beginning, extraordinary levels of violence marked the European invasion of the
Congo delta led by Leopold’s adventurer agent Morton Stanley who boasted to
having in no time at all ‘attacked and destroyed twenty eight large towns and four
score villages’.28 In contrast to Stanley’s moral ambivalence, other stories filtered
back of unspeakable horror.29 It was Casement, soon to be executed by the British
who met Joseph Conrad and warned him of things ‘I have tried to forget, (of ) things
I never did know.’ One of these was the story of Van Kerckhoven, the collector of
African heads, the inspiration for Conrad’s Kurtz (and Frances Ford Coppola’s
version of Kurtz, as played by Marlon Brando), who was said to have surrounded his
compound with a palisade of human skulls, and whose expeditions were described
by a contemporary as a hurricane that passed through the countryside leaving
nothing but devastation behind it.30 Meanwhile back in Belgium unperturbed by
any of these tales, Leopold prepared for the grand opening of the Palais de Justice.
In the background his ministers and propaganda department hastily set about
building his reputation as a philanthropist king, friend of the African and anti-
slavery crusader.
During the construction of Imperial Brussels, the population of the Congo
delta declined by a half, with an estimated ten million people dying through the
combined effects of murder, starvation, exhaustion and disease.31 The violence,
speed, and scale of the Congo conquest along with all the other crimes that
litter the history of the colonisation of Africa, India and the Americas are almost
impossible to grasp. But by inventing concepts of race and bureaucracy the
European managed to create a ‘refined atmosphere’ through which the tragedy
of this real history became geographically and historically displaced.32 Whether
it is possible through a plaque on a wall or a piece of public art to evoke the
memory of imperial crimes and the suspension of the rule of law is an open
question. But unlike the attempt to objectify the memory of the holocaust in
camp museums and commemorative landscapes, there is no trace in Brussels of
the African genocide, and very little – it should be added – in British cities that
speak of the crimes of Empire.
Whether Leopold had ever seen St George’s Hall, I am not sure. But Lord
Leverhulme, MP for the Wirral, philanthropist and founder of the model worker’s
village at Port Sunlight, certainly visited the Congo where he followed in the
footsteps of the Belgian monarch and set up his own private kingdom based
in Leverville that was reliant on forced labour to provide palm oil for his soap
business.33 There was however to be no model philanthropic village for the
Africans.
The public career of the soon to be Lord Lever of Hulme survived his Congo
expedition as did the Palais de Justice. Nowadays the Palais performs a number of
civic duties. But there is no hiding its origins in the megalomaniac vanity of one
man who was oblivious to the idea that justice might have anything to do with
Wallonian miners, let alone native Africans.
The prosperous merchants and wealthy bankers of the Belgian bourgeoisie
had urged Leopold to build the Palais’ one million cubic metres of corridors
and staircases, and were delighted with the citadel of secrets in which to
defend their property and provide their profits with a legal foundation. The
Palais like St George’s seemed to prove Evgeny Pashukanis’ contention that
bourgeois-capitalist property need no longer be contested weapon in hand for
it had been ‘transformed into an absolute, fixed right … and which, ever since
bourgeois civilisation extended its rule to encompass the whole globe, had been
protected the world over by laws, police and law courts’.34 But others were less
than impressed with Leopold’s gift to justice, particularly the local proletarians
shuffling in the streets below and the former inhabitants of the area who had
been forcibly evicted to make way for the Palais. Incandescent with rage they ran
to the Swan bar where under the watchful eye of the ghost of Marx they joined
the recently formed Belgian Worker’s Party.
By the general strike of 1902 Brussels was shaking with the tremors of
insurrection. Socialists fought running battles with police as they paraded
the streets, ‘smashing the windows of churches and cafes, firing revolvers and
singing revolutionary songs’.35 They retreated to the Maison du Peuple, the art
nouveau masterpiece designed by Victor Horta where they tore up tramlines and
constructed barricades. But other residents resorted to more macabre acts of
revenge and if the legend is to be believed there was a witch who could be seen
at dusk wandering the back streets busily sticking needles into an effigy of the
Palais’ architect Joseph Poelaert with a relentless ferocity that greatly hastened
his descent into terminal insanity.
The Withering of the Court of Law
The state is not ‘abolished’. It dies out. This gives the measure of the value of the
phrase ‘a free state’, both as to its justifiable use at times of agitators, and as to its
ultimate scientific insufficiency; and also of the demands of so-called anarchists
for the abolition of the state out of hand.36
Engels wrote that the ‘The central link in civilised society is the state’, of which one
of the central institutions is the Law Court. Indeed, Glasgow’s Old Court like St
George’s and the Palais ostensibly captures the idea of a civilised society governed
by law. But he added, that the State, ‘in all typical periods is without exception 10.4 Marx in
the state of the ruling class and in all cases continues to be essentially a machine Brussels (photo
by author)
for holding down the oppressed, exploited class’.37 For those that dream of the
parliamentary reform of capitalism, the idea of the State and the legal system
as little more than a weapon designed to maintain the hegemony of the ruling
class is too crude and unsophisticated. They will point to evidence that shows
that although courts can be places where draconian judgements are delivered or
indeed where the rule of law is abandoned altogether, they have also been the
forum where progressive legislation has been passed. By necessity they cling to the
belief that however terrifying a court may be when controlled by political criminals,
however intimidating its scale and size, and however grim its origins as the legal
face of a repressive and exploitative system, changing the regime that resides
within can alter its metaphorical associations. However in the latter half of the
nineteenth century, before universal suffrage, when the courtrooms of Glasgow,
Liverpool and Brussels echoed with black skins, tubercular workers and wigged
rhetoric, Engel’s depiction of the State and its legal machinery as an adjunct of
capital made absolute sense.
The meanings we attach to buildings are unstable and transitory.
Transformations in use, ingenious forms of camouflage, and the distortion
of memory, have softened and fundamentally altered the significance of old
buildings like the courts of the nineteenth century city. Glasgow’s County Court
becomes a chic place to live. St George’s doubles up as a dance hall and cultural
centre, and the Palais de Justice becomes a picture postcard … . Meanwhile,
light years away from faith in courtly dialogue or civilian changes in use, the
anarchists of the Spanish Civil War dreamt of a society in which all forms of
authority, discrimination, and punishment would be abolished.38 In this State-
less world there would be no need for such things as a court of law, a prison or
the headquarters of the secret police. Such institutions would simply be allowed
to disintegrate until they were indistinguishable from a ruined garden.
notes
1 Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, Ideology and Terror (London, 1976),
p. 243.
2 See Tom Devine, The Scottish Nation, 1700–2000 (London, 2000), p. 224.
3 ‘The slave is exactly subservient to his master. This is why this exploitative relationship
requires no specifically legal formulation. The wage worker on the contrary, enters
the market as a free vendor of his labour power, which is why the relation of capitalist
exploitation is mediated through the form of contract.’ Evgeny, Pashukanis, Law and
Marxism: A General Theory (London, 1989), pp. 110–13.
4 See Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, pp. 461–5.
5 See Perry Anderson, Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism (London, 1974), pp. 18–28.
6 For the statements of Glasgow Merchants see, MacLehose, J, Memoirs and portraits
of 100 Glasgow men (Glasgow, 1886), p. 130 and other entries. For a brief snapshot of
the West Indian Association and black history in Glasgow see David Dabydeen, John
Gilmore and Cecily Jones (eds), The Oxford Companion to Black British History (Oxford,
2008), pp. 189–91.
7 Georg W.F. Hegel, Philosophy of Right (Oxford, 1967), p. 140.
8 For general commentary on the European and British dimensions of political militancy,
see Eric Hobsbawm, Age of Revolution (London, 1997). For a history of labour in the
nineteenth century construction industry, see Raymond Postgate, The Builder’s History
(London: The National Federation of Building Trade Operatives, 1923).
9 Architectural historians like Niklaus Pevsner claim St George’s as one of the finest and
important examples of neo-classicism in the world. See for instance Quentin Hughes,
Liverpool-City of Architecture (Liverpool, 1999), p. 59.
10 For first hand details of living conditions in Liverpool in the mid-nineteenth century
see the Liverpool Journal, November 24th, 1849, <www.old-merseytimes.co.uk>.
11 Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, p. 190.
12 See for instance Gail Cameron and Stan Crooke, Liverpool – Capital of the Slave Trade
(Liverpool, 1992), p. 44.
13 See Robin Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery: From the Baroque to the Modern,
1492–1800 (London, 1998), pp. 517–18.
14 See Cameron and Cooke, Liverpool, p. 72. See also Marika Sherwood and Kim Sherwood,
Britain, the Slave Trade and Slavery from 1562 to the 1880s (Liverpool, 2007), pp. 73–7.
15 See Karl Marx, Capital, Volume I (London, 1990), pp. 163–7.
16 Karl Marx, Capital, Volume III (London, 1984), p. 830.
17 Ibid., p. 814.
18 Evgeny Pashukanis, Law and Marxism; A General Theory (London, 1989), p. 117.
19 Ibid., p. 73.
20 ‘I was crossing the Channel to show myself to my employers, and sign the contract. In
a very few hours I arrived in a city that always makes me think of a whited sepulchre.
Prejudice no doubt. I had no difficulty in finding the company’s offices. It was the
biggest thing in town, and everybody I met was full of it. They were going to run an
overseas empire, and make no end of coin by trade.’
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (Oxford, 2002), p. 110.
21 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (London, 2002), p. 222.
22 Eric Hobsbawm, Age of Empire (London, 1987), pp. 41–2.
23 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (London, 2002), p. 82.
See also the infamous and often misunderstood passage that begins: ‘The totality
of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the
real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure …’ Karl Marx, A
Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (London, 1981), p. 20.
24 For a description of the Palais, see Walter Sebald, Austerlitz (London, 2001), pp. 38–9.
25 See David Harvey, Paris, Capital of Modernity (London, 2006), p. 311.
26 See Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich (London, 1997), pp. 78–9.
27 Adam Hochschild, King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial
Africa (London, 1998), pp. 293–4.
28 Stanley added that ‘The blacks give an immense amount of trouble; they are too
ungrateful to suit my fancy.’ Hochschild, King Leopold’s Ghost, p. 49.
29 Reports relayed by Roger Casement, Morel the Liverpool shipping clerk and Williams
the African American journalist. ‘This officer’s … method … was to arrive in canoes at
a village, the inhabitants of which invariably bolted on their arrival; the soldiers were
then landed, and commenced looting … after this they attacked the natives until
able to seize their women; these women were then kept as hostages until the Chief of
the District brought in the required number of kilogram’s of rubber.’ Hochschild, King
Leopold’s Ghost, p. 161.
30 Ibid., pp. 196–8. Francis Ford Coppola, dir. Apocalypse Now, 1979.
31 That took place between 1880–1920. Ibid., pp. 225–34.
32 The ability to forget about Africa, to ‘create a vicious, refined atmosphere’ around
such crimes was institutionalised within the European mind through what Arendt
suggests were the concept of race, a mechanism to explain ‘other’ human beings ‘who
no civilised European could understand’, and through the great game of bureaucratic
administration, the essential modus operandi of the ‘great game of expansion’. Arendt,
The Origins of Totalitarianism, pp. 185–90.
33 See Jules Marchal, Lord Leverhulme’s Ghosts: Colonial Exploitation in the Congo (London,
2008).
34 Pashukanis, Law and Marxism, p. 115.
35 New York Times, April 11, 1902.
36 Friedrich Engels, Anti-Duhring (Moscow, 1978), p. 341.
37 Friedrich Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State (London, 1981),
p. 235.
38 See for instance, Murray Bookchin, The Spanish Anarchists: The Heroic Years 1868–1936
(Edinburgh, 1998), pp. 269–70. In addition for reprints of various libertarian manifestos
from the Iberian anarchist tradition see Daniel Guerin, No Gods No Masters, vol. 2
(Edinburgh, 1998).
11
The Spatial Registers of Justice
Richard Patterson
In the ‘Introduction’ to Social Justice and the City, David Harvey stated his ambition
as that of ‘healing the breach in our thought in what appear to be two distinctive
and irreconcilable modes of analysis’, that is, of social process and spatial form.
He also referred to certain unsustainable dichotomies, including for example
‘fact/value’, ‘subject/object’, ‘public/private’, and to what he considered to be the
methodological error of treating ‘things’ as possessing ‘an identity independent of
human perception and action’ located in (a thing called) space.1 But this ‘space’,
Harvey argued, is of two types, sociological and geographical, each with its own
exclusive methodological precepts and structure, such that it was methodological
exclusivity that prevented sociological analysis from recognising the ‘profound
effect (of spatial configuration) upon spatial processes on the one hand, and the
inability of geographers, architects, and urban planners, on the other, to inform
their formal manipulation of space with anything other than mere intuition’, on
the other. As such, it was his view, the implementation of social control through
the agency of planning and other forms of spatial development, was not subject
to critical analysis of the competing social factors it concerned, nor of the varying
lived experiences it effected. Harvey proposed that conceptions of geographical
space were in fact themselves constituted in social process and were not therefore
objective, universal conditions, independent of human perception and action, etc,
but intrinsically interest laden and not neutral grounds against which to measure
‘objective’ social truths. This led to his declared intention, to establish a new
‘ontology’ of space, one encompassing the sociological and geographical, one that
provided a basis for just social actions.
The question of identity between spatial form and social form or process was part
of a more general debate questioning principles of objectivity and transference of
methodologies from the physical to the human sciences. The functionalism that
had previously been accepted as the ground of an objective analysis of space was
challenged by Claude Lévi-Strauss in such essays ‘Do Dual Organisations Exist?’,
where he sought to explore the proposal that certain traditional or autogenous
societies were organized according to parallel, yet ‘dual’ or mutually exclusive
organisational ‘structures’.2 It was his contention that this exclusivity was based
around opposing moities, and that its conceptualisation and expression differed
not simply in terms of nominal affiliation, but in terms of contrary and incompatible
discourses that were reconciled temporally through cyclical reciprocal ritual
obligations. Central to the examples given were the divergent renderings by
informants of spatial concepts with specific reference to village form, and the
meanings attached to its various components. It is noteworthy that this particular
piece was cited by Roland Barthes as constituting an introduction to an ‘essentially
semantic’ urban semiology, potentially offering a direction for overcoming a
methodological inadequacy of then contemporary urban theory.3 But he also
pointed to the limitations of Lévi-Strauss’s proposals, specifically concerning how
we come to infer or impose meaning on space more generally. Barthes raised the
following point that would in essence differentiate the requirements of an urban
semiology from the epistemological terms of the structural model proposed by
Lévi-Strauss. Barthes held that there exist contradictions in modern urban space
arising between functionality on the one hand and the semantic charge of history
as a non-cyclical temporal development, which lead to an absence of ‘definitive
signifieds’. For Barthes, this clearly pointed to a multi-valent structure relating
concepts, perceptions, and the use of space with its various correspondent social
and cultural processes, a multi-valent structure which he described as an urban
‘erotic’.
Contemporaneously Henri Lefebvre also had the ambition in The Construction
of Space to articulate a ‘theoretical unity between “fields” which are apprehended
separately … [as] the physical – nature, the Cosmos; secondly, the mental, including
logical and formal abstraction; and, thirdly, the social’.4 Lefebvre is interesting in
this context as, although he approached the matter with similar methodological
and epistemological concerns, his objectives were more along the lines of the
alignment of a spatial taxonomy with modes of production, than with issues
of justice per se. Thus, he proposed a tripartite process of spatial development
leading from spatial practice (acts of production and reproduction), codified signs
as representations of space and ‘complex’ symbolic representational space. This
highly complex structure appears to embed a number of otherwise more familiar
models. Initially, for example, his characterisation of activities of spatial practice
were modelled principles drawn from Noam Chomsky’s linguistics, namely on
the principles of ‘performance’ and ‘competence’.5 For Lefebvre, the linguistic
analogy was significant in that it offered an example according to which operative
mechanisms and regulatory structure, like grammar, only became conscious upon
reflection. As he put it ‘spatial practice is lived directly before it is conceptualized’.6
Equally interesting is the way he considered this conceptualisation to fall into
two categories modelled on the opposition of ‘sign’ and ‘symbol’ as, respectively,
the ‘representations of space’ and as ‘representational space’. The representation
of space is the more straightforward of the two, and is based on commonly
understood codified systems, which he claimed had emerged from habitual spatial
practice. In the case of the hegemony of abstract, Euclidean and perspectival
space, for the period extending from the Renaissance to the nineteenth century,
The Spatial Registers of Justice 167
the spatial practice from which he claimed the codes had emerged from capitalist
mode of production. His articulation of ‘representational space’ is, however, more
difficult to summarize. Initially, he claimed that through imagistic associations
it ‘serves to maintain social relations in a state of coexistence and cohesion’, as a
result of the fact that it is what is ‘directly “lived” through associated images and
symbols’. But then he introduced a caveat, that it ‘conceals as much as it reveals’.7
‘Representational space’ or, as he put it the ‘historical space’ of religious origin, in
contrast to the abstractions of ‘representations of space’, must in some significant
way be an illusion, an imaginary object of some kind. Indeed, a significant part
of Lefebvre’s argument about representation and space concerns the function of
illusion (transparent or realistic) in obscuring the real conditions of social, spatial
practice.8
The target of the critiques raised by Harvey, Lévi-Strauss and Barthes was the
putative objectivity of standard spatial constructs of the day, as typified in the
work of geographers, urban planners, and architects, a model that was essentially
Euclidean and abstract, epitomized by linear perspective, objective, scientific and
Cartesian. In all three cases, there is at least an implicit intention to move beyond
methodological limitations, towards a fuller, more complex understanding of space,
in Harvey’s case explicitly with the objective of developing an ‘ontology’ that would
ground implementation of a more socially just policy through regarding the use of
‘spatial’ resource. Lefebvre’s approach, on the other hand, reduced the term ‘space’
to that of metaphor, critically accessible through a tripartite structure, according to
which Spatial practice (material/social) precedes conceptualisation and, crucially,
is as such inaccessible to conceptualisation other than through representations of
space or as representational space. These latter ‘conceptual’ spaces are differentiated
according to standard linguistic models, the former – representations of space –
‘syntactically’ through formally ordered, visual codes, the latter – representational
space – ‘semantically’ through associations of meaning, imaginary, and naturalized
relationships based on specular identification, etc. As such they propose a structure
of modes of spatial experience that translates across a spectrum including and
reconciling material, empirical practice, conceptual experience and imaginative
potential. It may be worth noting that this tripartite structure bears a strong
similarity (albeit with a contrary terminology) to Jacques Lacan’s registers of the
psyche: the Real (the ineffable), the Symbolic (signifier) and the Imaginary (signified/
signification), suggesting that while there may be no linear mediating sequence
between the abstract and the concrete, between material/social practice and our
means of conceptualising it, we may nonetheless recognize the varied and often
internally conflictual manner of our occupation of the world.9 Secondly, the model
that these studies propose implies that space, as we conceive and experience it,
is a form of projection mirroring our innermost desires and anxieties, for which
environmental manipulation is the form of a therapeutic construction of our self.
In each of the cases summarized above there has been the ambition to critique
the principle of space as an objective given in favour of the use of spatial concepts
and perceptions instantiations of social and cultural meaning. This paper is
concerned with the particular process through which the absolute or Cartesian
space that was the object of their critique came into being. It will not propose a
linear generative model as, say, from base to superstructure, except perhaps in
a more nuanced, recursive version. In this context, it will propose that absolute
space emerged from discourse through the medium of pedagogical method and
that it functioned, through the reductive process of orthogonal measurement
and diagrammatic representation, as the putatively neutral ground of judgement
between opposing and conflictual patterns of occupation, use and location. The
introduction of the regulating properties of discourse in this instance provides
a link between the requirements of objectivity and universality (initially with
reference to commerce and the terms of contracts) and (latterly) principles of
spatial description, exploitation, and control.
Habits of Mind
Long before Michel Foucault’s Le mots et les choses, Walter Ong had proposed
an historical taxonomy mapping the sequence of change in discursive practice,
albeit on material rather than structural grounds, that he qualified as follows: 1)
the Classical world, in which learning and memory were functions of listening; 2)
the Middle Ages, when they were functions of reading; and 3) the post-Gutenberg
age, in which the relative proliferation of texts had created special problems for
teaching, leading to simplification and diagrammatic forms of representation. What
is of particular importance for our purposes is the emergence of the third phase,
the technology for the dissemination of which Ong located in transformations in
the teaching of ‘dialectic’ (or logic) in the later Middle Ages.10 The initial conceptual
element, trope, or mental reflex he was concerned to articulate began in what
he described as the scholastic ‘passion for fixity and exactitude’ derived from the
material base of reliance on books – books containing the written and formalized
words of iconic authors, a memorized canon – rather than on spontaneous and
dynamic language of live oratory or speech. One may speak therefore of Ong’s
work initially as one of the history of this reifying/hypostasizing influence on
Western thought.11
Ong was concerned with the changes in objectives resulting from the extension
of education to wider sectors of the population after the middle of the thirteenth
century. The vehicle of this transformation, he claimed to be the Summulae logicales
(1246) of Peter of Spain, a textbook for use in the training of university students,
that came to constitute the first year or one-third of the arts faculties’ programme
throughout Europe.12 In contrast to previous practice it was highly technical and
formal, in line with the Scholastic focus on the use of logic for strength of argument
rather than as an agent of enquiry or a means for revealing truth. It provided a
skeletal version of logic in comparison with its Classical antecedents, and although
this was cited by its humanist critics in their battle to overcome its malignant
effect through a return to fundamentals (and to epistemological and metaphysical
questions), there were several modes of thinking it had initiated – which became
so engrained, automatic, natural, and to a degree unconscious – that they were not
subject to this Humanist reformist zeal. These included 1) the practical application
of probable claim as a form of certainty, 2) the use of reification as a dominant
trope, and 3) a tendency to quantification which resulted, crucially for arguments
presented here, in the use of spatialisation as a mode of pedagogical delivery.
Whereas Aristotle presented language as an open system enabling dialogue,
Peter of Spain set out a system for regulating and controlling discourse by way of
reference to quantity, in that the component elements to which he referred were
comparable by way of reference to the standardized surrogates of suppositional
logic, themselves weighed against each other, and which were most effectively
taught through images, ‘diagrammatically’, in ways which Aristotle’s logic could
not have been. Yet although this visual and quantified method of thinking was
inculcated through a European-wide curriculum, it was less apparent initially
because of the difficulty in the publication of handwritten manuscripts, and of
reproducing images. But with the advent of printing, including the possibility of
employing complex visual imagery through the use of woodcuts, charts, illustrations,
and geometric diagrams, a complex visual pedagogy began to appear with great
regularity. An early example of this can be found in Jean Lefèvre d’Etaples’s (1455–
1537) Grammatographia, in which he developed a schematisation of grammar in a
particularly visual way, that is, rather than in a traditionally ‘discursive’ format.
Such pedagogical strategies were universally taken up across Europe with
a profound effect on normative thought processes, not to mention on the re-
framing of objectives in the transformation of the Latin heritage that latterly
came to be called the Renaissance. To reiterate, this included an enhanced sense
of abstraction through the formal properties of substitution in suppositional logic
with its inherent and subtle turns of reification and quantification.
11.1
Demonstration
of an attempt
to schematize
grammar. From
Jean Lefèvre
d’Etaples,
Grammatographia
(Paris, 1529)
Secondly, the development of knowledge as formally complete, multi-

dimensional paradigmatic sets superseded aural, temporal, or linear narrative
(especially after the advent of print in 1450–55), when, through the development
of tables and diagrams, its inherently visual and spatial potential was realized.
These formally complete spatial constructs and diagrams are thus reifications of
what had been contingent, allusive, figured or dynamic modes of understanding,
communication, and conceptualisation, implication and inference. Thirdly,
conventions for differentiating classes of discourse according to their putative
objects were simplified and blurred in this process of abstraction and simplification,
such that ‘thought’ itself was universalized – no longer dependent on context-
specific narrative – and ‘reified’, made into a thing of fixed, formal constancy.13 This
had the effect, not only of reorganising the business of teaching and learning,
and not only of specifying what was taught and learned, but of shifting the status
of the learning or teaching ‘subject’, namely to place the ‘subject’ or individual
consciousness at the root and focal point of a universal paradigm of conceptual
order, giving the subject a clear perspective on the objects of knowledge, so to
speak, as opposed to a polar location in discursive reciprocity.
Objectivity
The spatialisation of knowledge was not, however, just limited to such paradigmatic
grammatical and logical sets, but was extended to subject matter itself, as can be
seen in the idea of the memory theatre, and in the many diagrammatic taxonomies
proposed for the study of nature.14 Again significantly, what we read and interpret
as ‘space’ in these representations were projections of discursive structure, to be
exact, projections of pedagogical practice. Where these developments can most
clearly be seen to engage with issues of representation and aesthetics is in the
theoretical writings of Leone Battista Alberti (1404–72), particularly in De pictura,
where, in the text of the third book, he advises artists that in order to construct a
proper narrative structure in a painting, they should:
take pleasure in poets and orators, for these have many ornaments in common
with the painter. Literary men, who are full of information about many subjects,
will be of great assistance in preparing the composition of an ‘historia’.
This was the focal point, so to speak, of Michael Baxandall’s discussion of the
background to De pictura, with particular reference to the term compositio, which
he believed to have been drawn directly from the rhetorical treatises.15 Both
Vitruvius16 and Cicero17 had used the term, but by ‘… compositio’, wrote Baxandall,
‘Alberti means a four-level hierarchy of forms within the framework of which one
assesses the role of each element in the total effect of a picture; planes go to
make up members, members go to make up bodies, bodies go to make up the
coherent scene of the narrative paintings … .’18 With this theoretical demand,
pictorial imagery was to be submitted to the same criteria as a well-constructed
11.2 Alberti’s
translation of
the arborescent
structure of
rhetorical
composition to
that of painting
as ‘compositio’
(after Baxandall)
text: a hierarchy of component elements were to be regulated so as to focus in a

clear and unambiguous way on the theme, argument or plot, in Alberti’s terms,
on a generic ‘historia’. Elsewhere, Baxandall noted that the term compositio was
used metaphorically ‘transferring to painting a model of organisation derived from
rhetoric itself. Compositio was a technical concept every schoolboy in a humanist
school had been taught to apply to language. It did not mean what we mean
by literary composition, but rather the putting together of the single evolved
sentence or period, this being done within the framework of a four-level hierarchy
of elements: words go to make up phrases, phrases to make clauses, clauses to
make sentences.19
Seeking to impose an organisational framework on painting Alberti (1404–72),
according to Baxandall’s argument, did not attempt to seek out a visual principle
de novo, but utilized the compositional commonplace of this arborescent structure
in a new application. This had the benefit of enabling him to articulate a radically
new principle in the development of visual practice by organisational means that
were already entirely and generally familiar to anyone with an education. What we
shall now attempt to demonstrate is the way in which this same formal structure
came to dominate the seminal organisation of ‘space’ in the church architecture of
Filippo Brunelleschi (1337–1446).
Architecture
Unity in the architecture of Brunelleschi is achieved by two associated means,

initially through the resolution of geometry in the composition of volumes,
and latterly by the submission of all geometric form to a single underlying
system, by which visual rigour was developed through a consistent, unbroken
geometric resolution of volumetric composition. At San Lorenzo, the plan of
which he inherited (and which recapitulates a fourteenth century Florentine
tradition), Brunelleschi’s innovations were largely syntactical and limited to
controlling the progression of scale from aisle chapels to nave to crossing to
the dome as a unified composition.
At the most intimate scale of the chapels, a

motif of order-plus-arch is established as an arch
inscribed within pilasters and entablature. This
motif is projected across the aisles to determine the
nave colonnade, as the form and dimension of the
pilasters and the ‘stylobate’ on which they stand.
But whereas the side chapel pilasters support an
entablature, the nave columns are capped with
‘dosserets’ (three dimensional derivatives of an
entablature), similar to those of the Portico of
Pompey. In a similar projected ‘movement’, the
vaults capping the aisles above these the pilasters
and entablature determine the form and dimension
of arches rising above the dosserets. In this way, to
summarize so far, Brunelleschi has created the first
stage of the overall compositional structure of the
church, initially in two dimensional format along the
chapel arcade, and projected to three dimensions by
11.3 San Lorenzo, Florence. View showing means of sail vaults as the colonnade separating the
progression of scale from side chapels to nave nave from the aisles.
(photo by author) The next stage in the composition involves further
development of the established motif, through
two interlocked scales through the positioning of
a second entablature, resting on/tangential to the
architraves of the colonnade arches. This establishes
visual continuity along the length of the nave. A third
magnitude of scale is achieved in the culmination of
the nave entablature on a projected ‘double height’
pilaster defining the corner of the transept. From
this pilaster springs elliptical arches that mark the
end of the nave and determine the geometry of the
transept and the pendentives of the crossing.
Brunelleschi’s innovation was twofold in the
introduction of Classical ornament to a traditional
Christian parti, along with the elaboration with an
ordination or compositional principle as an unbroken
hierarchy, in this instance of three traditional
volumetric entities and scales, bound into a single
narrative unity, into a single reified proto-space. Like
the arborescent order elicited by Baxandall’s in his
analysis of Alberti’s theory of painting, there is an
arborescent order, again a simple commonplace of
11.4 San Lorenzo, Florence. View showing contemporary pedagogical method, to be found
culmination of scaled progression to the in the ordinating, compositional principles of
dome crossing (photo by author) Brunelleschi’s work.
11.5
Brunelleschi’s
‘compositio’
Ornaments, or surfaces, severally go to make up motifs; motifs together structure

volumes; volumes together when so continuously ordinated adumbrate a concept
of space. Previous buildings had been composed of volumes, frequently allowing
for variation in the use of ornament and motif and certainly producing wonder in
contemplation of their drama and light. But it is only in the work of Brunelleschi that
the totality of the whole is submitted to and defined by an overarching ordinating
structure, an ordinating structure that is derived from language and provided a
signified for the signifier ‘compositio’.
Sto. Spirito represents the submission of the compositional idea of arborescent
form to a single underlying system, that fundamentally alters the building’s
semiotic. The forms of Sto. Spirito do not articulate elements of varied liturgical
practice, accumulated special interest or patronage in the provision of large-scale
ostentatious family chapels as had existed in San Lorenzo. There is a similar refocus
in its lighting, in that whereas the light entering through windows in the lunettes
over the aisle chapels of San Lorenzo in a sense balances that of the clerestory,
at Sto Spirito, the dominant source of light is from above. In these two parallel,
yet distinct compositional principles, uniform hierarchy and clear direction from
relative darkness to light, there is no confusion, disruption, interruption, or insertion
in the gradual development of dimension and clarity of direction from the level of
human occupation to that of the divine.
On the one hand, there is an architectural-historical theme that leads from this
point, specifically through the work of Bramante, towards the development of a
universal, hierarchical, arborescent compositional system based on interlocking
proportions, constituting the basis of what would become known as ‘space’. The
history of this development is extensively documented, largely in the context
of analogies with musical harmonies, none of which in the era prior to ‘well
temperament’ provided any basis for the comprehensive structures discussed here.
What did carry this development beyond metaphors of universal harmony was the
drive, initiated by late-mediaeval and Renaissance pedagogy, towards arborescent

order and classification according to three-dimensional visual diagrams. And it was
the mental habits involved in these practices that led to a predominance of truth
criteria that were metonymic, qualitatively uniform, quantitative and universally
applicable.
Correspondingly, this ordering system, developed by architecture in ever more
overt, rigorous and all-encompassing forms, generated a context of human actions
that was neutral and abstract, and against which, significantly, those actions
became above all measurable. As such, a progressively more ordered, ultimately
universal environment came to constitute an external baseline against which
registers of value with reference to ownership and behaviour were referenced to
a common standard and not subject to symbolically or qualitatively distinct, local
and historically contingent standards of judgement.
The critiques of ‘space’ discussed above were variously concerned with the ways
we describe and change the world as we perceive it and in which we live. Specifically,
these critiques were focused on the judgement of objectivity arising through the
reifications of absolute or Cartesian space. Architecture, in so much as it has been
grounded in these reifications and claims to objectivity since the Renaissance, has
served to naturalize and treat as objective that set of socially derived, historically
contingent principles of order based on measurement and calculation, specifically
with reference to the calculation of value. Also, at the very base of the drive for
objectivity was the desire to overcome dispute and confusion arising out of the
context of historically contingent events and material conditions. Architecture’s
role has been to order and measure buildings and cities, such that through the
embodiment of calculation and the determination of value, those principles –
putatively external, objective and value neutral with reference to dispute resolution
and the allocation of resources – are rendered ‘objectively’. Architecture and its
allied professions have represented and manipulated the material basis for the
social contract in a way that Harvey has judged to be socially unjust. Yet it is not at
all clear that principles of spatial order based on interest or culturally singular forms
of practice would amount to anything more than a precipitous politicisation of all
areas of material opposition – not to mention conflict – as a relentless discourse of
power.
Alternatives to arborescent structure, with its principles of single, ‘root’ genesis,
progressive bifurcation and causal chronologies, have been proposed by Gilles
Deleuze and Félix Guattari in their concept of the rhizome.20 Utilising language
including geological metaphors and heterogeneous semiotic chains in place
of linear semantic continuities, the rhizome has been proposed in architectural
practice as a principle means of superseding hierarchical, perspectival (univocal)
space.21 As an historical phenomenon, however, the Deleuzian rhizome is of very
recent origin, without the comprehensive impact on discourse that was the case of
arborescence. What the rhizome has provided in the reconceptualization of space
is a permissiveness, a lack of hierarchy, and a multiplicity. Despite the distinctive
and ahistorical content of cultural practice reflecting rhizomatic principle, it is
effectively a phenomenon of Postmodernism. Without the establishment of a
common context, point of reference or frame of meaning, the rhizome does

not constitute the grounds for judgements regarding the deployment of urban
resources or social justice, but it may serve to represent the variety and power of
contesting forces.22
notes
1 David Harvey, Social Justice and the City (Baltimore MD, 1973).
2 Claude Lévi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology (Harmondsworth, 1968), pp. 132–63.
3 Roland Barthes, ‘Semiology and the Urban’, in Neil Leach (ed.), Rethinking Architecture:
A Reader in Cultural Theory (London, 1997), p. 166 (first given as a lecture to the Institute
of the History of Architecture at the University of Naples on 16 May 1967).
4 Henri Lefebvre, La Production de l’espace (Paris, 1974), trans. Donald Nicolson Smith,
The Production of Space (Oxford, 1991), p. 11.
5 Noam Chomsky, Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (Cambridge MA, 1966).
6 Lefebvre, Production, p. 34.
7 Lefebvre, Production, pp. 32 and 39.
8 Lefebvre, Production, p. 27ff.
9 Jacques Lacan, trans. Alan Sheridan, Ecrits: A Selection (London, 1977), p. 87.
10 Walter Ong, Ramus Method, and the Decay of Dialogue (Cambridge MA, 1958).
11 See Walter Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologization of the Word (London,
1982) for a discussion on the development of print and the shift from aural to
visual thought as a result of reading. Cf. Ivan Illich, In the Vineyard of the Text: A
Commentary to Hugh’s Didascalion (Chicago and London, 1993), p. 99: ‘Ordinatio:
visible patterns’…(on the use of visual signs identifying the function of a particular
section within the argument) ‘These signs … shift the task of perceiving the authors
ordinatio from the inner ear to the eye.’
12 Ong, Ramus, p. 55ff.
13 Baxandall provides another example of this phenomenon in his citation of the use
of proportion in Renaissance commercial discourse. Universality in the application
of proportional laws in architecture, painting, sculpture and music is obviously well
known, but what is interesting in Baxandall’s commentary is the citation of Piero
della Francesca’s use of a marketplace anecdote to explain the Rule of Three. Michael
Baxandall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy (Oxford and New York,
1988), pp. 94ff.
14 Frances Yates, The Art of Memory (London, 1966); Richard Patterson, ‘The Hortus
Palatinus and the Reformation of the World’, Journal of Garden History, vol. 1, nos. 1 and
2 (1982): 67–104, 179–202.
15 Michael Baxandall, Giotto and the Orators (Oxford, 1971), pp. 130–31; for a discussion
of the Vitruvian basis via Barbaro, of a ‘linguistic’ basis for the visual tradition, see Oskar
Bätschmann, ‘Diskurs der Architektur im Bild’, in Carlpeter Braegger (ed.), Architektur
und Sprache (Munich, 1982), pp. 11–48; Alberti, De statua ‘Dedication to Brunelleschi’;
Alberti, De pictura, 21; Baxandall, Giotto, pp. 130–31; Alberti, De pictura, ii 35; Vitruvius II
36 on members and modules.
16 Vitruvius III I, 1.
17 Cicero, De officiis I xxviii, 98.
18 Alberti, De pictura ii, 33–35.
19 Baxandall, Giotto, p. 131: quoting Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae ii, 18.
20 Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, trans. Brian Massumi (London
and New York, 2004); volume 2 of Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. of Mille Plateaux
(2 vols, Paris: Les Editions de Minuit,1972–80).
21 Deleuze and Guattari propose a distinction between two types of space, which they
name ‘smooth’ and ‘striated’.
22 For an introduction to this topic, see Andrew Ballantyne, Deleuze and Guattari for
Architects (Abingdon, 2007).
12
Gimme Shelter: Mass Incarceration and
the Criminology of the Housing Boom
Jonathan Simon
Introduction: Building a Culture of Control
Mostly when we think about the intersection of architecture and justice we

think of the connections between buildings, like courts, prisons, jails, and the
ideas, ideologies, and policies that shape both the scale and aspirations of these
buildings.1 Here I want to propose a different kind of connection. Just as buildings
belong to a ‘built environment’,2 and policies emerge not directly from interest
groups but out of broader ‘political rationalities’,3 we can learn something by
reflecting on how these influence each other.
My example in this chapter is ‘mass incarceration’. Between the 1970s and the
end of the twentieth century, the rate of imprisonment more than quadrupled in
the US (reflecting wide variations in states but in degrees of rapid growth).4 This
departure from a long term pattern of around 100 prisoners per 100 thousand
adults to more than 400 by 1999, was a product not of a sustained wave of crime,
but of policies that promoted the building of many new prisons and shifted
imprisonment from a penalty for individuals to one directed at whole categories of
criminal offenses with little regard for the individual circumstances or prospects.5
There is much to be said about mass incarceration in terms of the growth in the
number of and architectural qualities of prisons, as well as in the laws and public
policies enacted to address crime by sending more people to prison for longer
periods of time, but here I propose to reflect on the relationship between the
broader built environment and mass incarceration as a political rationality.
As geographer Mike Davis suggested some years ago, the rapid build up of prisons
should be understood as integral to a broader reconfiguration of metropolitan areas
in which different segments of society once located in fairly tight proximity in the
great industrial cities were now distributed in class segregated bands in a dispersed
metropolis. In Robert Park and Ernest Burgess’s influential sociological model of cities
(published in their 1925 book, The City) neighbourhoods were distributed in concentric
zones of different kinds of housing and business. Crime and other outcomes,
according to their pioneering urban sociology of Chicago and its neighbourhoods,

reflected these enduring social and economic functions, rather than the morals
of the often shifting populations that occupied them. In Davis’s revision of the
model for post-industrial cities like Los Angeles, prisons alternate with bands of
gated suburbs in the outer peripheries of the metropolis as a kind of ‘gulag rim’.6
Likewise, mass incarceration is not simply a criminal justice policy but part of a broad
reframing of approaches to governing social problems through incapacitating a
demographically substantial and economically expendable portion of the population.
If mass incarceration is situated at the intersection of the reterritorialization7
of the American urban built environment and a new framework of governing
anchored in fear of crime, as I will suggest, there is both bad and good news. On
the bad news front, this account helps explain why mass incarceration prisons
have been largely immune from popular criticism of their internal environments
or external outcomes despite clear and substantial evidence that they are
seriously failing.8 If the public legitimacy of mass incarceration is protected by a
precautionary mentality toward criminal offenders anchored in the economic and
moral economy of the new metropolitan spatial order, prisons and the policies that
keep people locked up will tend to become and remain a common denominator
of partisan politics and thus subject to little innovation or risk taking by political
leaders. We can talk about evidence based crime policies or the folly of building
prisons that cannot support rehabilitative programming or even adequate health
care, but no one will be listening much.
On the good news front, when we consider the alternative accounts of
mass incarceration – its constitutive role in contemporary racial formation and
stratification, and its utility to managing the disorders and instabilities engendered
by neoliberal economic governance – the claims made here about the built
environment and the political rationality behind mass incarceration may suggest
reason for optimism about change in the short to medium term. While change
in racialized fears or inequalities can be expected to be a slow and relatively
continuous process and the grip of neoliberalism seems tight (notwithstanding
the Great Recession), the metropolitan spacial order that dominated in the US
from the 1950s through the present, with its emphasis on home ownership, class
segregated suburbs (with greater distance from the city center associated with
higher prices and prestige), and heavy reliance on automobility, now appears to be
unsustainable as the price of energy goes up.
Mass Incarceration and the Criminology

of the Housing Boom
In seeking to explain the dramatic shift in the scale and nature of US imprisonment,
social scientists have identified several links between transformations in the built
environment, the reterritorialization of the American metropolitan areas toward
sprawling ‘edge cities’9 and mass private property (homeowner association
controlled residential subdivisions, shopping malls, office parks, etc.),10 and the
Mass Incarceration and the Criminology of the Housing Boom 179
formation of a political rationality in which incarceration was a central tool of

governance. These are not inconsistent but highlight different behavioral and
institutional connections.
The prison as a solution to surpluses of

marginal land and people
Geographer Ruth Gilmore’s spatial and economic study of California’s prison

boom documents the importance of a new economic ascendancy of finance,
construction, and real estate interests.11 The prison as a site of state investment
and legal power served to resolve several challenges to California’s economy
and existing spatial arrangement, posed by the restructuring of the national
manufacturing economy that began at the start of the 1980s. That restructuring
left a number of significant mismatches all over the US including California. In
cities that had enjoyed strong manufacturing economies the closure of many
factories left large amounts of urban real estate vacant and large numbers of
surplus industrial workers (soon followed by young people who had never been
industrial workers but lacked the education to move into higher paid service
sector jobs). The decade also saw considerable surplus in agricultural land as
the state’s water scarcity (itself a product of the state’s failure to invest in more
water infrastructure) forced more marginal agricultural land out of production.
At the same time, the political ascendance of anti-tax politics created a surplus
of public finance capital that could not be tapped for the kind of infrastructure
projects that the state had long indebted itself to build like universities, dams,
and highways.
Gilmore suggests that mass incarceration was perfectly situated to resolve the
disequilibriums created by deindustrialization. Land devalued for its agricultural
uses, but too far out from population centers to have residential real estate value,
was used for prisons financed by public borrowing, to house surplus urban (non)
workers whose race made them relatively easy to demonize into a dangerous class.
New political alliances helped transform sentencing laws to facilitate a ramping up
of imprisonment. New debt strategies permitted the state to finance construction
without committing to new taxes to pay them off. The overall result has been a
powerful engine of imprisonment.
The Haunted Suburbs
In his early and pioneering study of mass incarceration and the broader
transformations in understandings of and approaches toward crime that
produced it, David Garland gives a prominent role to the intersection of two
long term social trends in both countries, suburbanization and the rise of
female labour force participation.12 Suburbanization, the movement of families
with means from urban neighbourhoods proximate to employment, to more
remote ‘bedroom’ communities of housing, began under the ascendance of

a single earner family in which the higher wages of male workers allowed by
post-World War Two affluence, permitted their female spouses to ‘stay home’.
But a generation afterwards as suburbanization continued and intensified, the
wage squeeze on middle class jobs (particularly those without high education
requirements) made it increasingly common for women to join their spouses
in full time employment. But as female work force participation climbed the
suburban residential communities, which were supposed to be an anchor of
security in the lives middle class families, became empty and insecure feeling
during the day when both parents might be at work and children either in formal
after-school care or minding themselves (another source of insecurity).
In Garland’s complex and subtle account, the new residential and employment
context of middle class families made them highly sensitive to the rises in reported
crime that occurred in both the US and the UK beginning in the 1960s. According
to Garland, the formation of a new ‘common sense of high crime societies’ quickly
forged a new politics in which modern correctionalism and its relatively optimistic
presumptions about the capacity of penal treatment to rehabilitate citizens who
commit crime and ‘reintegrate’ them into society, became an anathema, and the
prison came to represent a consistently ‘tough’ approach to crime.
Homeownership and Reflexive Risk
One could contrast Gilmore’s and Garland’s accounts as economic and cultural
respectively, although each deals carefully with both economic and cultural
issues. Gilmore identifies the prison with macros flows of investment in land and
buildings while Garland focuses on the phenomenology of crime as it becomes
part of the everyday experience of home owners. In recent work I’ve suggested
that homeownership as a legal relationship played an important role in mediating
between the sensibilities of citizens on the one hand, and investment flows on the
other.13
When violent crime in the big cities became a national problem because of the
nationwide ban on alcoholic beverages known as ‘Prohibition’ beginning in 1920, it
generated a sustained political and media mobilization that bears clear comparison
to our more recent ‘war on crime’;14 yet this original crime war had relatively little
impact on the routines of American life or on the structures of political power.
At least part of the reason, I would suggest, may lie in the fact that Americans in
the 1920s were overwhelmingly renters, but by when violent crime in the cities
returned as a national political issue in the 1960s Americans were on their way to
being a super-majority of homeowners.
There is nothing new, of course, in the political importance of this watershed in
economic life. Historians and political scientists have long recognized the potency
of homeownership as a pull to the right for many Americans whose labour market
role might suggest a left of center set of policy preferences, but whose identity
as a homeowner has made taxes, schools, and yes, violent crime important. As
compared to renters, homeowners face a non-transferrable economic risk in

the price of their home. Outside of periods of great financial calamity, the value
of homes has generally advanced (and in recent history quite considerably) but
specific properties are subject to local conditions that can pull them out of the
general trend, including taxes, school decline, and violence, but also of course, the
loss of a major nearby employer, an environmental exposure (in real time or the
revealing of historic toxicity).
Home ownership in the twentieth century moved from being a reflection of
economic security to a platform for building it. In the 1920s, when real estate
boomed along with the new financial and corporate economy, the average
homeowner was a middle aged or even older person for whom the privately
owned home was a form of comfort and a way of saving for retirement. By the
1950s, the average homeowner was becoming a young family, for whom the
privately owned home was a vehicle for building wealth and a form of debt. In
between the New Deal forged new legal instruments, like the 30 year fixed rate
mortgage, and the tax deduction for mortgage interest, designed to socialize
some of the cost of homeownership, and make it possible for young families
to borrow the private money to buy in the expectation that growing earnings
would allow them to pay it off while building equity and enjoying the autonomy
of owning their residence.
Much of this new investment went into new suburban housing rather than
recuperating blighted central city housing. Historians have shown that fear of racial
integration and its effects on housing prices was one driving factor, but so likely
were the economic benefits of driving new home building which by the 1970s
had become the major motor driving American economic recoveries following
recessions.
While the privately owned home was promoted as a form of security for both
homeowners and their communities, the new arrangement came with a built in
risk. Should local conditions make the value of the home go down, the money
owed on the home through the mortgage could quickly become much more than
the house was actually worth. Threats to home values came from many sources,
from plant closures (especially in smaller towns), to new urban infrastructures (like
freeways), changes in the racial demography of the neighbourhood in segregated
societies, and environmental disasters.15
One of the most prominent threats to property values comes from crime which
inevitably occurs in a specific locale and when publicized, which the most serious
crimes frequently are, can often leave a ‘reputational stain’ on the vicinity. Crime
has long been linked in both elite and popular discourse to neighbourhoods
and their character. Crime diminishes the value of a house if it suggests that a
neighbourhood is at risk for crime. This creates a distinct risk sensitivity to crime for
the homeowner as compared to renters. Both may share a concern with being an
actual victim, but only the homeowner is exposed to risk of the neighbourhood’s
reputation for crime getting worse.
Fear of crime began to go up in the United States during the 1950s, even
before reported crime rates began to rise steadily, due to the increase in home
ownership experienced in that decade after the long break in the real estate
market from the Depression to World War Two. Returning World War Two
veterans were particularly favoured for loans for new suburban housing. This
surplus crime risk sensitivity in homeowners becomes more acute once crime
has become particularly salient to government and media. The rise of reported
crime in the 1960s and 1970s, amplified by politicians and the media, resulted
in a securitization of new real estate, so that housing was increasingly marketed
through its security. But the securitization of housing, by promising more
security, also made the value of the house even more vulnerable to value loss
through crime risk. Perversely the more the value of the house was tied up in
its security, the lower the threshold at which signs of crime risk could diminish
its value. Not just actual crime, but signs of disorder could damage the value of
the house. By the 1980s and 1990s, new housing estates almost everywhere,
but particularly in the hot real estate markets of the sunbelt, were taking forms
that visibly manifested their security attributes, especially the ubiquitous gated
entryway. This in-security dynamic also helps to explain why housing growth
has pushed relentlessly toward the urban periphery. It is not only that land is
cheap, but green fields come without a reputation for crime.
Learning from the criminology of the housing boom
Whatever account one might favor for why America in the era of mass home
owning affluence became committed to mass incarceration, and indeed all of
them might play some role in explaining not only the general trend but the
enormous variation we see across the United States, several general observations
can be made. They start with the place that the home, owned (mostly on
borrowed money), now plays (or at least did until the great financial crisis of
2008) in the lives of middle class Americans. It is supposed to provide not only
shelter against the elements, but shelter against financial instabilities and shelter
against criminal violence. It is endangered by anything that makes it, the home,
less valuable to potential buyers, or less affordable by its present owners. Thus
the privately owned home in the current political economy anchors a whole
approach to citizenship.
First, the respatialization of Americans from urban renters to suburban
homeowners has increased the level of crime based insecurity and the role it
plays in public life. Irony abounds here, naturally. People were encouraged to
buy homes and move to the suburbs (and national policy tended to merge the
two in any event) precisely so they could enjoy more security, but whatever gain
in real or even imagined everyday security they or their children experienced in
their new homes came along with a permanent adjustment in the level of overall
commitment to the project of security from crime that made itself felt in the way
many Americans organized their daily routines.
As architecture and film scholar Renée Tobe has noted specifically about the US
investment in the home:
In the postwar period, media and advertising spread the notion that all
Americans should and could own their own homes. House owners desired
communities and felt nostalgia for the past. Reliance on reason and rationality
in all things formed part of the creation of America and the development of the
‘American way.’ The ultimate mode of dwelling came to represent the ultimate
mode of living.
But as Tobe argues, the idealized security of the home constantly invites the
invasion of insecurity and even terror, a theme worked and reworked in the popular
film and television creations of US auteur David Lynch.16
Nowhere has this been more visible than in the policing of childhood, which
has moved in slightly over a generation from a tradition of essentially free-range
childhood (as author and anti-fear activist Lenore Skenazy calls it)17 for all but
the children of the most wealthy or famous, to a gated childhood of varying
enrichment and pleasure for children of virtually all classes. It also goes along, with
a more general gating of public and private spaces, including work places which
have become a maze of secured access spaces and ‘smart cards’.
Second, in ways that architects can help us to define more precisely, reversing
this securitization of American could expand enormously the degrees of freedom
available to architects and builders to realize other objectives in the built
environment generally and in many of our most important and beleaguered
institutions.
The gated community, which has been the gold standard of residential security
in the United States (the kind of place where Tiger Woods lives, but cheaper
knock offs exist for many), is a design configuration that deliberately frustrates
many features that would be otherwise desirable, for example the ability to walk
to stores and other business, or even, public transportation. The huge costs to
our national health care budget (disguised because of our hodgepodge of public
and private insurance schemes) of obesity and obesity related chronic illness
created by gating gets some discussion today, and almost everybody agrees that
integrated use walkable cities would be better, but almost nobody connects it to
the gating of the contemporary urban landscape and the mandate that security
requires complete physical segregation from public access. However to question
what Garland usefully described as the ‘common sense’ of high crime societies
is to stop being heard altogether even if your point is just a step away from the
current consensus.18
Schools, designed to maximize security by locking down campuses make it
difficult for students to resolve their own disputes as well as pursue many of the
learning experiences that accompany formal education.19 Security in schools
often sucks priority, funding, staff, and attention from the educational mission.
Furthermore, by reducing the distance between schools and criminal justice
agencies, indeed in many schools placing law enforcement officials directly into
the school campus, schools have increased the risk that students will end up
being recruited into deeper engagement with criminal justice and ultimately
incarceration. Nor is it clear that this kind of securitization even protects young
people from becoming victims of violence.20
Of course prisons, and to a lesser extent courts, which are more commonly the
focus at the intersection of architecture and justice, would also benefit enormously
from a downscaling of mass incarceration. California is the nation’s most extreme
example but its pathologies are broadly present in America’s distended penal
systems. In California despite building twice as many prisons in the past thirty
years than in the previous 120 years of statehood, California entered this decade
with prisons at over 200 per cent of capacity, inside of which long term deficit of
medical and mental health care had created a humanitarian crisis that required
federal court intervention.21 Among the many reasons for California’s terrible
overcrowding was the practice of returning tens of thousands of released prisoners
for relatively minor violations, underscoring the utter failure of imprisonment to
either deter or rehabilitate as currently practiced. The failure to rehabilitate is not
surprising given the priority given to physically segregating prisoners from the
community. A system unable to keep track or respond to even florid symptoms
of mental and physical illness could hardly be expected to employ contemporary
techniques of behavioral therapy or education. Once hyper-overcrowding
becomes an acceptable norm even the pretense to providing an opportunity at
self betterment for those prisoners willing was dropped. Moreover, once people
are sent to prison with little consideration for their individual condition, prison
populations begin to concentrate individuals with high levels of chronic illness
(often linked to drugs and other life-style choices).
While California’s degree of overcrowding and the background level of chronic
illness are at the high end of American states, these widely shared traits are an
expensive little noted feature of the US prison model. California’s crisis, ironically,
gives it an important opportunity to rethink what prison and jail spaces should
look like and do. Much of the action is already taking place at the county level
where new jails in some communities have emphasized treatment and education
in their very design as well as facilitating the engagement of the community, all
features expelled from the prisons of mass incarceration.
Third, as costly as mass incarceration has been and as powerfully rooted
in American life as it has become, the relationship criminologists have drawn
between the built environment and mass incarceration is one that may be less
intractable than other sources of insecurity and imprisonment. The other way of
looking at the sources of US mass incarceration emphasizes the significance of
racial stratification. Mass incarceration is, on this account, a political tool kit for
managing racial hierarchy and subordinating non-white and especially African
American citizens. Evidence abounds that the effects of mass incarceration are
heavily shaping racial stratification and reproducing the disadvantages of the
racialized past. It is also clear that the political origins of the war on crime lie in the
complex politics of party competition around race in the 1960s and 1970s.
If mass incarceration is the ‘new Jim Crow’ in Michelle Alexander’s compelling
thesis, an updated version of the legal framework that kept African Americans in
separate and unequal lives in the South until the Civil Rights movement broke
its back in the 1960s, it is difficult to see any powerful obstacles to its continued
grip on American life given that racial justice movements are even weaker today
than they were a generation ago.22 The same is true with Neoliberalism, the other
structural source generally pointed to as a source of mass incarceration.23 To the
extent that the embrace of prisons is driven by deregulated labour markets and
increasingly pro-business governments (whether in pursuit of legitimacy or social
control) there is little reason to expect any near term change and indeed unless
the present economic crisis dictates new commitments to regulation (rather than
a marginal increase in some sectors like banking) and to collective risk institutions,
we would expect the prison to spread to regions that remain relatively ambivalent
(such as Europe, Asia, and Latin America).
Finally, if mass incarceration is dependent, through various mechanisms, on the
peculiar model of residential development aimed at homeownership increasingly
dispersed in expanding metropolitan regions, there is good reason to believe
that it has reached its natural limits and is in the process of reversing (to some
extent). The current economic crisis is unlikely to rewrite the rules of economic
management in the US, but the long pause it has hit on sprawl and the retraction of
homeownership as hundreds of thousands have lost homes due to inability to pay
mortgages on loans now worth more than the property they were made on, has
placed this model under new scrutiny. The economic uncertainty also underscores
the benefits of renting which seems to be making a comeback after shrinking for
decades.
Long term, government policies aimed at reducing carbon emissions and
market prices driven by energy shortages may align to shift the American built
environment away from the current dominance of sprawl and physical segregation
of uses. More reliance on high density housing accessible to public transportation
and schools will drive some families back to central cities, or at least inner ring
suburbs, while the advantages of flexibility may quickly turn the necessity of
renting (due to the still tight lending market in the US and UK, Scotland, and
Ireland) into a virtue.
If the criminology of the housing boom is correct the US should be entering
a period where violent crime (which conveniently remains at levels substantially
lower than in the last decades of the previous century), has less resonance in the
built environment. That does not mean of course, that mass incarceration, or the
legal and social policies that promote it will disappear quickly, or that fear of crime
will easily loosen its grip on American identities and routines. Both of those will
require positive action by active citizens, including criminologists, lawyers, and
architects, ready to challenge received common sense when it comes to building,
dwelling, raising our children, running our organizations, etc.
Conclusion
Looking mostly at the United States, one can draw a relationship between the
built environment associated with the long boom in residential housing and the
epic expansion of imprisonment that punishment and society scholars call ‘mass
incarceration’. This chapter lays out alternative accounts, or criminologies of the
housing boom. The forces for change in our built environment, especially the shift
toward lower carbon life styles for the middle class and the corollary high prices
of energy, could also open the door to rethinking what seem to be entrenched
commitments to mass incarceration as a form of security.
This pattern is not limited to the United States. Some European countries show
signs of a similar affinity between housing booms and prison booms (especially
the UK, and Ireland, but also the Netherlands, Spain, and Greece). Going forward,
architects, lawyers, and criminologists have a role in warning societies about
the consequences of promoting American style home ownership and suburban
sprawl. Indeed, even in countries where housing expansion has been less vigorous
(before the collapse) we see populist pressures to respond to broad insecurities
with harsh punishment and treatment for those demonized as criminal threats (for
example, the Roma).
Indeed, architects, lawyers and criminologists have a distinctive mission in
addressing the lingering fear of crime, which even if it is losing much of its motive
force, will remain capable of defining expectations for change as well as active
opposition from powerful interest groups in a position to defend the old ideas of
security. If fear remains highly salient to middle class routines, we can expect that
the new metropolitan terrain, even as it conforms to pressures for greater density
and lower energy consumption, will remain gated and exclusionary. Ideas about
how to reinvigorate the self ordering and reassuring capacity of neighbourhoods
have been circulating since Jane Jacobs’s classic polemic against 1960s urban
redevelopment planning.24 Since the early 1990s police strategies in New York and
a few other cities appear to have resulted in drops in reported crime even more
dramatic than the general crime decline recorded across the United States.25 If
the mass incarceration prison figured as the dark anchor of the valorized safe and
gated residential community of the 1980s and 1990s, defining the model of public
safety to go along with reinvigorated urban neighbourhoods with high density
and high mobility is the challenge we face.
notes
1 See John Bender, Imagining the Penitentiary: Fiction and the Architecture of the Mind in
18th Century England (Chicago, 1987).
2 See Denise L. Lawrence and Setha M. Low, ‘The Built Environment and Spatial Form’,
Annual Review of Anthropology, vol. 19 (1990): 453–505.
3 The term comes from Michel Foucault who uses it to describe the discursive
formations that can productively shape and seed public policies. See, Foucault,
Omnes et Singulatun: Towards a Criticism of ‘Political Reason’, Tanner Lecture, Stanford
University (Stanford, 1978).
4 The data since the 1980s is available here: <http://www.albany.edu/sourcebook/pdf/
t6292009.pdf>.
5 David Garland, The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society
(Chicago, 2001); Bruce Western, Punishment and Inequality (New York, 2006).
6 Mike Davis, Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster (London, 1998).
7 I draw on this term from cultural studies to capture the way built environment, legal
authority, and social norms are all embodied in ‘territory’ as a spatial order. The term
was used by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari to describe the process by which a
particular order of power is broken down and replaced by another, for example in
the process of colonization or conquest (picture American troops pulling down the
statue of Sadam Hussein in Baghdad during the American occupation of that city). See
Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism an Schizophrenia, trans. Robert Hurley,
Mark See and Helen Lane (New York, 1972).
8 The literature on the criminological failings of prisons, often and problematically
summarized through ‘recividivism’, or the rate at which released prisoners return
to prison within a standard period after release, is now significant an excellent and
reasonably recent summary can be provided in Joan Petersilia, When Prisoners Come
Home: Parole and Prisoner Reentry (New York, 2003). The failings of prison design
have been brought out by recent litigation in California which has documented both
catastrophic failures to provide safe, secure, and healthy environments for prisoners,
and a failure to reduce the potential criminal risk posed by those released from prison,
see Plata v. Schwarzenegger, 3 Judge Court final opinion and order, upheld, Brown v.
Plata, 09–1233.
9 Joel Garreau, Edge City: Life on the New Frontier (New York, 1991).
10 Clifford D. Shearing and Phillip C. Stenning, ‘From the Panopticon to Disney World’,
Perspectives in Criminal Law: Essays in Honour of John LL.J. Edwards, edited by Anthony
N. Doob and Edward L. Greenspan, Q.C. (Toronto, 1984); Evan MacKenzie, Privatopia:
Homeowners Associations and the Rise of Residential Private Government (New York,
1996).
11 Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crises, and Opposition in Globalizing
California (Berkeley CA, 2007).
12 Garland, The Culture of Control, p. 130.
13 Jonathan Simon, ‘Consuming Obsessions: Housing, Homicide and Mass Incarceration
1950–1980’, The University of Chicago Legal Forum, vol. 2010, p. 140.
14 Marie Gottschalk, The Prison and the Gallows: The Politics of Mass Incarceration in
America (Cambridge, 2006).
15 It was this local risk that, in part, mortgage securitization was intended to eliminate.
Historically, other than in the Great Depression, national real estate values had
risen, with local declines out paced by local gains. Mortgage instruments mix bits
of mortgage payment streams from all over the nation together in one instrument.
As compared with holding the actual mortgages from a single area (which could be
quite risky), these instruments promised gain with far less risk. Unfortunately the same
instruments came with a bevy of new risks because of the moral hazards built into the
model (i.e., the opportunities for some participants to pass off risks at no price), some
of which proved catastrophic.
16 Renée Tobe, ‘Frightening and Familiar: David Lynch’s Twin Peaks and the North
American Suburb’, in Visual Culture and Tourism, ed. David Crouch and Nina Lubbren
(Berg, 2003), pp. 241–58.
17 See, Lenore Skenazy, Free Range Kids: Giving Our Kids the Childhood We Had Without
Going Nuts with Worry (New York, 2009).
18 Garland, Culture of Control, p. 163.
19 Calvin Morrill and Michael Musheno, Youth Conflict: Culture and Control in a Multiethnic
High School (forthcoming).
20 In January 2012 the shooting of an eigth grade boy named Jamie Gonzalez inside his
school in Brownsville, Texas, by police officers after he brandished what turned out
to be a pellet gun raised the question of whether police were protecting anyone but
themselves. William Welch and Carolyn Pesce, ‘Parents question lethal force on 8th
grader with pellet gun’, USA Today, 5 January 2012, <http://www.usatoday.com/news/
nation/story/2012-01-04/texas-student-shot/52379064/1>.
21 In 2009 a special three-judge federal court ordered California to reduce its prison
population by as many as 40,000 prisoners in order to achieve overcrowding that was
only 137% of capacity. This order was upheld by the US Supreme Court in Brown v.
Plata, 09–1233 (2011).
22 Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in an Age of Colorblindness
(New York, 2009).
23 Bernard Harcourt, The Illusion of Free Markets: Punishment and the Myth of Natural Order
(Cambridge MA, 2011).
24 Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (New York, 1961).
25 Franklin Zimring, The City that Became Safe: New York’s Lessons for Urban Crime and its
Control (New York, 2011).
13
Drawing Conclusions: Fort Rupert,
British Columbia in 1863
John Bass
Introduction
Colonial settlement in British Columbia was built on its share of broken promises
and the province of today bears a legacy of contested space. On BC’s Vancouver
Island, where the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) settled on land long used by the
region’s First Nations’ peoples for their own settlements, property rights treaties
between the HBC and fourteen Vancouver Island First Nations were signed to
defuse turf tensions. However, the colonial, and later, provincial obligations to
their First Nations co-signatories were ignored or deferred. Settlers continued to
settle and, in the eyes of those judging land claims through the lens of British
property law, their settlements made scores of subsequent Native land claims
moot.
Using archival photographs and other documents as a source of data and
architectural documentation and analysis as a tool of enquiry, we will examine
one such contested space – Fort Rupert, British Columbia – a coastal outpost
of the HBC’s Pacific Coast operations in the mid-nineteenth century, and
home to the Fort Rupert Kwakiutl Band, members of the Kwakwaka’wakw First
Nation.1 The data strongly suggests an act of injustice (first by the Colonial,
and later, the Provincial, governments of British Columbia) was perpetrated
on this community. This research uses the agency of architectural analysis and
representation directed at events that unfold in time to provide new knowledge
and methods of communication to the Fort Rupert Kwakiutl, who continue to
seek redress.
To summarize: In 1851, representatives of the HBC and two families of the
Kwakiutl people who settled adjacent to the fort signed a treaty establishing the
property claims of Colonial and Kwakiutl groups, temporarily defusing growing
tensions between the two. Twelve years later, a property survey that ignores
this treaty is approved and private land is created, or ‘preempted’.2 Within a few
years plus or minus of this pivotal year, several graphic documents are produced
describing the spatial organization of fort and Kwakiutl village. These documents
are the central pieces of evidence that we have studied in support of ‘specific
claims’ cases made by the descendants of the Kwakiutl people who signed the
two treaties. The work is similar to the methods of context building employed by
art historians and archaeologists – a search for circumstantial evidence concealed
within the portrayal and artifacts of everyday events – methods that produce
arguments fusing interpretation and fact.3
In the context of the Fort Rupert research, photographers began to make
images there as early as the 1860s. These include several extraordinary images
that portray the early years of its colonial and Kwakiutl settlement. An archive of
photographs taken over six decades describes the gradual processes of spatial,
material, and social assimilation that occurred there. An analysis of the spatial
dissolution and social assimilation of the paired colonial and Kwakiutl settlements
at Fort Rupert led to a set of specific legal issues that originated in the 1851 treaty
and are as yet unresolved.4 This unresolved legal status of territory became the
real question of project described here.
Fort Rupert, 1849–86
Thirty years after its invention in 1839, the camera was no longer ‘a gadget for
an elite’, but instead was being used for police filing, war reporting, military
reconnaissance … anthropological records (often, as with the Indians in the
United States, accompanied by genocide) …5
The historical context of this research is set in the mid-nineteenth century, when the
British began to occupy the aboriginal territories along the Pacific Coast of Canada.
The early colonists were vastly outnumbered.6 Tensions inevitably developed
between the two groups. Among them were spatial conflicts that arose as the
colonists settled, built cabins, farms, cities and forts on land used for millennia by
Native people for settlements and food harvesting. Where the proximity of the two
groups was especially close, the Colonial government defused tense situations by
negotiating fourteen separate but identical treaties with their Native neighbours.
The treaty was representative of British property law, of which the Native people
would have had little understanding since their practices of ownership were
seasonal, and not absolutely fixed to pieces of land. In addition to this fundamental
problem, the language of the treaties is confusing, and two of the treaty’s clauses
are key in this regard. In the first, the Native people agreed
…to surrender, entirely and for ever (sic), to James Douglas, the agent of the
Hudson’s Bay Company in Vancouver Island, that is to say, for the Governor,
Deputy Governor, and Committee of the same, the whole of the lands situated
and lying between McNeill’s Harbour and Hardy Bay, inclusive of these ports, and
extending two miles into the interior of the Island.
For surrendering their land to the HBC, the treaty assured that
Drawing Conclusions: Fort Rupert, British Columbia in 1863 191
…our village sites and enclosed fields are to be kept for our own use, for the use of
our children, and for those who may follow after us and the land shall be properly
surveyed hereafter. It is understood, however, that the land itself, with these small
exceptions, becomes the entire property of the white people for ever (sic); it is also
understood that we are at liberty to hunt over the unoccupied lands, and to carry
on our fisheries as formerly.7
That the colonial government did not follow through on their agreement to
survey the ‘village sites and enclosed fields’ is the basic fact from which this
research emanates. If they had done so immediately, many Kwakiutl ‘properties’
that were lost to preemption would have been preserved. While the Fort Rupert
Douglas Treaty was signed in 1851, it wasn’t until nearly twenty years later that
their first village site was surveyed, and it took another decade and a half before
it was reserved. By that time, their key settlements – level ground near river
inlets or shorelines, the most desirable and accessible space in this remote and
mountainous area – had become the private property of white settlers through
the preemption process.8
What follows here is a micro-analysis aimed at helping to make the case for
reclaiming a small but important piece of land taken by this nineteenth and early
twentieth century policy. This geography is limited to the space of the Fort Rupert
Kwakiutl Band, and more still to just one of their many specific land claims – that of
the southern shore of Beaver Harbour, where one hundred acres of their land was
preempted by an occupant that demonstrably settled only eight acres, subsuming
a Kwakiutl village in the process.
Timeline of Fort Rupert’s early spatial evolution
Described below are the key events in a seventeen year period beginning in 1849.
The timeline identifies key data in the form of maps, sketches, surveys, charts and
images. Supported by narrative accounts, these visual documents made it possible
to develop a graphic analysis of the configuration of and change over time to the
Fort Rupert’s Hudson’s Bay Company fort and surrounding Kwakiutl village.
1849–55: The Hudson’s Bay Company builds Fort Rupert. By 1855, staff at the
fort is reduced to ‘a dozen men and their dependents’.9
1850: Magistrate Dr. John Sebastian Helmcken describes the Kwakiutl settlement
at Fort Rupert: ‘This Rupert village contained at least two thousand five hundred
bodies, i.e. men, women and children …’ ‘The Quocholds … occupied the north side
of the fort.’ And ‘The Queechars … occupied the south side.’10
1851: The HBC signs two separate but identical treaties (so-called Douglas
Treaties) with 16 ‘Quakeolth’ [Kwakiutl] and 12 ‘Queackar’ [K’umuyoyi] chiefs.
The Royal Navy surveys Beaver Harbour (Fig. 13.1), and depicts in some detail
the Kwakiutl settlement flanking the fort to the east and west, corroborating
Helmcken’s narrative account.
13.1 1851
Admiralty Chart of
Beaver Harbour,
by GH Mansell RN
UKHO Admiralty
Chart 2153
series A1 (1851)
(courtesy of the
UK Hydrographic
Office)
1857: The HBC takes stock of its Fort Rupert holdings. A valuation produces
detailed graphic descriptions of the locations and functions of the fort’s physical
elements, including a plan of the fort with dimensions.
1860: HMS Plumper Captain Richards estimates the Kwakiutl population at Fort
Rupert to be 700 to 800.11
1862: HBC Chief Trader Finlayson requests ‘preemption’ of 100 acres at Fort
Rupert.
1863: A fire destroys four K’umuyoyi houses and threatens the fort. These houses
were located very near to the northeast walls of the fort’s coal yard.12 Surveyors
complete a ‘Plan, One Hundred Acres of Land, Preempted for The Honourable
Hudson’s Bay Company, at Fort Rupert V.I.’ (Fig. 13.3)13
Two Fathers from the Catholic Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate build a
mission church and school at Fort Rupert. Originally called the Mission of Assumption,
it was renamed St Michael’s after the mission moved to nearby Harbledown Island in
1865. Father Fouquet, who said that the Kwakiutl ‘were very far from heaven’, perhaps
best summed up underlying causes motivating the move.14
c. 1864: A panoramic image of the fort and Kwakiutl village and two group
portraits of British Naval offices and Fort Rupert Kwakiutl people are made (Figs
13.5 and 13.6).
December 1865: The HMS Clio shells the Fort Rupert Kwakiutl village. ‘I told
him he should have a certain time to give the men up, and if they were not then
forthcoming, we should open fire from the ship and destroy the village. At the
expiration of the time appointed we fired upon the Ranch, and totally destroyed it,
with 50, or 60 large Canoes …’15
May 1866: Captain Edwin Porcher of the HMS Sparrowhawk makes several
watercolour paintings of Fort Rupert, two of which depict the fort and a destroyed
village. Porcher’s account of the visit indicates that the village was in great disrepair.
‘(o)n the West side there was an Indian Ranch, but the greater number of the
Indians were at the time away fishing. Only a few of the houses had been rebuilt
since they were destroyed by the Clio in December last for refusing to give up some
murderers, and the marks of the hatchets on the canoes were still visible.’16
1879–80: A survey of land allotted for the first Fort Rupert reserves is produced
for Indian Reserve Commissioner Gilbert Sproat. The survey again confirms the
presence of Kwakiutl houses on land preempted by the HBC in 1863. According to
Robert Galois: ‘The reserves allotted by Sproat covered: 1) the area between Fort
Rupert and the eastern limit of the section of land sold by the HBC to the Oblate
and here identified as R.C. Mission, and 2) the area west of the limit of the HBC pre-
emption and the aforementioned Oblate mission land. The first reserve covered the
majority of Tsaxis village, however the houses east of the Fort buildings remained
on land owned by the HBC.’17
1881: Edward Dossetter takes a panoramic photograph of fort and village, the
first photograph of Fort Rupert with an unassailable provenance and attribution.
Houses rebuilt after the 1863 fire are evident, as are many significant differences in
the material and technology of the Kwakiutl settlement.18
1886: Land transfer survey completed, making Robert Hunt the owner of land
preempted by the HBC. The resulting survey contains several new and important
pieces of programmatic and spatial information that can be correlated to other
graphic documents.
1888: The last of the early Fort Rupert Kwakiutl Band’s reserves are surveyed and
formalized, and do not include land occupied by the ‘old houses’ referred to in the
1886 Hunt survey.
1914: The Provincial government’s MacKinnon-McBride Commission hears the

land claims of representatives of the Fort Rupert Kwakiutl. Only one of their 24 land
claims petitions was honored, either due to the request being ‘unreasonable’ or
because the land in question had become private property.
1919: George Hunt, son of Robert Hunt and Franz Boas’s collaborator, makes a
census and illustrates it with a plan diagram he titles ‘as Fort Rupert was in the year
1866.’ (Fig. 13.7)
Collecting, sifting and seeing
The narrative implicit in this timeline was distilled by a review of hundreds of texts,
images, and other documents produced over more than seventy years. The first
work we undertook was to derive from the images a body of precise measured
drawings of changes over time to the settlement at Fort Rupert. To do this, we
began by constructing more than two-dozen plates that correlate buildings and
time across the photographic record.19 The plates describe the position of the
camera, significant built elements and image provenance. The images traced
changes to the HBC fort and Kwakiutl village – changes to and disappearance of
buildings, and the construction of new buildings, fortifications and fences, bridges,
platforms, public spaces and house poles.
The images led to the creation of phased site plans and other detailed
drawings that trace the gradual dissolution of the space of the fort and
its merger with the space of the Kwakiutl settlement (Fig. 13.2). All of this
13.2 Diagrams
of the settlement
at Fort Rupert in
1850, 1863, 1900
and 1930 (drawing
by Jenny Xu,
Heather Maxwell
and author)
work was formatted in a book entitled Naming and Claiming: The Fort Rupert
Reconstruction Project.20 The spatial dissolution of fort and village was occurring
simultaneously to the hardening of legal distinctions regarding ownership.
That photographs by the year 1900 give the appearance of an amalgamated
community is therefore very misleading.
As the reconstruction project progressed visual evidence emerged that seemed
to support the ‘specific claims’ litigation of the present-day Band and its legal
agents. The reconstruction project led to the explicit question of whether it would
be possible to make a case, primarily through precise drawing, that the terms of the
Douglas Treaties were not met by the colonial and provincial governments.
‘As Fort Rupert was in 1866’: Preemption, panorama,

portraits, diagram
Our extended observation of images and other graphic documents allowed us to see
13.3 Plan of
change. The problem was how to precisely situate and scale the gradual evolution of
One Hundred
the artifacts depicted in the images. Luckily, we had a few vital bits of dimensional Acres. Survey
information that gave us a scale of comparison, including the dimensions of an by Pym Nevins
important big house, the dimensions of the fort and its buildings and the location of Compton, 1863
the only extant artifact of the original fort, a large masonry chimney. HBCA G.1/231,
detail (courtesy of
Out of the meditative process of simple description, several images emerged
the Hudson’s Bay
that were particularly loaded and potentially open to comparative analysis. Company Archives,
Particularly fruitful was comparing the 1863 HBC preemption survey (Fig. 13.3), Winnipeg, MB)
13.4 Diagram of
preemption survey
and Queackar
house relocation
(drawing by
author)
the c. 1864 panorama and group portraits (Figs 13.4 and 13.5), and perhaps most
importantly, the 1919 George Hunt sketch ‘As Fort Rupert was in 1866’ (Fig. 13.6).
We will further inspect these images in order of creation, and use Hunt’s sketch to
bind them together.
The 1863 survey is titled ‘Plan, One Hundred Acres of Land, Preempted for The
Honourable Hudson’s Bay Company, at Fort Rupert V.I. ’, and indeed, it is a Plan – a
plan of action. Without a doubt the graphic data it contains is much more than a
simple boundary survey. In addition to describing the dimensions and boundaries
of the HBC preemption, the Kwakiutl houses, shoreline, river, wells and other
elements of the landscape, the drawing stakes out a four-acre parcel called ‘R. C.
Mission’ that was to become the property of the Catholic Church. Within that parcel
are nine houses of the Queackar sept, one of the two Kwakiutl Band Douglas Treaty
signatories.
The presence of the nine Queackar houses on the preemption survey begs
several questions: Were these houses being relocated, and if so, why? Were the
treaty rights of the Queacker family to move with their houses? And regardless of
the answer to those questions, why was their proposed relocation integrated into
a preemption survey?
That the 1863 survey indicates nine houses were to be relocated to the Roman
Catholic mission site sheds light on where in the Kwakiutl village the houses once
were. The 1851 Hydrographic Survey shows a long strip of houses to the west
of the fort, and five houses to the northeast of the fort (Fig. 13.1). While the line
of buildings to the west is represented in the preemption survey, none of the
buildings to the northeast are indicated. Their absence suggests that it was these
houses that were being relocated to the mission site.
As noted in the timeline, in 1863, a fire destroyed four Queackar houses. No

doubt the HBC considered this a serious threat due to the close proximity of the
houses to the fort’s enclosing wooden walls. The fire occurred just months before
the preemption survey was completed, but after HBC officer Finlayson requested
it.
This description of c. 1863 events suggests that at the time of the preemption
the HBC was attempting to relocate the K’umuyoyi to the Roman Catholic
parcel as a way to accomplish three things: 1/ Provide a place for those who had
lost their homes to rebuild; 2/ Remove the threat of fire to the HBC property; 3/
Increase the distance between the fort and the Kwakiutl houses, reinforcing the
100-acre preemption claim. The so-called preemption survey was really more
a proposal for a land exchange, without Queackar property rights part of the
bargain.
The c. 1864 panorama taken by Frederick Dally (Fig. 13.5) is an extraordinary
image, and makes an important contribution to understanding the spatial
organization of Fort Rupert at the time of the preemption. The panorama,
composed of three separate photographs, is a very early image, taken before the
evident use of Western building materials and technologies, and is striking in the
contrast of the two cultures it documents.
Seemingly, this image is simply a description of the quotidian – some people
sitting or walking along the foreshore escarpment, some preparing food or
heating their houses, using fire and creating smoke in the process – a depiction
of a day in the life of a Fort Rupert Kwakiutl person. But the image also is a
document of a political event – the arrival of a woman in a hoop skirt, welcomed
by a group of Kwakiutl who sit on the wharf above her, watched by two guards
who stand behind the fort’s fenced yard enclosure – a tableau staged for a camera 13.5 Panorama
that required its subjects to remain still for half a minute during exposure of the of Fort Rupert, V.I.,
Frederick Dally,
glass plate negative. c. 1864 (courtesy
But in order to focus on the known facts of the image, coming to understand of the Toronto
the motivations for creating such a tableau must unfortunately be left for another Public Library)
day. Near the centre of the panorama is a large Christian cross, perhaps twenty
feet high, located just outside the fort’s protective stockade. As described in the
timeline, Robert Hunt, the English father of George and an HBC employee, had
given Catholic Oblate missionaries, and later, the Anglicans who followed them,
a space where the missionaries could educate his children.21 The Oblates had
left in 1865, and were, as discussed above, part of the abandoned three-way
development proposition described in the 1863 preemption survey. It is significant
that in another image, taken slightly later (c. 1869–70) than the panorama and
from a similar position, the cross is nowhere to be found.22
The foreground of the panorama provides little information, but it is worthy of
note. In the foreground, there appear to be piles of earth and light material, probably
shells cast off as part of the process of food processing. The earth is certainly
disturbed, turned over, but not cultivated. The camera that took the panoramic
images is positioned at the place where four houses had recently been destroyed
by fire, the place where the K’umuyoyi lived. What we see in the foreground is quite
likely the trace of a past fire, and possibly the site of new construction.
Reverse camera: Dally’s group portraits
Two group portraits provide additional facts to bolster the argument that there
was a Kwakiutl village on land that was preempted by the HBC. In the background
of both (and in the foreground of panorama) is an intact Fort Rupert. This is unlike
the state of the fort in Dossetter’s 1881 image, by which time much of the fort’s
enclosure had been removed.23
13.6 Group
portrait of Fort
Rupert Indians and
Officers From HMS
Scout, Frederick
Dally, c. 1864
(Image PN 2554
courtesy of the
Royal BC Museum,
BC Archives)
To the left of the fort, four light-coloured

poles rise. In the second of the group portraits,24
which is taken from a slightly different vantage
point, only a single pole is visible, but in this
one a notch is clearly discernible at the top
of the pole. These are large posts, perhaps
three feet in diameter. The notches are being
made to accept very large beams. A big house
is being built during the time that this image
was taken.
The other notable element in the second
of the group portraits appears at the right
edge of the image, in the foreground. Visible
there are the large-scale planks and binding
poles typical of all but one of the row of
buildings seen in the panorama. By the time
of Dossetter’s image, planks and binding poles
had been replaced by milled siding. In these
earlier images, none of the territory-marking
poles evident in the Dossetter image are
visible. The fact that the vertical binding poles
and large planks are visible in both the panorama and the second group portrait 13.7 As Fort
strongly suggest that the three images were taken before the HMS Clio shelling. Rupert Was in
1866, Sketch by
George Hunt’s 1919 census and diagram ‘As Fort Rupert Was in 1866’ will
George Hunt,
serve as a coda to the analysis made in this essay. Hunt, who was 65 when 1919 (courtesy
he made the drawing in 1919, generated the data from his memory and from of the American
information he gathered from others who, like himself, had lived in Fort Rupert Philosophical
in 1866.25 The census describes in great detail the number and hierarchical Society Library,
Philadelphia)
structure of Fort Rupert’s families in that year as well as the position of their
houses relative to other houses and geographical features.
Hunt’s diagram is keyed to some twenty pages of notes that Hunt produced for
ethnologist Franz Boas that described what Boas called the ‘social organization
of the Kwakiutl’ of Fort Rupert in 1866.26 In these notes, Hunt identifies nine
families, one each for the nine houses he locates northeast of the fort. These
families are all of the ‘Queackar’ (K’umuyoyi) sept.
Despite the fact that Hunt’s sketch diagram was made 53 years after the
date to which it refers, it is clearly a more accurate description of the physical
settlement of fort and Kwakiutl village than is the 1863 preemption survey.
Fig. 13.8 illustrates this correlation by superimposing Hunt’s numaym (family
descent group) data onto the buildings visible in the panorama. Hunt’s diagram
is not to scale, but it is carefully drawn, and full of demographic information
that can be linked to other data. Indeed, the ability to seamlessly map Hunt’s
data onto the c. 1864 panorama gives Hunt’s inclusion in his survey of the
family houses not seen in the panorama legitimacy, and gives legitimacy to the
conclusion that this area of Kwakiutl Fort Rupert was illegally preempted.
13.8 Numayms
of Fort Rupert,
1866, detail
(photomontage
by author)
While this analysis may prove nothing, it implicates a great many acts and
people in events of the period of time it addresses. Before, after and during
the Hudson’s Bay Company preemption in 1863, Kwakiutl signatories of
the Fort Rupert Douglas Treaties had built and occupied a settlement at the
northeastern flank of a fort. This settlement was erased, and its occupants
denied title to property ensured to them by treaty. Whether this violation of
the terms of a living treaty will be emended remains to be seen.
This work draws from the forensic, observational methods of art historians
and archaeologists to uncover circumstances and the graphic, representational
methods of architectural documentation and analysis to visualize them. At the
disciplinary core of architecture is the necessity to synthesize socioeconomic
structures, technical systems, and physical processes into drawings. But this
ability need not be limited to design and building. One may also apply these
skills to other aspects of the production of space. Looking comparatively at these

photographs and other visual documents has provided just such an alternative
– and a way to act on John Berger’s thesis about the early use of the camera –
that images may conceal acts of injustice through their attempts at recording,
reconnaissance and control.
notes
1 A note on names: The HBC’s Fort Rupert was built within the Kwakwaka’wakw First
Nation’s traditional territory. Kwakwaka’wakw is the name of an aboriginal ‘First Nation’
of which the Fort Rupert Kwakiutl Band is a part. The four Kwakwaka’wakw families
(septs) who settled at Fort Rupert became known as the Fort Rupert Kwakiutl Band. I
will refer to the local Native people as the Kwakiutl when in the context of the people
of this community. When referring to a larger scale of territory, I will refer to this group
as the Kwakwaka’wakw. Two other key Anglicizations are: Kwaguhl (Quakeolth) and
K’umuyo’I (Queackar).
2 Preemption, the word used in the British system for converting land into privately
owned property, required the settler to clear land, fence it, to build a house and
cultivate a garden before ownership was granted.
3 I owe a methodological debt to Michael Baxandall, whose Patterns of Intention (Yale,
1985) taught me to respect the limits of interpretation, to John Berger, whose many
works taught me the importance of pushing up against those limits, and to both, for
teaching me the pleasure of looking closely at pictures.
4 The contents of this paper have been made available to lawyers representing the Fort
Rupert Kwakiutl Band.
5 John Berger, About Looking (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980).
6 See Barry Gough, Gunboat Frontier: British Maritime Authority and Northwest Coast
Indians, 1846–90 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1984), p. 9.
7 The Aboriginal and Northern Affairs Development Canada website maintains a
comprehensive record of the 14 Douglas Treaties. This includes a transcription of the
‘Conveyance of Land to Hudson’s Bay Company by Indian Tribes’ document for the Fort
Rupert’s two treaties. The website URL is http://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1100100
029049/1100100029050.
8 The starkest impact of this difference in conceptualizing property was recorded
during the 1914 MacKinnon-McBride Commission’s hearing adjudicating Native land
claims. At the hearings, the Fort Rupert Kwakiutl petitioned to have 31 (settlement,
food harvesting, and burial) sites reserved. By 1914, all of these had been preempted,
leading the commission to deny the Kwakiutl petition on all claims.
9 Ibid., p. 75, footnote 266 (BC Archives, HMS Driver Correspondence, O/A/D83J, Johnson
to Hornby, 21 Jun, 1850. Copy in UBCA, Akrigg Papers, Box 1, file 55, original in NMM;
HBCA, B 226/b/7, f 83, Douglas to Blenkinsop, 22 March 1853).
10 Dorothy Blakely Smith (ed.), The Reminiscences of Doctor John Sebastian Helmcken
(Vancouver: UBC Press, 1975), p. 300.
11 Robert Galois, The Fort Rupert Band and the Fort Rupert Treaties: A Report Prepared for
Mandell Pinder, April 2009, footnote 453. Galois is also author of Kwakwaka’wakw
Settlements, 1775–1920: A Geographical Analysis and Gazetteer (Seattle: University of
Washington Press, 1994), widely considered the definitive geographical history of the
Kwakwaka’wakw Nation.
12 Galois (2009): ‘Four Indian houses were burnt to the ground … [and] A great deal of
property was consumed.’ Victoria Daily Colonist, 14 Sept, 1863.
13 An 1857 survey, done to inventory HBC assets at Fort Rupert, indicated that the entire
fort and grounds comprised only 8 acres, not 100, as requested by Finlayson.
14 A.G. Morice, History of the Catholic Church in Western Canada: from Lake Superior to the
Pacific (1659–1895) (Toronto: Musson Book Co., 1910), p. 330.
15 Transcript, Statement of Lieutenant Carey, R.N. H.M.S. Clio. BC Archives Microfilm
#B1349, F1208a.
16 From Dwight L. Smith (ed.), A Tour of Duty in the Pacific Northwest: E.A. Porcher and
H.M.S. Sparrowhawk, 1865–1868 (Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press, 2000), p. 50.
17 Galois (2009), p. 140.
18 The image (BC Archives call no. B-03566) may be viewed online at the Royal British
Columbia Museum’s BC Archives.
19 I would like to thank my research assistants, James Eidse, Amaury Greig, Aaron Knorr,
Heather Maxwell, Ouri Scott, and especially Jenny Xu, who provided valuable insights
and produced much of the graphic work of the reconstruction project.
20 This work was produced under a Memorandum of Understanding with the Band,
stipulating that any work produced would be the property of the Band. Several copies
of the manuscript are now in the possession of the Band’s elders and teachers, as are
copies of this paper.
21 See note 12.
22 This later image is in the collection of the Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, NZ.
Cat. No. PA1-f-021-071-8.
23 See note 15.
24 This image (BC Archives call no. C-05561) may be viewed online at the Royal British
Columbia Museum’s BC Archives.
25 Judith Berman, ‘The Collectors: Hunt and Boas’, in Gateways: Exploring the Legacy of the
Jesup North Pacific Expedition, 1897–1902, ed. Igor Krupnik and William W. Fitzhugh,
Contributions to Circumpolar Anthropology, No. 1 (Washington DC: Smithsonian
Institution, 2001), pp. 190–95.
26 Franz Boas, The Social Organization and the Secret Societies of the Kwakiutl Indians (New
York: Johnson Reprint Corp., 1970), pp. 330–32.
14
Repurposing With A Vengeance:
A Dance of Restrained Acts Towards Justice
Catherine Hamel
A call to justice. A call that is always wounded.1
Justice is a complex topic with numerous incisions into space. This paper explores
the potential for justice through subtle disturbances. It is a potential to instigate
change, not by altering existing systems, but the attitudes towards them. They are
intrusions that impact the spaces we inhabit but do not define themselves by it.
Unlike the built forms that generally define architecture, these intrusions allow
themselves to be diluted in their endeavor to reposition justice in the public realm.
The framing narrative stems from the meeting of a Rwandan journalist and the
narrator. A fleeting and slight occurrence, insubstantial in the public history of
genocide and ensuing attempts of justice through acts such as the Gacaca Courts,
it nevertheless allows the attitude to seep into a different stance. Personal contact
and personal forgiveness invite considerations beyond the more overt retributive
justice that the context can propel.
A series of examples, intentionally subtle in the face of the overwhelming
violent narrative are proposed as possible ways into negotiations of justice in
space. Classified, the examples are a vessel of conversation; a receiving surface;
a vessel of condensation; and a bridging surface. They are not limited to war and
the environment but relate to the context of crossing borders of imposed political
segregation and setting boundaries of social consideration. These examples are
fragile, for many perhaps too quiet to be heard, or merely a drone of background
noise. The initial narrative and its turbulent context directed the examples through
contrast and provide the opportunity for a form of spatial exploration in which
justice might be negotiated in space.
Violence, a home is taken brick by brick

A treaty, a home is returned brick by brick
In an apartment embedded in a concrete and glass city where the only soil that is
exposed is quickly removed for the untidiness it represents, a sole painting hangs.
The importance of the selection of this solitary image is undermined by the casual
slant that defies the right angles of its hosting wall. The brush strokes are rough and
betray the attempt of a novice who painstakingly tried. There is beauty in its raw
quality. The image as a composition is simple. The picture displays a hill covered in
green vegetation with a gouge revealing red soil. In the vicinity lays a chaotic pile of
bricks – clay, compressed and torched. There is no title. There is no hint of location.
The fleeting voice of the painting’s owner discloses, this is my home in Rwanda.2
The appropriation of homes in war is a thread in the bolder appropriation of
land. Structures undergo varying levels of destruction. Some structures are razed
while others have their decay accelerated to evict the owners then halted for
their eroded space to be occupied by uninvited guests. These guests appear and
disappear as the lines of confrontation shift engulfing them in one enemy territory
or another. In cases where the lines of confrontation recede and the houses are
returned, a destroyed version or at least a foundation remains. Often a trace
remains. What strikes one in this painting is the full erasure of the original home.
There is but a gouge revealing red soil and in the vicinity the chaotic pile of bricks.
This had been a large homestead, not a small structure easily moved. In violence,
the home was taken brick by brick. A treaty was signed after agreement at the
conclusion of political negotiations. It attempted to guarantee the security of the
people and their property. This included the return of what was taken.3 A home was
returned brick by brick.
The return of the home as a pile of bricks! Though the scale differs, though the
actors differ, there is commonality in the scripts with the contamination of water
that flows; the discarding of deforested land; the abandonment of depleted soil;
the return of carcasses where once was flesh. There is commonality in the violence
of material profitability and its indifference to how it affects certain social realities.
This story and its wounded space expose acts of violence and material repurposing.
It is not war and the relentless assault on humans that is of interest, but the parallel
with material appropriation in the environment in the judicial systems at play.
Environmental repurposing with a vengeance, less blunt but not necessarily less
barbaric. These words attempt to build a mental stepping-stone in a torrent of
survival, of greed, of appropriation. A stepping stone that often sinks (an argument
lost) and resurfaces (an incoherent island). It is a way of knowledge formation
towards the hope to collaborate, to provoke towards a reflective understanding
that will lead to actions that instill the quest for justice.
Less a question than a series of questions

Less an argument than a string of observations
The subject of these words is a confession of bewilderment4
The act of hanging this painting instigates an interest in restrained acts

towards justice. The term justice is used with a conscious awareness of a limited
understanding of its connotations. The structure of this act gives form to something
that has not been distilled enough and still difficult to narrate clearly should all its
Repurposing With A Vengeance 205
implications be considered. A line is drawn and a dance occurs within its confines:
a home taken and the implications of the form in which it is returned.
The structure of the story is used to give form to the search into the potential
role of the spaces we build as facilitators of justice. The acts within the story itself
expand the dialogue to include spaces shaped by people, not just architects. This
also serves as a way to constrain the scale, to give freedom to the time frame of the
existence of these spaces and the process in whish they come to be. Architecture,
in its most generic understanding, is too often framed with lines that are rigid,
aggressive, imposing. Large in scale and pretentiously even larger in intent, it tends
to be planned to respond to the magnitude of the investment and the needs of
the multifaceted collaborations. Its claim to concepts such as human rights, ethics,
and justice exist fluidly in the realm of words but are not easily given form. Certain
possibilities remain outside the conversations that consume architecture and dwell
in the silences of its peripheral and underlying implications – in the spaces that
may not be intended or precise. It is in imprecision that sometimes promise lies.
The act of painting, hanging and repeatedly viewing this painting charts
vulnerable lines that exhale and are not afraid to dissipate to allow for their
repercussions to emerge. Lines that can be subtle, delicate wondering. Working
towards a potential consequence of justice not a defined space for justice, the
words that follow emerge from silence and end in silence with no claim to offer
solutions through architecture to reach a just society. The potential for justice
stems from Walter Benjamin’s premise in ‘Critique of Violence’,5 that generalizations
are contradicted in issues of justice and the possibility that law could be viewed as
a series of negotiations. The context of a possible justice arises and justice as law
is replaced by a call for justice.6 The answer to this call is studied in moments and
acts that demonstrate these negotiations in space, infectious subtle spatial and
material intrusions that disperse and affect the quest for justice. It is a dance in that
shapes appear and disappear. Concepts are confronted momentarily only to be
escaped as they become too near. It is a dance as there is something to listen to as
a way to respond, and something to escape as a way to survive.
I speak of the house, a home today, and tomorrow, stolen,

resurrected as a ruin7
Repurposing with a vengeance. Why vengeance? Has something been violently

taken away and given new purpose that inflicts punishment or retribution for an
injury by someone? Repurposing is a form of recycling that is focused on finding
new uses for items that are already present rather than discarding them. The idea
of repurposing can include making modifications to the items or simply finding
new use without changing any of the physical aspects. A brick still remains a brick,
a unit, multiplied and mortared, still makes a wall. New use has not been specified.
The variation lives in the space the walls enclose. It is the life that inhabits that
suffers the inflictions. There is an obvious violence in the act of taking, and an ever
more poignant brutality in the act of the return. Some humans have an aptitude
for ferocity. Others retain tremendous patience in vulnerability. If justice is a series

of negotiations, where do conversations occur between the fangs of the wolf and
the sumptuous flesh of the sheep? In the silence that follows the conversations…
There is a saying in the French language that rivals dwell on opposite banks.
They do not run around in the open countryside. They are cautiously separated by
water.8 While, we can by treaty, seek a process of justice and restoration; it seldom
speaks for those who know the experience of the painful assault. A pile of bricks
on the land, it is that place, it is that material but it is not that fabrication that was
lived in and shared. A brick, a unit in a wall, it held a unit in a life. In speaking of
bringing to justice the wolf that has eaten the sheep, there is a betrayal of sides
being chosen. Was not the sheep a wolf in disguise? Had they not been in such
desperation and limited means, they would not have taken the brick. Is their
desperation a justification for their act? And so the river flows, and separation is
imposed with a succession of dams and a complicated arrangement of wickets and
the gap between the different categories prohibits crossings.9
When blood has flown and its stain remains visible, negotiations are too easily
hindered by the reactionary blame. It is not justice but bitter anger that often
speaks. Distance dilutes the immediacy of blame.10 Yet it is the warmth of the
spilled blood and the threat of more that brings rivals to the table. Past violence
rests in forged peace. It is a forgetfulness that leads to stagnation, the kind that
war propels. It festers enough to erupt more violence but not enough to instigate
action. A relevant interlude: After the treaty was signed, the brick was not the only
material returned. People speak of instances where strangers disrobed in public
as enforcers of law walked by. A parallel story lingers of the man who received his
wife’s dress as another woman unclothed in fear in front of him, running in skin,
nothing but her pure skin sewn by Mother Nature. She was leaving the dress she
had repurposed behind. I spoke of the return of carcasses where once was flesh. A
story also lingers in the return of the dress that disrobed the carcass. Is it not worth
considering such moments in the way we toil the land? Who is taking, what is the
violence inflicted, not in the taking, but in the giving back? What is the relevance
of skinning the land for the architect? The underlying question is the relevance and
role of the architect when the land is being skinned. What can be done should they
acknowledge their complicity in the situation that propels pillaging of some for
the profit of others? The architect, a mere builder with good intentions, can be the
wolf that knows he can devour the lamb and chooses not to. What space can move
us towards justice through negotiations that occur outside political grounds in the
simple and chaotic, the quiet and the vocal, acts of people?
Ivar and Astrid raise architectures, cubes of echoes,

weightless forms. Some they call poems, others drawings,
others, conversations11
Spatial conversations, some might rant about the inaccuracy of these words.
Space does not speak and conversations need language. Yet in their imprecision
they provoke the idea of a dialogue between fissures that might receive subtle
intrusions that allow justice to be negotiated in space. Is it not the intrusion that
causes the crack? It is perhaps too violent a consequence for the negotiation that
leans towards collaboration. Patient and doubtful acts that navigate but do not
propel the action of others; acts in space that question; acts in space that provoke;
acts in space that invite. They often dissolve into the oblivion of a forgotten past
and do not need to shriek to be heard. Four such voices are temporary observed.
They are generous invitations for another to respond. Subtle, they claim space as
they harden into surfaces, defy fear even at the threat of death, break a silence
they choose to hear. It is the quality of the interaction between the act and its
consequence that is of interest.
The emphasis in these examples is on the character of the act or the interaction,
not the physical object. It takes on the character of a performance in that context,
no content provided. The more traditional way of making in which a creator
deposits an expressive content into a physical object to be withdrawn later by a
consumer, is replaced with a process of dialogue and collaboration. It is a means
to encourage the ability to speak and listen outside the tensions that surround the
typical interactions.12 These examples, an art project, and three people propelled
spaces, range and are not limited to war and the environment. Two of the examples
speak of vessels, one anchored, the other moving. The other two speak of surfaces,
one bridging, and the other receiving. One vessel and one surface relate to the
context of continuously crossing borders and boundaries of imposed political
segregation. The other two halt intrusions to allow transformation. They all quietly
endeavor to reposition justice in the public realm.
To be a trespasser in a word of systems
This first example is a receiving surface on which footprints dissolve into dust.
They are feet that move across lines of confrontation in Beirut, Lebanon. Based on
vernacular hearsay of the aunt who knew the sister who heard of the daughter
who dared, this is an instance that speaks of a leak in the divide of the city of Beirut,
Lebanon, during the 1975–90 war. It was a context where fighting shifted for
years and mapping the city was a daily exercise for its inhabitants. Among these
fluid allegiances and violence, the cut of the ‘Green Line’, the largest divider that
tore the city remained a constant. The neutrality of the subdivided ideological
territories relied on the non-porous nature of their containment. There were leaks,
as individuals vary in their viscosity. The main road next to the National Museum
came to be called the ‘museum passage’ because it was the main communication
route between both parts of the city. People crossed for many reasons: to work, to
visit, to get married. The passage was also crossed as an act of defiance by the few,
mostly women, who refused to fall prey to the situation. They crossed just because
they could. Back and forth, they went behind enemy territory, an act of will to defy
the forced political segregation. These trespassers seeped in and contaminated the
hatred with their humanity. Unstable links, there was faith in their persistence even
though their acts left faint traces that could easily be erased. They were markers in
the space of the city, moving targets that refused to be anchored on a map. Their
footsteps agitated the dust, temporarily.13
The vessel of condensation refers to the moving buses that drone across
sectarian lines in Ireland. Known as The Route Project, it was organized over a
series of exchanges between those seeking to record through words, film, objects
and the people driving the buses across that country’s lines of confrontation. The
initial exchange occurs between the bus drivers recounting the experiences of
driving across sectarian lines and the writers, filmmakers, and artists who heard
and recorded. Though each bus driver had different loyalties, their professional
identification reconciled their differences. The dilution of rejection towards
acceptance was embodied in the spatial movement of their buses across the
dividing lines of the city. The project set out to preserve and valorize the historical
culture of reconciliation among drivers, but it also sought to ‘re-purpose’ this
accumulated knowledge, to learn from it, and to apply its lessons in the context of
present day struggles to mediate the nascent peace process.14
The wind blew and the footprints were erased. The bus crossed but for an
instance and disappeared into the other side. The negotiations exist in the stories,
in the defiance, in the courage, in the myth. They inhabit the single body that can
be an effective obstruction against the rage of military imposition. Knowledge
arises from the threat of these ‘trespassers without visas, anomalies, mistakes,
deviations of the imagination’.15 In receding behind enemy territory and returning
alive, these periodic crossers of the borders of segregation show that the beast
that had been demonized could be touched, conversed with, humanized. The
motion of their bodies, raw or armored in metal, cut a connection in space. It is
an exchange of values carved out with their defiance. A transfer occurs from
objectified information to contact, from a common public heritage to individual
exchange. Opposition takes the form of resistance to the systems of knowledge
and the institutions that regulate the population. It displaces the cultural memory
by contaminating, an impurity in the war order of the city.
Do Not Trespass
Whereas the receiving surface in Beirut offers possibility in the memory engrained
in each grain of sand, the tenacity of dust lingers in the bridging surface of YWCA
Police Station Desk in Peru. The goal of the project was to teach women their rights
and not accept discrimination. This was promoted through the creation of a desk in
a police station. The women’s desk in the police station was to help guarantee that
the women who came with a complaint when abused would be heard and legally
advised. By knowing that they will have a sympathetic ear as opposed to one that
will reject and mock them, women are able to denounce domestic violence and if
necessary get shelter.
The police station, an emblem of security is the fraught space of potential
mockery for the feminine body in some cultures. Injustice imposed. Abused, she
might seek shelter only to be further vilified by the very face of authority she sought
shelter with. A thought, a space receives a designated table for a designated user.
A man who can receive the possible reality of the abused feminine body mans a
table. The simple guarantee that the policeman behind that surface will not mock;
will believe; will question him who has violated; not her who was violated. A
seemingly small gesture, an opening allowed in a conversation where words are
received and potential equilibrium is restored. It is a fragile equilibrium, or merely
the hope of it as no words heal the bruises. A negotiation towards, not a solution.
A subtle but stubborn contamination. The one who used to receive the cries and
mock them has been withdrawn.
Minute, small, even seemingly insignificant and fragile gestures can erode
larger systems. A few conversations and housing policy is altered. Not architectural
style, but space inhabited. Such was the outcome of the vessel of conversation,
a boat used in the project by the Austrian Art collective WochenKlausur entitled
Intervention To Aid Drug Addicted Women in Switzerland. The task of this project
was simple: to have a conversation as an intervention in drug policy. The topic of
this conversation was the difficult situation faced by drug addicts who had turned
to prostitution to support their habits. A boat on Lake Zurich, a series of three
hour cruises, and a sign that spelled the command: do not trespass, conversation
in progress. This was its most aggressive order. These floating dialogues were
organized between key political figures and some of the women who suffered
the predicament. In the ritualistic context of an art event, with their statements
insulated from media scrutiny, a new communication emerged.16 One of the
outcomes was a change in housing policy and the creation of a boarding house
where these young women could seek refuge away from the violent attacks of their
clients. Justice? Some might argue that this merely enables the wolf disguised as
a sheep to prosper. Where does the blame begin, and hence the injustice? Justice
cannot be calculated but momentarily. They are prostitutes, many said. They are
women, others responded. They are human. Do not trespass. A space of protection
is architecture.
Why does he make me speak with your tongue?
These acts create turbulence in the order imposed. Turbulence is intermittent, in its
very definition and in its presence, in its nature and in its distribution. It is multiplicity
before reaching unity. It has gaps. It has margins. It is riddled with exceptions.17
Turbulence is created between the state of tolerance and its counterpart. Too
subtle for most, the potential nevertheless persists. In their act, rather than
accepting the closure of identity, these acts sought to open up the boundaries
of conformity. With resolve they exposed the possibilities contained in diversity.
It is a knowledge that dislodges people from their false sense of security. These
acts open up the possibilities of indeterminacy. Indeterminacy as an expressive
achievement rather than blind chaos, an achievement in experience requiring will,
resolve and judgment.18 It is not the number of bodies that follow these passages
that matter. One, two, a hundred, none. The idea of an imaginary trespasser or the
stopping of an aggressive intruder, is enough to dissolve the aggressive container.
It is possibility that perpetuates knowledge. It is knowledge that perpetuates the
possibility of negotiation.19
Painting has one foot in architecture and the other in dreams20
Act one: a man lives the consequences of human horror, paints a piece of his
testimony and hangs the painting to remember. He does not seek revenge. Act
two: the woman asks, listens to his testimony and imagines the story. She retells the
story already told, in a new language, to learn from the translation. She does not
seek to solve a problem. She does not pretend to offer a solution. They both bear
witness, hanging fully neither to tragedy nor paralysis, but the impossible bravery
and willingness to live and listen with a courageous hope in a tragic world. The
task is rife with failure. It is in that very moment of failure that the act of translation
occurs, and hence possibly understanding.21
Does this recourse to performing testimony, of telling and witnessing, imply
that we are in danger of contemplation that somehow betrays the urgency to act
on the depicted horror? ‘Why do you keep watch, while the human tribe sleeps
across the earth, indifferent to misfortunes, to wars, to joys, to massacres? Asked
the watcher. There has to be someone, Kafka answers, watchers, prophets of the
present, agents for the most arduous, most dangerous cause.’22
What does it mean to do this in concrete terms: to give more than to take, to
listen more than to speak; to speak to start a dialogue, not just to be heard; to
intervene in places of fear and horror? To witness, bravely and merely to witness
though the possibility of being a savior is nowhere near. ‘In the task of living these
things, where is the dignity in failure, the beauty in a ridiculous hope?’23
Thought with a gun and a human aim
In the face of an overwhelming sense of impossibility, sometimes it takes a doubt,

to trace and retrace what cannot be captured. To attempt to envision a shift outside
the boundaries within which we exist. To still be able to be thrilled by inquiry, not
certitude within the systems that allow no variation. To envision a shift from the
series of events, of policies, of laws that work to hold our system within a defined,
bounded reality.24
A brick, multiplied and mortared and then there is a life that is enclosed. The
spaces we inhabit are not neutral. They offer possibilities. They betray prejudices.
They segregate by imposing division. They liberate by allowing their transformation.
Negotiations in space can occur regardless of the space. They can occur despite of
the space. They can occur precisely because of the nature of the space. They start
in words and convert to form. It is sometimes the form that creates the words. If
justice cannot be calculated, but is always sought, the environment we build and
inhabit converses in seeking it. An aggressive context can be sedated. A serene

situation aroused. A painting hangs. Not merely to be viewed. A painting on the
wall, it is a story. It did not know it was a story to be told.
Notes
1 Jacques Derrida, ‘Force of Law: The Mystical Foundation of Authority’, in Gil Anidjar
(ed.), Acts of Religion (London, 2002), p. 257.
2 The conflict in Rwanda is not the theme of this paper and the specific reasons and
details are beyond its scope. Experts differ as to the relative importance of different
causes for the disputes. Poverty, land scarcity, population growth, environmental
trends, unequal land distribution, are debated as factors at varying degrees.
The common thread recognized by all is the important role that was played by
competition for land and resources in fuelling the conflict.
3 The treaty referred to is the Peace Agreement between the Government of the
Republic of Rwanda and the Rwandese Patriotic Front. It notes the Protocol of
Agreement on the Rule of Law signed at Arusha in 1992 to repatriate and reintegrate
all Rwandese refugees who may wish to go back home guaranteeing the security of all
the people and their property.
4 Alberto Manguel, The City Of Words (Toronto, 2007), p. 3.
5 Walter Benjamin, ‘Critique of Violence’, in Selected Writing, vol. 1, 1913–26 (Cambridge
MA, 1996), p. 247.
6 Derrida, ‘Force of Law’, p. 257.
7 The phrase is an adaptation of Paz’s poem ‘I speak of the city,’ in Octavio Paz, in Eliot
Weinberger (ed.), The Collected Poems of Octavio Paz: 1957–1987 (New York, 1987),
p. 511.
8 Michel Serres, Genesis, trans. James, G. and Nielson (Ann Arbor MI, 1995), p. 94.
9 Serres, Genesis, p. 94. ‘Classing is a succession of dams, a complicated arrangement of
wickets, hierarchy is semi conductive, the gap between subsets prohibits crossings,
classing is there to disarm, to slow momentum, be it creative or destructive, who can
tell, to cool down its heatedness or slacken its celerity, complex classing encumbers
the bed of violence, or else, I can’t choose, classing is formed by violence and the
disorderly course of its flux, violence deposits it as a river lays down in passing its
heavy or final alluvial deposits, it deposits it, codes it structures it, makes it, it looses
some of its virulence along the circuitous route of its products. The gravel comes to
a standstill in the flux and in return, the flux comes to a standstill amidst the gravel.
Violence makes the classes and the classes unmake violence.’
10 This concept for the need for distance is based on Slavoj Zizek’s discussion of
subjective and objective violence, and the ‘systemic’ violence of the catastrophic
consequences of the functioning of the economic political systems, in Slavoj Zizek
Violence: Six Sideways Reflections (New York, 2008).
11 Octavio Paz, in Weinberger, The Collected Poems of Octavio Paz, p. 531.
12 Grant Kester, Conversation Pieces: Community and Communication in Modern Art
(California, 2004), p. 3.
13 Catherine Hamel, ‘The National Museum of Beirut: Crossing into a Border’, in Andreas
Broeckmann and Gunalan Nadarajan (eds), Place Studies in Art, Media, Science and
Technology: Historical Investigations on the Sites and the Migration of Knowledge

(Germany, 2009), p. 260.
14 Kester, Conversation Pieces, p. 8.
15 Hélêne Cixous, Stigmata: Escaping Texts (London, 1998), p. 177.
16 Kester, Conversation Pieces, p. 3.
17 Serres, Genesis, p. 111.
18 Richard Sennett, The Conscience of the Eye: The Design and Social Life of Cities (New York,
1990), p. 173.
19 Hamel, ‘The National Museum of Beirut’, p. 260.
20 Paz, The Collected Poems, p. 591.
21 Julie Salversons, ‘Taking liberties: a theatre class of foolish witnesses’, Research in
Drama Education, vol. 13, no. 2 (June 2008): 246.
22 Cixous, Stigmata, p. 177.
23 Salversons, ‘Taking Liberties’, p. 245.
24 Frances Westley, Brenda Zimmerman and Michael Quinn Patton, Getting To Maybe:
How the World is Changed (Toronto, 2006).
Part 4
Philosophical Questions of
Propriety
15
Architecture, Justice, Conflict, Measure
Peter Carl
In the simplest possible terms, justice refers to fairness, equity, balance among
people and between people and reality as a whole. Accordingly it appears at the
opposite extremes of human existence. On the one hand, it appears as a principle
of order, as the nature of order itself, as that which names the working-out of
reality’s infinite processes on behalf of a (usually beneficent) higher purpose or
destiny. On the other hand, justice appears to be at the disposal of our freedom,
appealing to our altruism, generosity, sense of fairness.
It is not obvious that architecture and justice are related to each other.
Buildings or settings devoted to judgement or punishment, however important
or richly symbolic in their own right, would seem to be secondary interpretations
of the promise that architecture itself might somehow embody a theme as grand
as justice. The more recent concern for social justice, inevitably derived from
John Rawls, would seek to establish a reasonable (rational) basis for ensuring
that the disadvantaged or disenfranchised are not excluded from, for example,
adequate housing.1 This would seem to imply an urban organism which might
embody social justice, perhaps to be called a eu-topia; but I am not aware of such
a speculation (although all projects make claims in this direction). A bit like the
disembodied world in which Jurgen Habermas’s intersubjective communication
takes place,2 debates within social justice seem to concentrate on laws, or
theories of just action.3
However, it does appear that what might be termed ‘the spatialisation of
justice’ was of some significance during the emergence of the Greek polis.
Within the struggle to find a just democratic order, the theme of order became
attracted to geometric and spatial metaphors derived from the practico-
symbolic inheritance, as part of the style of reflection on the nature of reality
that became philosophy. With the advent of the Hellenistic culture radiating
from Alexandria, and the establishment of geometry as an internally-
consistent apodictic discipline, the earlier speculation became flattened to the
instrumentalisation of geometry in mechanics, statics, perspective, as it is seen in
Vitruvius.
The Practico-Symbolic Inheritance
The emergence of law within cities in the late third millennium bce represents a
proto-philosophic understanding rooted in an evolving urban praxis. Growing
out of such phenomena as custom elevated to ceremony and ritual, personal
contracts, trade agreements, the standardisation of weights and measures, and
supported by the elaborate ritual and administrative apparatus of the temple-
palace, the establishment of law requires thematizing the city, or kingdom, as a
whole, at a level that transcends, and claims, all particular individuals. This degree
of objectivity is most succinctly represented in an elaborate kudurru, or boundary
stone, from the Kassite period.4 A kudurru is a stone inscribed with an invocation
to preserve the boundary which it marks, although this example is missing its
inscription, having only the preparatory guide-lines. Between what appear to be
the two halves of the serpent Tiamat (cleft in two by Marduk in the Babylonian
version of the cosmogony recounted in the enuma elish) is a crenelated city-wall
with towers and above that, two rings of images: the lower depicts animals and
musicians, probably a festival, whereas the upper is symbolic, depicting altars
and deities. The kudurru is evidently stratified from temporal to eternal, with
an emphasis upon motifs, like the wall and the (missing) legal text, that invoke
permanence. Between the two halves of Tiamat, one moves upwards from the
contingent temporality of the city (and legal text) to festival time, repeatable
and offering communication between gods and humans, to the eternal domain
of gods; and at the very top are the remains of a solar bull, as if to invoke the
entire cosmic order.5 This indicates that such an order was possible to conceive
at this time,6 although ‘cosmos’ as a concept, referring to all of reality (not just
astronomy, as at present), will emerge only a millennium later, legendarily with
Pythagoras.
An explicit relation between architecture and justice is to be found in the
investiture scene atop the Stele of Hammurabi,7 whose general formulation
follows the Code of Ur-Nammu, of approximately 250 years earlier. About half
a millennium before Moses received the commandments from Yahweh on Mt.
Sinai, Hammurabi was depicted receiving a measuring-rod and knotted chord
from the solar deity, Shamash. Hammurabi’s sculptor drew upon a Mesopotamian
topos that appears in reliefs, cylinder seals and even murals.8 The prologue to the
code serves as a caption to this image, in which the structure of a just kingdom
is outlined: Hammurabi is appointed by Shamash to protect the meek, serve
the gods, defend the peace. The primary motif is that of measure, evident in the
economy of infringements and punishments. For example, item 228 specifies
that the architect of a house for a noble shall recompense a collapse causing
death with his own.
The measuring-rod appears to be about two cubits in length and the cord is
assumed to be knotted to produce a right angled triangle; the belatedly-named
Pythagorean Triangle was well known in Babylonia and Egypt, but as discrete
cases, not as a theorem.9 These implements produce ‘right’ measure distributed
spatially. The knotted cord implies an emphasis upon right-angled corners, and
Architecture, Justice, Conflict, Measure 217
indeed one finds that corners are symbolically important, where votive deposits
are regularly found (including set-squares and plaques depicting the ruler as hod-
carrier). The use of ‘four corners’ to describe the full extent of an empire or of reality
seems to have been interchangeable with ‘four quarters’, Christ is characterised as
cornerstone in the New Testament,10 and of course we still have cornerstone-laying
ceremonies. Finally, ‘architecture’ in these contexts comprises mostly city-walls (and
gates, where justice would be enacted), and, with the exception of the ziggurat, the
interiors of temples and temple-palace compounds (the less ceremonial buildings
would be constructed by developers and builders). The importance of these
principal edifices is evident in their sheer scale (the main temples and the palace
compound at Ur occupy nearly 40 per cent of the area within the walls), in the
amount of resources, both human and material, devoted to their construction, in
the precision, lavishness and subtlety of their design and ornamentation and in the
rich metaphors in the texts which fuse the concrete and divine milieux.11 Too often
written off as manifestations of prestige and power (as if corporate headquarters),
these configurations may be understood as pre-conceptual interpretations, rooted
entirely in the practico-symbolic domain, of the order of reality. The Giparku at
Ur,12 for example, shows a structured hierarchy of parts within a whole that will not
appear conceptually, and certainly not thematised as ‘geometry’, for a millennium
and a half.
‘Measure’ in such contexts connotes not only precision, but also decorum (as
in the right size of a door for a god, for a king, for a lesser person), rightness
of relationships (which, much later, will become the analogical structure of
geometry), practical efficacy in building, and, in varying degrees depending on
local circumstances, resonance with weights and measures, with the rhythmic
aspects of poetry, ritual, music and dance – echoed in writing and its discipline
as well as in bureaucratic and military protocol – and, ultimately, with the regular
(cyclic) temporalities of celestial phenomena. The knotted cord and staff do
not ‘represent’ this cluster of phenomena (no contemporary text joins them all
in this way) so much as they participate in it, and have the additional value of
joining authority/responsibility with making/ordering the contexts propitious
for communication between gods and humans. In other words, what is most
important is the identification of the space between Shamash and Hammurabi
with instruments of just measure that are themselves concerned with spatial
ordering. It implies that the order of reality is a gift bestowed by a highest
(celestial) god, which contains within it the basis for communication between
finite humans and the eternal order (of Being), and that this lies at the heart of
any conception of a ‘just’ world or realm.
The Greek Polis, the Ambiguity of ‘Geometry’
It is only in the post-Hellenistic, and particularly post-Renaissance, conditions of

perspectivity that this group of themes might be generalised as geometry and
inspire the plans and elevations of buildings. As already hinted, there are many
proto-geometric phenomena, particularly in ritual/ceremonial settings, the

sizes and dimensions of customary use, ornament, architecture, construction,
surveying, taxation/tithes, astronomy, etc. in the millennia prior to the advent of
proper geometry with Euclid, in the fourth century bce.13 Accordingly, any attempt
to discover geometric orders in architecture prior to the generation of Euclid
must be treated with extreme scepticism, and the ready association of geometry
with ‘order’ still deployed by architects deserves similar qualification. Indeed, it is
probably safe to say that the conceptual power of geometry as a framework for
a particular kind of ordering has so captivated the imagination as to invert the
proper understanding – for most people, it is a question of what the geometry
‘represents’; and for such people, the geometry is secure and all other meanings
are contingent. Under these conditions, any profound relation to justice has been
reduced to iconography.
In order to appreciate how this conceptual flattening was achieved, it is necessary
to recall the famous Anaximander Fragment, from about a millennium after
Hammurabi, at the beginning of the period in which ‘cosmos’ attains conceptual
status. This arises within the Ionian speculations on physis, which already with
Anaximander attracts geometrical and mathematical motifs. Here ‘origin’ is meant
ontologically (not historically) and is endowed with a ‘where’, anticipating the
Heideggerian interpretation of Dasein, ‘there-being’:
The origin from which things/beings come-to-be,

must be also where they pass away
according to necessity [kata to chreon];
for they must do justice [dike] and pay recompense [tisis]
to each other for their injustice [adikia]
according to the order [taxin] of time.14
One way to ‘translate’ this dense passage is as follows: the Being of beings exhibits
a necessity manifest in the temporal reciprocity of justice and injustice.15 The two
phrases prefaced by ‘according to’ establish temporal necessity as an order which
is enacted as a paying of recompense (justice) between coming-into-being and
passing-away. The fragment preserves no mention of a deity, rather order itself is
characterised according to the temporal measure of justice. However, the temporal
character of justice may reflect Hesiod’s Theogony, from a century and a half earlier,
in which the goddess Dikē (human justice) appears among the Horai (hours),
alongside Eunomia (good law) and Irene (peace), who were the daughters of Zeus
and Themis (divine justice/custom and prophecy).16 A struggle between two female
figures labelled ‘dikē’ and ‘adikia’ (the latter tattooed like a barbarian), appears on
both the Chest of Kypselos17 and a red-figured amphora in the Kunsthistorisches
Museum in Vienna, dated to a few decades after the Anaximander Fragment. The
two women are obviously personifications, or types;18 and an agon of opposites is
not only preliminary to full conceptual determination but also fundamental to the
order of the still-emerging polis. It is as if Anaximander had characterised reality in
terms of a (just) polis. At about the same date, Solon’s poem conventionally called,
‘Eunomia’ says of Dikē:
the silent one, knows what is and has been done

and comes with certainty to claim the payment due
this aims an inescapable blow at the whole community19
In other words, within the evolving democracy of the polis, the practico-symbolic
style of understanding persists alongside, or underneath, alternative styles of
analogy and concept (indeed, it still does, although usually under the conceptual
rubric of ‘the’ sacred). In the few examples we have considered, justice retains an
affiliation with the order of reality as a whole (cosmos), but is no longer channelled
through the institutions of palace and temple.20 More significantly, the polis-
culture represents an emancipation from the tensional network of analogies,21 the
referential continuum of nature, gods and humans characteristic of the Bronze-
Age kingdoms. For Sophocles, ‘… language and winged thought and the city’s
instituting passions were self-taught … ’.22 The assumption of responsibility by the
body of citizens for its own order – executed across a spectrum that includes political
reason, religion/myth as a framework for concepts, and tragic drama – seems to
correlate historically with the experience of reality as a reciprocity between the
claims of the parts (open to discovery) and the nature of the whole (also open to
discovery), which in turn requires finding a voice, or way of speaking, with respect
to the reciprocity, rather than only from concrete circumstances. When Parmenides
asserts the proximity of being and thinking, he also expects the former to protect
the latter from delusion.23
When, therefore, I suggest that Anaximander is using, as it were, his polis-
imagination to help him think the nature of reality as temporal justice, there can be
no hint of a direct correlation of his Fragment with the contemporary composition
of the polis of Miletus. Indeed, architecture is less necessary to participation
in the order of reality than it was in the Mesopotamian cities, or rather more
institutions are involved (even the houses of citizens) and their distribution about
the polis means that the structures of connectivity or relation endow the polis
as a whole with the importance once reserved for a few institutions. Within this,
the institutional typicalities of praxis such as addressing, propitiating, hosting or
gift-giving, which had been elevated to ritual and ceremonial status in Bronze
Age cities, retain a ceremonial importance in the new conditions. However, the
most important typicality of this kind, the agon, is new to the polis (although
not new to cosmogonies), as is a formalised language – Rhetoric – to support it.
Varieties of agon appear in all the important collective institutions of the polis
– religious sacrifice, the making of laws (bouleterion), judging (heliaia), tragic
drama, symposium (house), and of course competitive games and combat. The
agon is significant as an institution because it makes conflict the vehicle of order.
It matters only to the litigant who wins or loses a law case; what matters to the
polis as a whole is that justice is institutionally situated. This institutionalisation
of for-and-against represents a removed level of self-understanding analogous to
the ‘reciprocity’ mentioned above, and invokes a level of objectivity that inspires
not only personifications of justice and injustice but, more fundamentally, such
principles as the coincidence of opposites cultivated by Heraclitus, Empedocles
and Pythagoras, putative student of, among others, Anaximander.24 In Heraclitus’

famous ‘all things happen by strife (eris) and necessity’ and in Empedocles’ cycles of
all things coming together through love (philotes) and apart through strife (neikos),
we again see the thematising of reality in terms of the life of the polis.
If the advent of law with which we began allows the city to understand its
diverse praxes as part of a continuum with the order of the gods, the collective
claim of the law, its transcendence with respect to any individual, is retained in
the polis, even though the laws are ‘made’ – debated for-and-against – by the
citizens. Accordingly, the most important structure of connectivity in the polis is
the logos. The heliaia exemplifies the degree of concreteness constituted in this
new investment in logos.25 The heliaia is extracted (supposedly by Solon) from
the ecclesia, or full assembly of representatives of all ten demes (this division of
the polis into ten, as part of the Cleisthenic reforms, itself represents a conceptual
structuring of wholeness that cancels out the influence of particular families,
wealth, status, etc.). The jurors witness the debate of the litigants (the central
section of a Rhetorical speech is known as agones because it rehearses both sides
of the debate) in an open-air setting that is bounded like a temenos (perhaps helios,
sun, is heard in heliaia, recalling the role of Shamash in Babylonia). This boundary
acts like a horizon with respect to the common ground of disagreement. The
configuration recurs in the other agonic settings; and it appears that the structure
agon > common ground > horizon constitutes a paradigmatic, quasi-ritualised
setting. The ground and its horizon establish the conditions for the for-and-against
debate, which claims both disputants, within the Rhetorical formality that claims
all civic discourse.
The famous Socratic dialogue recapitulates this situation; and in Plato’s dialectical
logos, we find the motif of measure reconstituted in terms of the participation of the
soul in the movement that ascends and descends the four levels of the stratification
of Being, articulated through the analogical structure of the Divided Line.26 This
stratification is a primary insight, derived from the paradigmatic setting of agonic
debate, in which the horizon is effectively recalled at each level of participation/
understanding, with the primary division between doxaston (opinion) and noeton
(intellection) marking the movement from ambiguous involvement in the life of
the polis (corresponding to the shadowed cave of the ‘myth’ that explicates the
Divided Line) to structured reflection (corresponding to the luminosity outside the
cave). This movement back and forth between the Many of the fractious polis and
the One of the Highest Good is rendered in terms of Dikē. Placing this configuration
alongside the harmonic cosmic order depicted in the Timaeus (which takes place
the night after the dialogue of the Republic, and is therefore paired with it27), it is
evident that we are in the presence of a reformulation of the situation depicted
in Hammurabi’s investiture. The communicative gap between Hammurabi
and Shamash, identified with the measuring-implements connoting justice, is
recapitulated in that between the two disputants (dialogue) and the proportional
ascent to intellectual understanding (dialectic).
The Latin proportio translates the Greek analogia, which emerges as the
principle underlying the several concrete involvements with ‘measure’ outlined
above, and allows the several styles of embodiment (actual things, depictions of
things, personification, types, oppositional pairs, geometric figures, ideas, etc.) to
communicate with each other within logos (which itself comprises word, discourse,
reason, a proposition, account, ratio, analogy). Within the idea of ratio (well-known
to Bronze Age cultures, but as discrete ratios, worked out as routines and used for
particular purposes) lies the heart of the communication between measure and
justice – the null-point of equality between differences.
Geometry and arithmetic occupy the second-highest level, dianoia, of Plato’s
stratification, whose figures, eikones, ‘seek mental realities’;28 that is, these disciplines
have a preparatory function with regard to dialectic. The great division in the
stratification between doxaston and noeton29 corresponds to a distinction Plato
regularly draws regarding geometry and arithmetic that are practical, ‘drawn in the
sand’ or used for building or music (doxaston), versus those that are philosophical,
conducted wholly mentally (noeton), where the latter participate most closely in
the Good.30 There is therefore nothing to derive from Plato regarding geometric
figures in buildings as being more true or beautiful or just.
Aristotle preserved the motif of stratification in his description of praxis in
Book VI of the Nichomachean Ethics (technē underlies phronesis, and, above them,
episteme underlies sophia), despite having little respect for Plato’s Ideas and in
particular for a vision of ethics that involved participation of individual choice with
a pre-existing, eternal harmonic order. Indeed, Aristotle began the discipline that is
rooted in ethos, a species of communal commitment to what is held in common. For
him, the practical life was the receptacle of order in the polis; and, for example, he
proposed to decant dialectics from the exalted position it held in Plato’s VIIth Letter
to the concrete debates of the polis.31 Although not approved by Aristotle,32 one
might see the planning principles of Hippodamos of Miletus in similar terms – for
it is evident that Hippodamus’ diaresis, division, of the polis, popularly associated
with the actually very ancient grid of streets (not least familiar from the planning of
Greek colonies, from the eighth century), was intended to provide the framework
for a more general isonomia involving recurrent threes (e.g. division of the land
into sacred, public, private). One might say the result is a physical approximation of
the logos, and of distributive justice (therefore a species of ‘eu-topia’, as against the
tendency to classify his proposition as an ‘ideal city’ or utopia).
One must place Hippodamus in a much longer history of attempting to place the
civic order in relation to spatial metaphors,33 which originates with the generation
of Thales and Anaximander, and turns on several key terms – kosmos, isonomia,
geometria, arithmos, physis, logos, democratia – and the (often violent) efforts to
discover dikē in the actual governance of the polis. This trajectory of thinking is
summarised in its complete form by Plato: ‘… heaven and earth and gods and
men [Heidegger’s four-fold] are held together by community and friendship, by
orderliness and temperance and justice and for this reason they call the cosmos an
order, not disorder … geometric equality has great power among men and gods … .’34
The speculation in Plato’s Republic represents the most profound interpretation of
this tradition, and he contrasts this with such ‘magical’ cities as the concentric circles
of Atlantis.35 However, the radial city of his last dialogue, Laws, appears to share
in this style of thought (despite obvious differences), reverting also to the Ionian
twelve under a cosmic god, instead of the expected secular ten, of the generation
of Cleisthenes and Pythagoras. This period also corresponds to the transformation
of geometry from practico-symbolic routines into a domain of internal coherence
(autonomy). However, once the nature of geometry as an axiomatic discipline is
clarified by Euclid, and Plato has clarified the ontological movement across the
four horizons of participation in the Good [or Being], any consideration of uniting
practical with speculative geometry requires either leaving this aspect of Plato’s
thinking to one side, as did Aristotle, or deploying a mixed – or corrupt – ontology,
as did the Hellenistic culture originating in Alexandria.
The Alexandrian Transformation
Whether or not Euclid developed his geometry in Plato’s Academy (Proclus has him
synthesising and improving the work of his predecessors in the Academy, declaring
he ‘belonged to the persuasion of Plato’36), it is generally agreed he was in Alexandria
shortly after its founding. Alexandria was a cosmopolitan city rich in syncretism,
including the notions of divine kingship of its namesake, the late Egyptian dynasties
as well as an influential population of Jews, and, most importantly for us, an
interest in ‘knowledge’ (supported by the famous library and the Museion) giving
rise to the systematic communication between speculative geometry and practical
making, in machines, architecture, and illusionistic painting.37 After the period of
quite rigorous speculation, beginning in the mid-fourth century bce, was stifled by
the Roman conquest, in the mid-second century bce, the discoveries were simply
put to use (like the water-wheel), forgotten completely, or partially remembered
in fragmentary form. In the fluid syncretism of late Republican and Imperial
Roman culture, the combination of intrinsic certainty of geometric relations and
their (largely Platonic-Pythagorean) meanings attracted numerous analogies and
speculative possibilities. It is to this post-conquest Hellenistic culture that Vitruvius
is indebted when he thinks the theatre not as a setting for tragedy or comedy but
as an arrangement of triangles/squares recalling the zodiac,38 replete with literal
Pythagorean harmonies,39 or the city as a harmony of four winds, four humours,
and so forth, or architecture as an interdisciplinary synthesis of knowledge.40
A good example of this style of ‘interdisciplinary’ knowledge – or syncretism –
is Plutarch’s Isis and Osiris,41 in which one finds the Platonic movement between
mythos and logos elevated to a synthesis with Osiride and Dionysian myths.42 For
anyone not prepared to research Plutarch’s elaborate Platonism, the impression is
given of a composite milieu whereby philosophy communicates easily with Egyptian
and Greek cults reduced to referential motifs. Similarly, the archaic conception of
harmonium mundi becomes flattened to the epicycles43 corresponding to chains
of ratios (of revolution), by which the various proposals were in fact calculated, as
if the heavens were a giant algorithm as well as the paradigm of divine movement
(because heavenly bodies were luminous, precisely regular and self-moving, they
articulated celestial temporality). One suspects that Hadrian, who served a year as
archon in Athens, had himself inducted into the Academy and appointed Plutarch
procurator of Achaea in 119, drew upon a similar composite of concepts in his Villa,
both literally, in terms of the Egyptian themes connected with Antinous and more
generally, with respect to the geometric sophistication and solar ‘games’ of some
of the buildings within his Villa.
For Plato and Aristotle, architecture hardly mattered, except for the manner
in which the technē, craft, arrived at its results; indeed Aristotle uses the term
‘architectonikes’ to characterise politics as the most authoritative master-craft.44
By contrast, in the Hellenistic Roman milieu, architecture achieved a level of
elaboration and sophistication never before seen; and we might say that it was
possible to ‘philosophise’ in or through architecture. With the exceptions of the
Stoics Cicero and Marcus Aurelius and the Epicurean Lucretius, philosophy was less
important to Roman culture than were Rhetoric, law and religion. Accordingly one
finds in the developed perspectivism that animates, for example, Vitruvius’ text,
Pompeiian houses, Tiberius’ twelve villas on Capri (one for each of the gods) or
Nero’s Golden House, such a close co-ordination between domestic custom and
mythic themes, supported by the ubiquitous scenae-frons, that it is possible to
suggest that these configurations are among the principal vehicles for speculation
on the individual’s relation to the cosmos, beings in their Being. The philosopher-
poet-architect-general-statesman Hadrian therefore has at his disposal a well-
developed iconographic typology dependent upon layers of practice and geometric
reasoning brought to a high conceptual synthesis then re-embedded in practice,
endowed with ‘cosmological’ significance. One might argue his Villa, supposedly
a representation of the Roman ecumene over which he ruled,45 falls within the
millennia-old tradition of the semi-sacred palace; but this does not account
for the presence of these techniques in houses, villas, tombs, even markets. The
enchanted quality of the Imperial Campus Martius, apparently devoted to affairs
of the spirit and dubbed ‘most sacred’ by Strabo,46 derived less from the range of
activities – worship and commemoration, tragic and comic drama, bathing, races
and athletics, politics, gossip, discussion, reading – than from the great scale and
the persistence of shrine-like motifs and ornament in the edifices and in the great
colonnades, disposed about a huge artificial lake (the Stagnum Aggrippae) and
rendered in gardens and exotic marbles. The resulting conflation of secular and
sacred in a vague theatricality enabled Augustus to see the city as a receptacle for
cosmic, historical and personal symbolism. Three centuries later, this iconographic
typology enabled Christian architects to assemble churches and palaces as symbolic
configurations, and indeed the central area of medieval Constantinople must have
seemed like one extensive temple. Eventually it provided the Renaissance with its
leading representational strategy.
Against the distinction between divine and human still present in Plato and
Aristotle, the Stoics and subsequent Neo-Platonists both argued for a continuum,
evident particularly in the Neo-Platonist Proclus’ four-level ‘geometric ontology’.47
As Hans-Georg Gadamer rightly declares, for most of European history, Plato was
effectively Plotinus.48 This of course made such composite configurations easier to
imagine and to achieve; and the Christian addition of soteriology to the received
ontology put an even greater emphasis upon concreteness, particularly after the
Reformation and Counter-Reformation. The culmination of this procedure is to
be found in the sequence that leads from Michelangelo to the post-Tridentine
Baroque of Francesco Borromini and Guarino Guarini, thence to South Germany
and Central Europe. Tracing the dialogue between the motives of corporeality
with those of Jesuit mathematics and geometry (whose two chief characteristics
for these purposes were the survival of medieval light-ontology and geometric
projection, continuity through transformation), Dalibor Vesely argues that the
principal desideratum is the ‘embodiment (Incarnation) of divine presence in the
human world … a problem of embodiment of culture as a whole’ … which he
summarises in the phrase ‘luminous flesh’.49
Ontology and Soteriology
An example from the very beginning of the Renaissance recovery of Hellenistic

procedures which still preserves a reciprocity of justice and architecture is the Sala
dei Nove in Siena, as ornamented in the early fourteenth century by Ambrogio
Lorenzetti’s famous frescoes.50 The nascent perspectivity – the entire argument is
delivered to visibility as views and texts, distributed across three walls of the simple
box of a room – is still rooted in the concrete agon of the deliberations of the Nine,
and their relation to the adjacent Major Council and to the Chapel, which together
occupy the piano nobile of the Palazzo Pubblico, which in turn is the focus of the
fractious – even dangerous – civic life of the medieval Roman Catholic republic.
The lateral walls of the Sala dei Nove depict the Evil and the Good cities, and each
of these views is divided in half by a city wall, since each contrada included both an
urban and rural component. From south to north there is a progression from literal
to symbolic representation: from actual fields visible from the single window in the
south wall to the painted fields outside the Good and Evil city walls to the cities
intra muros to the allegorical judgement scene on the main, north, wall (paired
with its negative in the Evil city, on the left [west] wall). Solomon, dressed in the
colours of Siena, is enthroned in the company of the Virtues and personifications
of Distributive and Retributive Justice. The Judgement of Solomon embodies both
distributive and retributive justice. Following the south-north transformation from
literal to symbolic, the Judgement Scene fulfils an eschatological movement from
the Edenic themes of the southern half of the room, and foreshadows the Last
Judgement. Like the heliaia, the four walls establish a horizon for the common
ground of disagreement, the tension between the sic et non of good and evil
always alive in human finitude, and helps us realise that, from the inside, the four
walls of the heliaia too are, as it were, façades to the polis.
The Last Judgement – with Christ as judge – is of course characteristic of the west
wall of churches.51 In churches, God’s Justice and His Mercy framed the worship of
all Christians, indeed temporality itself. On this basis, one might imagine Christian
Churches to be the most comprehensive architectural embodiment of dwelling
with justice. To the gathering of Christians in the promise of Heavenly Jerusalem
could be added the response to Job,52 in which the universe is characterised as a

temple made by God, as well as the preservation of ‘measure, number, weight’,53
which Augustine develops as ‘measure fixes the mode of everything, number gives
it its species, and weight gives it rest and stability’54 and which Thomas Aquinas
qualifies in turn as ‘these three follow upon being, only so far as it is perfect and
according to this perfection it is good’.55 This style of theology forms part of the
background to such motifs as the famous manuscript illustration of ‘God the
Geometer’,56 or the depiction of creation in the Genesis cycle in the nave mosaics
of Monreale Cathedral, or the generative geometric mediation presented in the
Büchlein von der Fialen Gerechtigkeit, 1486, of Mathes Roriczer. The persistent
Neo-Platonism in Christianity implicated light in ontological order; and Aquinas
anticipates Grosseteste (De Luce) when he says:
[T]he nature of light is spoken of 57 as being without number weight and measure,
not absolutely, but in comparison with corporeal things, because the power of
light extends to all corporeal things inasmuch as it is an active quality of the first
body that causes change, that is, the heavens.58
However, light was also implicated in soteriology, based on such passages as Psalm
27:1–6 (‘The Lord is my light and my salvation’), and John 8:12 (‘I am the light of
the world: he that follows me walks not in darkness, but shall have the light of
life’). These are among the ways that medieval Christian churches preserved the
traditional attributes of the symbolism of justice – the interval between human and
divine orders marked by measure/ratio/analogy – but turned toward the promise
of salvation.
Although virtually interchangeable in texts, there is an important difference
between redemption, the style of exchange of which the Anaximander Fragment
speaks, and salvation, in which, as Augustine conceived it,59 finitude is overcome
and those who are saved will enjoy silent and eternal communication with God
in heaven. On this basis, the Sala dei Nove sits between the heliaia (or, more
accurately, the bouleterion), where the communicative interval/agon takes place
between citizens, and a church, where the communicative interval is between
humans and God (who is also Judge at the end of time). If, similarly, the tension
between Lorenzetti’s Good and Evil cities recalls Anaximander’s contest/agon
between Dikē and Adikia, this clearly prevails in a different register from salvation.
The Sala dei Nove is one civic institution among many which has this character, and,
in manifold ways the urban order of such towns (street, arcade, cortile, salone, etc.)
comprises the continuity between settings for this situation.
Conversely, when Renaissance architects, dramatists and painters recovered
Vitruvius’ Tragic and Comic scenae,60 they saw them not only as reciprocal forms
of drama, but also in terms of good and evil. The ‘Tragic’ centre of the town held
all the attributes of nobility, beauty, harmony, profundity of meanings whilst
the ‘Comic’ periphery of artisans and merchants held the opposite qualities.
Renovatio urbis arrived to the expectations behind our term ‘urban renewal’
by a gradual progression from a rich ensemble of theatres of renewal (poetry,
charities, defence-works, etc.) to the simple process of replacing what was

inevitably deemed a version of ‘Comic’ set with the latest version of ‘Tragic’ set.
After five centuries of refinement of this procedure – largely obtained through
transforming civic life and topography into concepts through theory – it was
possible for Le Corbusier to present his Plan Voisin as the luminous (‘Tragic’)
renewal of what he deemed the dark and crooked ‘slum’ (‘Comic’) of central Paris.
Like the several aspects of the Christian tradition smuggled into Enlightenment
culture (progress, the absolute, the sublime, etc.), we are in the presence of a
species of secular salvation.
Of course Le Corbusier also attempted to recover something from the remains
of the western tradition; and with respect to the theme of justice, his most notable
effort was the exploitation of the pun on ‘droit’ in his Poème de l’angle droit.61 This
work takes its overall ethos from Symbolist poetics and their gnostic interest in
secret meanings. Advocating a Dionysian/Orphic combination of creativity and
insight that owes more to Nietzsche than to the originals, it also draws upon
Plato’s Symposium and Aeschylus’ Prometheus. Architecture is subsumed within
Le Corbusier’s vision of world-order, a milieu of coincidentiae oppositorum (for
example a contest between creative darkness and luminous struggle), signs
(mostly of his own creation), and a desire to reconcile moments of intense clarity
with a chaotic, even violent, context. The French term droit connotes a legal or
moral claim, moral rectitude (droiture), uprightness and straightness (both physical
and moral) as well as the right angle. Combining motifs of conflict with a vaguely
Neo-Platonic harmony, the Poème develops seven levels of meaning which
are deemed to be held in his symbol for the right angle: the visual cross placed
within a squared circle broken on one side. With regard to measure, it deserves
remarking that his Modulor is less interested in all the magical properties usually
associated with the Golden Section, than it is the leading figure in a numerological
and geometric symbolism that emphasises continuity across differences (even
if only as a matter of dimension) and mimesis of certain natural forms. Neither a
philosopher nor a theologian, but a ‘practical man’, Le Corbusier only alludes to the
transcendent conditions for justice which are common to our other examples. The
Poème is an effort to move between the extremes of justice, between morality and
cosmological order, even inadvertently recalling Anaximander when he attempts
to develop a sequence from orbital periods of the earth and moon about the sun
to figured matter to personal identity.
Although such themes were a preoccupation of architects of his generation, Le
Corbusier’s insights bear more prolonged scrutiny and respect than do those of
others. After the revival of interest during post-modernism derailed into linguistics
and historicism, few architects presently concern themselves with these matters.
It must be admitted that ‘symbolism’ (usually just iconography) is part of the
problem, fostering the hope that facile references, excised from any plausible
living context, might save the case for practices otherwise indistinguishable
from the production of ‘form’. As it was with Le Corbusier, we are much better at
designing small to medium-sized buildings than we are at cities, or urban nuclei,
where the phenomenon of justice manifests itself most prominently. Despite the
regular critiques of the CIAM city even before Jane Jacobs, its principles persist
in the cities we now make. The continuity of agonic settings has evaporated
into statistics and ‘space’, more recently into ‘information’ (we have no idea what
constitutes ‘local’ or how to do a proper ‘Comic’ topography). Any reference to
distributive justice has been reduced to raw economics. The meaning of a town –
why to have it – has become subsumed under planning: the ever more desperate
management of resources weirdly metabolised into an aesthetics of ethereal
form.
The drama of technological change seems still to dominate our sense of
history; and it is true that cell phones enable otherwise disenfranchised urban
immigrants to construct international supply-chains or that digital monitoring of
energy-systems enables efficiency savings. However, it bears remembering that all
of the important human situations have remained quite constant – face-to-face
discourse, cycles of wake/sleep, use of language, and so forth. It is these which
are the receptacle of ‘meaning’ and therefore of any concrete sense of ‘justice’. It
is the regrettable tendency of the social sciences and particularly of economics to
characterise the whole as statistical distributions of ‘subjects’ or ‘agents’, helping
to support such pseudo-phenomena as ‘human consciousness’. Against this, the
common feature of the apparently archaic examples studied here is to have taken
collective life – comprising the horizons of commonality of people, things, nature
– as the primary assumption, with respect to which only does individual freedom
have meaning.
Of the three themes that comprise global sustainability – resource depletion/
competition, climate change and connectivity – the first two incite an orientation
to justice that takes account of our natural/fundamental conditions, which the
third has so far failed to deliver. We may simply fulfil the UK Met Office prediction of
a chaotic migration northwards from rapidly desertifying middle latitudes.62 Even
if such predictions are inaccurate, the eventual necessity of discovering an ethos of
mutual commitment at very high densities may result in vast high-rise barrios, and/
or may inspire topographies and civic cultures as rich, differentiated and profound
as fourteenth-century Cairo, Siena or Prague. In our post-symbolic culture, the
initial emphasis will necessarily be rooted in city making as agonic praxis, in the
form of local transformations of the existing late-capitalist topographies. We
may eventually recover ways of understanding our relation to the whole, not as
a matter of hyper-efficient resource-allocation, but as an opportunity granted to
finite humans. As Anaximander understood, however, this will inevitably involve
trying to name the place where beings, temporality, justice are allowed a ‘measure’
of hope.
notes
1 John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge MA, 1971, 1999).

2 Jurgen Habermas, On the Pragmatics of Social Interaction (Polity, 2001), and The Theory
of Communicative Action, 2 vols (Cambridge, 1984).
3 For example, see P. Marcuse et al., Searching for the Just City (London, 2009); David
Harvey, Social Justice and the City (London, 1973) uses motifs like ‘spatial form’ and
‘land use’ in order to make the city available to his Marxian economic analysis. Henri
Lefebvre’s inconsistency seems to have made him attractive to all persuasions.
4 Late second millennium, Louvre, Sb 25, the so-called ‘Unfinished’ Kudurru.
5 For a slightly different reading, and detailed photographs, see Anton Moortgat, The Art
of Ancient Mesopotamia (London, 1969), p. 102.
6 A similar stratification is evident on the vase from Uruk, c. 3000 bce, National Museum
of Iraq, IM19606.
7 Early eighteenth century bce, Louvre, Sb8.
8 At Mari, where Hammurabi’s contemporary, Zim-ri-lim, substitutes Ashtarte for
Shamash, Louvre AO 19825.
9 See Moortgat, Art of Ancient Mesopotamia, Plate 201, for a detail from the Stele of Ur
Nammu, which clearly shows the chord and staff, often mistakenly called a ring and
staff because of the more summary representation in later reliefs and paintings. On the
status of ‘geometry’ in the Ancient Near East, see Otto Neugebauer, The Exact Sciences
in Antiquity (Princeton NJ, 1952) and Corinna Rossi, Architecture and Mathematics in
Ancient Egypt (Cambridge, 2003).
10 For example, see Ephesians 2:20; all New Testament references devolve from Psalm
18:22.
11 Cited in Samuel Noah Kramer, History Begins at Sumer (New York, 1959), pp. 85–96.
12 Leonard Wooley, Ur Excavations, Vol. VI, The Buildings of the Third Dynasty (Philadelphia
PA, 1974), plate 57.
13 Peter Carl, ‘City-Image versus Topography of Praxis’, Cambridge Archaeological Journal,
vol. 10, no. 2 (October 2000): 328–35.
14 Anaximander, Peri Physeos (early VIth bce), via Theophrastos (IVth bce), via Simplicius
(early VIth ad). See, inter alia, G.S. Kirk and J.E. Raven, The Presocratic Philosophers
(Cambridge, 1957), pp. 117 ff.; Charles H. Kahn, Anaximander and the Origins of Greek
Cosmology (London, 1994); Friedrich Nietzsche, Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks
(Washington, 1962); M. Heidegger, Early Greek Thinking (New York, 1984), pp. 13 ff.
15 Anaximander’s fragment precedes Parmenides’ advocacy of being; Simplicius/
Theophrastus placed the fragment in the context of the Ionian speculation on
exchange among elements, and declared that Anaximander argued the principle/
origin, arche, of existing things to be apeiron, the boundless, which I have elevated to
Being. See Kahn, Anaximander, p. 168ff., 193ff., 231ff.
16 Hesiod, Theogony II. 901–6.
17 Pausanius, Guide to Greece V.17.5–19.10; H.S. Jones offers a reconstruction in ‘The
Chest of Kypselos’, The Journal of Hellenic Studies, vol. 14, 1894, pp. 30–80; see more
recently, Anthony Snodgrass, Homer and the Artists: Text and Picture in Early Greek Art
(Cambridge, 1998), pp. 109 et. seq.
18 T.B.L. Webster, ‘Personification as a mode of Greek Thought’, Journal of the Warburg and
Courtauld Institutes, vol. 17, nos. 1, 2 (1954): 10–21.
19 Solon, ‘Eunomia’, ll. 15–17; see K.A. Rauflaub, ‘Political Thought, Civic Responsibility,
and the Greek Polis’, in Jóhann Páll Arnason, and Peter Murphy (eds), Agon, Logos, Polis
(Stuttgart, 2001), pp. 72–117.
20 Jean-Pièrre Vernant, The Origins of Greek Thought (London, 1982).
21 Eric Voegelin, The Ecumenic Age (Baton Rouge LA, 1974), p. 77.
22 Sophocles, Antigone, 354–6; Jan Patocka insists that history is possible only with the
advent of politics and philosophy in the polis; Jan Patocka, Heretical Essays in the
Philosophy of History, trans. Erazim Kohak (Chicago, 1996), Lecture Two and p. 143. In
general see Eric Voegelin, The World of the Polis (Baton Rouge LA, 1957).
23 Proclus: Commentary on Plato’s Timaeus, I, 345 ff., Kirk and Raven, The Presocratic
Philosophers, p. 269.
24 Walter Burkert, Lore and Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism (Cambridge MA, 1972);
Charles Kahn, The Art and Thought of Heraclitus (Cambridge, 1974); see also Anne
Michelini, ‘Political Themes in Euripides’ Suppliants’, The American Journal of Philology,
vol. 115, no. 2 (Summer, 1994): 219–52.
25 The heliaia, originally the name of a particular court, became a general name for law
courts, otherwise known as dikasteria (a juror was a dikast, both words made from
dikē). In general, see Mogens Herman Hansen, The Athenian Democracy in the Age of
Demosthenes: Structure, Principles, and Ideology (Oxford, 1991), Chapter 8. The edifice
in the South East corner of the Agora in Athens is now considered a grain store; but
the group under the North West end of the Stoa of Attalos lays fair claim to being the
remains of fifth-century law courts. Richard Ernest Wycherley, The Stones of Athens
(Princeton NJ, 1978), p. 56, fig. 18.
26 Plato, Republic 504a–540b; Hans-Georg Gadamer, Dialogue and Dialectic: Eight
Hermeneutic Studies on Plato, trans. P. Christopher Smith (New Haven CT, 1984) and
Plato’s Dialectical Ethics (New Haven CT, 1991).
27 Plato, Timaeus, 17c.
28 Plato, Republic, 510e.
29 This is undoubtedly inspired by Parmenides’ similar division in his poem, but the so-
called ‘Way of Opinion/Seeming’ is mostly lost.
30 Plato, Statesman, 284e; Philebus, 55d ff., 64b.
31 Aristotle, Topica, VIII.
32 Aristotle, Politics 1267b22 ff. and 1330b24.
33 Pierre Lévéque and Pierre Vidal-Naquet, Cleisthenes the Athenian: An Essay on the
Representation of Space and Time in Greek Political Thought from the End of the Sixth
Century to the Death of Plato, trans. and ed. David Ames Curtis (Amherst NY, 1996).
34 Plato, Gorgias 508a, ff.
35 Plato, Timaeus 25a, ff.
36 Proclus, Commentary on the First Book of Euclid’s Elements, trans. G. Morrow, II.iii.68
(New Haven CT, 1970), p. 57.
37 P.M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria, 3 vols (Oxford, 1972); Judith McKenzie, The
Architecture of Alexandria and Egypt 300bc-700ad (New Haven CT, 2007); Lucio Russo,
The Forgotten Revolution (Berlin, 2003).
38 Mark Wilson Jones argues this is an adaptation of building-practice to the ‘standard of
symmetria’, Principles of Roman Architecture (New Haven CT, 2000), pp. 58–9.
39 Sounding-vessels are attested in a few theatres.
40 Vitruvius, De re aedificatoria (in order of mention): Book V, vi, vii; Book V, iv, v; Book I, vi;
Book I, i.
41 Moralia V.
42 On the similarity of the latter two Plutarch was preceded by Herodotus.
43 This was first proposed by Apollonius of Perga a century after Euclid, perhaps inspired
by the circular metaphors of elemental change, sometimes seen as stratified cosmic
rings and compared to the phases of the moon in Empedocles B 26, from which Plato,
Phaedo 72b and Aristotle, de Generatione et Corruptione. 337a1–7.
44 Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, 1094a28.
45 Historiae Augustae, ‘Hadrian’, 26.5.
46 For the full passage, see Strabo, Geographica (London, 1917), 5.3.8.
47 Proclus, Commentary on the First Book of Euclid’s Elements, II.iii.62, op. cit., p. 50.
48 Hans-Georg Gadamer, ‘Thinking as Redemption: Plotinus between Plato and
Augustine’, in Hermeneutics, Religion, and Ethics, trans. Joel Weinsheimer (New Haven
CT: Yale University Press, 1999), Chapter 5.
49 Dalibor Vesely, ‘Corporeality of Baroque Art and the Mystery of Incarnation’, paper
delivered at Werner Oechslin Stiftung, Einsiedeln, July 2011.
50 Randolph Starn and Loren Partridge, Arts of Power (Berkeley CA, 1992), Chapter 1;
Chiara Frugoni, A Distant City: Images of Urban Experience in the Medieval World, trans.
William McCuaig (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), Chapter 6; Diana
Norman (ed.), Siena, Florence and Padua; Art, Society, and Religion 1280–1400 (New
Haven CT: Yale University Press, 1995), vol. II, Chapter 7; Alan Dundes, and Alessandro
Falassi, La Terra in Piazza; an interpretation of the Palio in Siena (Berkeley CA: University
of California Press, 1975).
51 However, the fifth century apse mosaic in Sta. Pudenziana in Rome would appear to
include a reference to judgement along with the evident regal, blessing and teaching
Christ, set in a vision of Jerusalem fusing Golgotha with the end-time framed by
the Tetramorph. See Wendy Pullan, ‘Jerusalem from alpha to omega in the Santa
Pudenziana mosaic’, Jewish Art, vols 23–4 (1997/98): 405–17; and Frugoni, A Distant
City, Chapter 1.
52 Job 38.
53 Wisdom 11:21.
54 Augustine, De Genesis ad Litteram, trans. J.H. Taylor (New York: Paulist Press, 1982), IV.3.
55 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Pt. 1, Q. 5, reply objection 1.
56 Codex Vindobonensis 2554, frontispiece.
57 Ambrose, Hexaemeron I.9.
58 Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Pt. 1, Q. 5, reply objection 5.
59 Augustine, De Civitate Dei, Book XIX.11,13; Book XX.1, 16, 17; Book XXII.1, 30.
60 Vitruvius, De Architectura, V.vi.9; Sebastiano Serlio, Tutte l’opere d’architettura et
prospetiva, Book II.3.
61 Le Corbusier, Poème de l’angle droit, 155 lithographs, boxed (Alec Tiranti, 1953).
62 Interactive Google Earth map from Met Office at: <www.fco.gov.uk/google-earth-
4degrees.kml>.
16
Politikē Aretē: Or the Origins of Civic Justice
Renée Tobe
In the dialogue of his name, Protagoras professes to teach aretē and in particular
politikē aretē. Plato’s exposition of how a skill becomes an excellence through
the giving of justice and good sense demonstrates the relation of politikē and
polis and the relation of justice to both. The linguistic origins of politikē technē
conceal whether it is a craft relating to city building and planning in terms
of architecture, and reveal the role it plays in how to plan a city as a society of
justice. Different translations of politikē aretē and politikē technē shed light on
our received notions of civic justice and the complexities of urban co-existence, Table 16.1
that is, the means by which millions of individuals from diverse strata all live Table of Plato’s
together in cities. Translations of Protagoras render politikē aretē variously as: Protagoras.
Different
‘running the city’; ‘civic art’; ‘political excellence or virtue’; ‘political excellence’ translations of
or ‘good citizenship’, and politikē technē as: ‘art of running a city’; ‘civic art’; ‘the Politikē Technē
art of government’; ‘city craft’; or ‘the art of politics’.1 and Politikē Aretē
Hubbard and
line Taylor (1889) Lamb (1924) Ostwald (1956) Griffith (2010)
Karnofsky (1982)
ton de politikon
skill in running a city civic wisdom political wisdom city craft political knowledge
(321d)
politiken technē
art of running a city civic art art of government city craft art of politics
(322b)
politikē aretē political excellence

running the city civic art political excellence good citizenship
(322d) or virtue
politikē aretē excellence as a

civic virtue political virtue political excellence good citizenship
(323b) citizen
Politikē aretē is both running the city and excellence as a citizen.2 Civic
art, good citizenship, political excellence, and running the city have various
interpretations, although in Plato’s era this may have been far less ambiguous
when all public discourse was both influenced by and sought to influence the
socio-political life of the polis.3 Refinement and maturation of political concepts
may be understood only through connecting them to historical events that
include social and economic developments. In current interpretations, citycraft
and skill in running a city are worlds apart, and political knowledge and civic
wisdom also have differing connotations.
Protagoras
It is not known how familiar Plato (427–347 bce) was with Protagoras’ (490–
420 bce) actual writings, and he may have relied on secondary sources for his
dialogue.4 The Protagoras begins with Protagoras the Sophist’s arrival in Athens
and features historic characters who were politicians, other Sophists, and wealthy
aristocrats. The nature of the Platonic dialogue helps the reader gain ‘critical
acquaintance’ with the general character of Protagoras. He is a bit proud, or vain,
likes to promote himself, doesn’t like being shown up, is intellectually evasive,
but essentially well intentioned as a Sophist.5 Socrates describes Protagoras as a
foreigner of Abdera, an outsider to Athens quite distracting with his wisdom. In
Classical Greece Sophists taught rhetoric as an intellectual practice and advised
on public policy. In this period architects Callicrates and Ictinos built the Temple
of Athena Nike and the Parthenon on the Athens Acropolis (447–432 bce). During
this era of Hellenic expansion military leader and statesman Pericles (495–429
bce), who wished to set up a new colony at Thurii, entrusted the design to the
foremost city-planner of his day, Hippodamus of Miletes, but the job of drafting
the laws to Protagoras.
Towards the end of the fourth century bce, Plato wrote the Republic
delineating the structure and philosophy of an ideal citystate where political
justice has great value and provides moral guidance for both rulers and for
the ruled.6 In Plato’s Republic, justice is found through doing one’s own work,
that is, doing what one does best must be just. Public discourse both cast and
reflected light on the social political life of the polis. Ancient Athens did not
discriminate between political, philosophical and dramatic discourse. Just as
Plato’s Symposium satirises comic playwright Aristophanes, Aristophanes’ Birds
lampoons Sophists like Protagoras and Plato’s Republic with Cloudcuckooland, a
city for birds designed in the clouds whose tiered system reflects Plato’s Republic
and his Clouds ridicules Plato’s Academy itself with the satirical Thinkery.
So called ‘Older Sophists’, such as Protagoras were known for their cleverness
and ability to impart knowledge to pupils willing to learn. The abandonment of
kingships raised the question of who should rule in a democracy since leaders were
granted authority on the basis of their excellence. At a time of increasing prosperity,
it was important that the sons of wealthy men, and not just those of the nobility or
Politikē Aretē: or the Origins of Civic Justice 233
traditionally prominent in politics could learn aretē, not just inherit it, and become
leaders in the Assembly.7 With the increasing prevalence of oratory and the need
to ‘win arguments’ Sophists became known for teaching rhetoric, which is both
positive in that it helps politicians to influence citizens to good and responsible
behaviour, and negative since it makes a weaker argument appear strong. In other
words, it can promote both justice and injustice.
Only fragments of Protagoras’ writing remain. According to Plato he also wrote
a treatise entitled Truth, Aletheia, that contained his statement that ‘man is the
measure of all things’ explained by Protagoras in the Thaeatetus where he states
‘that individual things are for me such as they appear to me, and for you in turn
such as they appear to you – you and I being ‘man’?’8 This dictum suggests our
everyday experience and understanding are the means or standard by which we
measure or assess social values, basic human needs and responsibilities. It weighs
the art of measurement against the power of appearances and suggests that we
perceive the existence and qualities of things only in so far as they come into
contact with our senses.9 Protagoras’ principle of the individual being the measure
of all things means judgement and knowledge are relative to the one judging and
that correction of one’s own perceptions is impossible, for one is as true as another.
What our senses perceive is true, for us. Appearances can confuse, they are different
for you than they are for me. What feels right to me may not be what feels right to
you, and, in fact, what feels right to me at one point, may seem wrong later on, and
judgements are made on facts presented.10
What is Aretē and Can it be Taught
The question of ‘what is aretē’ and is it teachable runs as a familiar motif in Plato’s
dialogues. Protagoras professes to teach excellence. When asked excellence in
what, he responds somewhat evasively. Protagoras explains that it is the ability
to manage ones household in the best way, good judgement in one’s own affairs
and in public life and how best to exercise political power whether through actions
or words.11 As listeners gather around him, Protagoras promises to teach the art
of running a city, described as ten politikēn technēn and to be a good citizen that
translates as agathoi politas and suggests that this is a technē at which individuals
can improve to the point of excellence.12 Socrates suggests this is not something
that can be taught, that is, aretē may not be didacton.13 For this reason Protagoras
describes politikē as a technē, a skill at which, with practice, study and learning, we
may improve.
As a master rhetorician, Plato attacks Protagoras’ theory of aretē in the style of
the Sophist himself and presents both sides of the argument, both what Protagoras
states, and the refutation.14 Protagoras argument seems to be:
First: A student who studies with Protagoras will become better.
Next: A student who studies with Protagoras will become a better citizen and able
to administer civic affairs.
Then: Protagoras professes to teach skill in civic management.
Finally: A student who studies politikē technē with Protagoras learns politikē aretē.
Protagoras purposefully builds on ambiguities between aretē and technē to show

that although all may possess these skills, he, Protagoras the Sophist, being more
skilled than others, may teach them and that not just noble born but all citizens, can
be political leaders. But what is politikē technē? Different translators had different
ideas. More than just ‘hands on’ knowledge, technē is an art, a skill, an ability to
know, or learn through practice.15 A special kind of technē is required for the polis
as illuminated by the different translations below:
You seem to me to be talking about the art of running a city, and to be promising
to make men into good citizens.
It seems that the technical subject of which you speak is citycraft and that you are
promising to make men good members of their city.
You seem to me to be talking about the art of politics, and promising to turn men
into good citizens.16
Protagoras thesis seems to be that a student who studies politikē technē with him,
will learn politikē aretē. In order to understand what this means, we insert different
translation into the premise:
A student who studies the art of running a city with Protagoras learns excellence
as a citizen.
A student who studies civic art with Protagoras learns civic virtue.
A student who studies the art of government with Protagoras learns political
excellence or virtue.
A student who studies citycraft with Protagoras learns political excellence.
A student who studies the art of politics with Protagoras learns good citizenship.17
Politikē aretē suggests good citizens, skilled in politics. Citycraft connotes the
activities of the professional politician and the operations of modern political
institutions. Socrates suggests that this is not a skill that can be taught since, unlike
medicine, for example, where one consults an expert, with politikē aretē everyone
has an equal voice on civic matters, since, in the polis being a citizen qualifies each
to speak to the assembly.
Protagoras Great or Long Speech
Classic Greek scholars describe the passage of dialogue where Protagoras explains
that he will teach aretē as a ‘confused and confusing piece of Greek’ that forms the
philosophical introduction to ‘one of Plato’s most baffling dialogues’.18 In his Great
Speech, described as a ‘tremendous display of eloquence’ that leaves his listeners

entranced, Protagoras illuminates the means by which this technē becomes an
aretē.19 These confusions are present in the Greek text although an Athenian of
Plato’s era might be less perplexed by both technē and aretē than current readers
with our centuries of philosophy.20
Contemporary language and thought distinguishes on far more levels between
‘being a citizen’ and ‘running a city’ than in the time of Classic Greece. For ancient
Athenians, ‘teaching the city’ meant instructing its citizens; teaching citycraft
is the same as teaching a person to be a good citizen.21 Protagoras, identified as
the one who knows the measure of all things, is most appropriate to be able to
instruct on how to act correctly in all things. The language of political philosophy is
‘linguistically mediated’ and the definition of citycraft, that is, being a good citizen,
may vary in relation to the qualities people happen to regard as important at a
particular time.22 This definition of aretē, as a kind of self-consciousness and self-
realisation, may not be formally teachable, but developed as a skill, or learned as
a language.
When asked to explain how aretē may be taught, Protagoras suggests he can
do this equally with fable or muthos as reasoned argument or logos. Here, as in
the Republic, muthos and logos are juxtaposed. Plato often uses myth or parable
to convey truth where literal truth is not possible. While muthos is often subsumed
under logos, parables need not be logically proven arguments but judged by
the inherent values they convey and the evaluation of their shifting layers of
meaning.23 Plato pokes fun gently at his character Protagoras; the suggestion that
the Sophist can teach as easily with a fable as factual argument clearly expresses
Plato’s scepticism of Sophistry that treats accuracy and rigour in detail somewhat
disdainfully. He uses the myth to persuade, and logos to demonstrate. Plato’s
emphasis on the artistry rather than the veracity of the Sophistry weakens the point
itself. Using both fable and logical argument demonstrates his power as a Sophist,
but undermines the validity of his line of reasoning. Although representing him as
upright and respectable, throughout the dialogue Plato uses Protagoras’ rhetoric
and style of Sophistry to destabilise Protagoras’ case that aretē is teachable.
The Myth
Protagoras relays a creation myth that features brothers Prometheus and

Epimetheus. Prometheus is known for stealing fire from the gods, and being
punished for it by having his liver pecked out by an eagle each day, while it grows
back each night. Epimetheus, his younger brother, was also punished through a
hapless marriage with Pandora who opened the box that released evil spirits to
the world. The myth draws from the Prometheus Bound trilogy of Aeschylus.24 Both
Epimetheus and Prometheus also appear in Hesiod’s writings where Prometheus
is described as having a ‘labyrinthine mind’ and Epimetheus as ‘foolish’.25 Hesiod’s
writings promoted the combination of justice as a moral force of a higher order
and the social values necessary for the emergence and prosperity of the polis, the
civilized and law-abiding city. Hesiod presents justice as an essential condition

for peace and prosperity and distinguishes between concrete manifestations of
justice and justice itself as a requisite for the civilised society, which is the polis.
Justice is, above all, a civic virtue. Protagoras’ interpretation of his myth shows
this clearly:26
In the beginning, (as all myths begin) Zeus commissioned Prometheus

(Forethought) to hand out qualities to all living creatures as they were brought
forth from where they were formed within the earth. His brother Epimetheus
(Afterthought) begged to be allowed to distribute the qualities himself. He
suggested that when the qualities had been distributed to all creatures,
Prometheus might survey them to see that they are all fine. With surprising lack of
forethought, Prometheus acquiesced.
Plato is unusually lyrical, using poetic language to describe the bestowing of

weapons and armatures on some, and on others mechanisms for safety such as an
ability to fly, or to run fast or hide:
Epimetheus distributed the provisions such that all species were ensured of
survival. They were given fur or feather to keep them warm, the ability to burrow
for shelter or build nests. Each had food, from plants, fruit, roots, or flesh. Those
creatures destined to be the victims of others were made small, given more
offspring, able to fun fast to escape, or to fly away, while those who preyed on
them were given teeth, claws, greater strength and cunning. Humans, however,
Epimetheus had forgotten and Prometheus found them naked, unshod,
unbedded and without weapons. Searching for some quality to give to humans,
Prometheus headed for Olympus, the citadel of the gods, but, frightened by
Power and Violence, the sentinels at Zeus’ gate, went to the lower city where
he stole fire from Hephaestus and knowledge of the arts from Athena for one is
useless without the other.27
When the theft was discovered, Prometheus was punished. The final line to
the myth, in the original language, sounds like a rhyme, or clanging of a gate:
‘Prometheus through Epimetheus fault, later on (so the story goes) stood his trial
for theft.’28 Plato uses a technical term, klopeis dikē, meaning stood his trial for, from
the Attic criminal process; ‘a prosecution for theft’ pursued Prometheus.29 The story
continues, and engages with our discussion:
Their skill at making things afforded them adequate protection and they were
able to build cities, but humans found themselves unable to live together
peacefully in them as they lacked the art of politics. Using his messenger Hermes,
Zeus distributed respect and justice, so that all share equally in justice and good
citizenship generally that there might be order in cities, and bonds to hold people
together in friendship.30
While they are given technē and fire by Prometheus, the divine qualities humans
receive are dikē and eidos translated as: ‘justice and conscience’; ‘right and respect’;
‘justice and reverence’; ‘justice and a sense of shame’; and ‘justice and respect’.31
Hubbard and
line Taylor (1889) Lamb (1924) Ostwald (1956) Griffith (2010)
Karnofsky (1982)
sophian anthropos wisdom necessary to wisdom for his knowledge needed

practical skill wisdom of daily life
(321d) the support of life [man’s] sustanance to stay alive
aidos dikē conscience and reverence and justice and a sense

respect and right respect and justice
(322c) justice justice of shame
dikē aidos conscience and justice and justice and a sense

right and respect justice and respect
(322c) justice reverence of shame
dikē aidos justice and justice and justice and a sense

right and respect justice and respect
(322d) conscience reverence of shame
aidos dikē conscience and reverence and justice and a sense

respect and right respect and justice
(322d) justice justice of shame
dikaison sophrosone justice and justice and good justice and self- justice and
justice and prudence
(323a) soundness of mind sense control moderation
These are gifts not just of the gods, but of the greatest god, Zeus, therefore Table 16.2
they are the greatest gifts. When Protagoras describes the precarious condition Table of Plato’s
Protagoras.
of people before the foundation of cities, able to practice the arts and crafts
Different
but unable to defend themselves he adds: ‘for they had not the art of politics, of translations of
which the art of war is a part’.32 Politikē aretē helps us overcome our tendency for Aidos and Dikē
polemike technē.33 We make our way through life guided throughout by justice
and common sense and these along with politikē technē and aretē, constitute
the socialisation that enable us to live in the polis. Aristotle develops this further
in his discussion of eudaimonia, in which he suggests that the polis is necessary
not just for life but exists for the good life. Political expertise is introduced
in the story as an extra endowment that humans, already in possession of
technical skill, required to enable them to live in organised communities.
Eidos is the good will to put this practical wisdom at the service of the larger
community.
And with the giving of aidos and dikē, politikē technē, develops into politikē
aretē and civic art becomes civic virtue; the art of politics becomes good
citizenship, the art of government becomes political excellence or political
virtue; citycraft becomes political excellence; and finally, the art of running a
city becomes excellence as a citizen. With the art of Sophistry Protagoras sneaks
political skill into the argument as an excellence.
Since it is the divine gifts or qualities of justice and common sense that allow
humans to live in cities, we try once again to follow the logic of Protagoras’ claim
that he can teach excellence, which has somehow become more complicated
rather than otherwise:
1. I can teach excellence.

2. I teach excellence in managing a city and how to be a good citizen.
3. This requires politikē technē.
4. Every one has justice and good sense/respect otherwise we could not live in
cities.
5. Therefore I teach political excellence.
Or
6. There are cities. Cities require justice and good sense. We use our justice and
good sense to live in cities. Therefore I can teach excellence.
Protagoras speaks as a Sophist; using both the structure of rhetoric and the
paradoxical argument. The nature of a paradox is that it doesn’t make sense,
although there is usually something to learn from it. The argument situated on an
ambiguity is often the most effective. There is a paradox between politikē technē
and politikē aretē that Protagoras, and Plato, emphasise: Is it given or can it be
taught? And how does a technē become an aretē? With the giving of eidos and dikē,
politikē technē develops into politikē aretē.
The Sophist’s argument employs an analogy in which one thing resembles
another. The word analogy itself derives from the term logos, giving the impression
of a logical conclusion. When Plato moves from muthos to logos he shifts from
divine gifts personified as aidos and dikē to qualities of human behaviour, the
human capacity for justice or dikaiosune, and instead of aidos uses sophrosune.
This word has a large elusive semantic range, whose core meaning is ‘soundness
of mind’ or ‘good sense’ but then in different contexts ‘self control’ or ‘moderation’
or ‘prudence’, conditions that underly all necessities of social and civilised life and
enable the polis to exist.
The main argument of the section is the sentence stating that all must share
in dikē and aidos or there would be no cities at all.34 While all different kinds of
aretē may not be distributed equally, the example being that a doctor may be more
excellent at medicine while a carpenter is excellent at working with wood, since all
share in eidos and dikē, all share equally in politikē aretē.
Plato’s Intentional Ambiguity
Plato uses mythical language personifying dikē and aidos, while in the logos,
more contemporary language is used, dikaosune, and sophrosune. Justice
(a quality we all possess equally) is not the same as ‘being just’ that implies
action.
The main argument of this section is that without respect, common sense, and
a sense of justice we could not live together in cities. Plato sums this up when he
states ‘all men must possess reverence and justice in order for a polis to arise’35
The question posed earlier of ‘what is politikē aretē ’ or as commentators ask: what
does Plato mean by ‘citycraft’ demonstrates the discursive intention. The question
of what is aretē, requires no firm answer for the point is to converse daily about
aretē to acquire a greater self-realisation for as Plato states ‘the unexamined life is
not worth living’.36
Protagoras’ Claim
Protagoras continues to elide the move from technē to aretē. Protagoras claims
to teach excellence through teaching citizens to hone the skills inherent within
them; that is their ‘god-given’ sense of justice and common sense. In the citystate,
everyone teaches aretē, just as everyone teaches the language of Greek, that is,
the citizen learns to be a citizen as he learns to speak his own language. Plato
uses politikē technē to denote the science of politics as something that one can
practice.37 Politikē technē, political skill or, more broadly conceived, ‘the art of living
in the polis’, is instilled in members of the polis, through the very social bases of
the state itself, as one learns a language, in contrast to technical skill, passed on
through a specific, narrow course of instruction. Protagoras’ claim that makes him
special is that he is better at it than others.
Different translations open up the discussion. Translations also limit our
interpretation. Translations differ, and sometimes say the same thing. For example,
‘altogether weaker’ and ‘weaker in all things’ mean relatively the same thing but
city craft and art of running a city and art of politics or political skill do not. In
another example, in the text, dikē and aidos are not always in the same order
and in some translations they are always the same but others follow the source
text. Translators suggest aretē is translated as virtue and excellence with equal
measure. The use of aretē in this period demonstrates the fluidity of language and
shift in focus of what is important. Greek conceptions of what made a person an
excellent or admirable one differed widely at different periods. Traditionally aretē
denoted excellences that would ensure success, prosperity and stability of the
group to whom the citizen felt loyalty. In Homeric times this was through bravery,
brute strength and cunning. In the time of Pericles and the Peloponnesian
wars aretē extended to administrative and political skills. Excellences that once
inferred an individual’s success in competing in battle began to be used to refer
to individuals supporting one another in cooperation.
In the centuries between Homer and Plato, the meaning of aretē changed as
the need for different kinds of city administrators changed. The highest human
excellence results from one’s own making; a reflexive self-consciousness, a vision
of human meaning quite distinct from Homeric values of bravery by which one
vanquished one’s enemy. In Protagoras time, excellences were those qualities
deemed most likely to ensure the success, prosperity, and the stability of the group.
This emphasises the need for community in order to survive. In the current era
being a ‘good person’ is not the same as being a ‘good leader’ and pursuing what
is best for oneself is often at odds with pursuing what is best for the city. These
qualities do not necessarily concur with Homeric values. We look to leaders to be
self-less and not self-serving or self-interested, quite different from the single-
minded and physically courageous heroes of Homeric times.
It may be that there was confusion of thought of what an aretē was at the time,
or Protagoras, as a distinguished Sophist may be doing this on purpose to slip in
political skill as an excellence, one that he can teach. It is also how a technē becomes
an aretē, one which each must share in equal measure. Plato states this clearly:
Is there, or is there not, some one thing which it is essential that all the citizens
have a share of if there is to be a city? Here, if anywhere, is where the solution
of your difficulty is to be found. If there is, and if this one thing is not carpentry
or metalwork or pottery, but rather justice, prudence and what is holy – human
goodness [aretē] to give it a single name.38
A sense of justice and respect enable humans to acquire aretē that has
connotations suggesting it is higher than technē. Aretē denotes excellence but
also virtue. As Arendt describes: Excellence itself, aretē as the Greeks, virtus
as the Romans would have called it, has always been assigned to the public
realm where one could excel, could distinguish oneself from all others.39 Politikē
aretē which is simply the excellence of the good citizen [agathos politeis] and
was a skill has now become an assemblage of moral excellences, that include
collegiality or administrative skill, that is, being a good leader. As Plato suggests
in another dialogue: To state that a democracy such as Athens is unable to
govern is to belittle its aretē.40 Civic aretē has been a goal from Homeric times
and proof, if it is needed, that the term is awkward or ambiguous to translate
is apparent not just in the multitude of translations, but in the example of
classical scholars who not only leave it in the original but keep both technē and
aretē in the Greek characters.
The dialogue commences with the two main protagonists holding one
position and after both muthos and logos concludes with Protagoras and
Socrates having exchanged philosophical stances. Both fable and rational
discourse are examined from the stance of the architect and urbanist. For
the ancient Greeks everything exists for the good of the polis and living in a
polis means that everything is decided through words and persuasion and
not through force and violence.41 The polis requires an order that determines
the structure, and, like following the rules of a game, justice consists in more
than just the observance of the rules of the order, but also invites one to
push the limits, held back from going too far by our sense of justice and good
sense.42
No amount of rhetoric or intellectual skill can replace human goodness
as essential constituent of the public realm. Arendt’s territory of statecraft
approaches Richard Sennett’s least defined version of ‘craft’ in citycraft. Sennett’s
citycraft is reflective of the Enlightenment legacy that all things are improving and
working towards a better future, in a manner that bridges the social and political
realms. Arendt suggests however that statecraft is a self-standing domain
of expertise.43
So aretē or excellence is teachable while political science is a gift of the
gods – surely in contemporary times we might see this the other way. We
interpret it differently according to our interests and understanding of
what politics, cities, and excellence are. The first aim of government and
administration is to secure the safety and prosperity of the polis. Such aretē
requires courage, initiative, and the willingness to take risks to achieve a
desired end.
Conclusion
Here we return to the myth and turn to Bernard Stiegler who, in as captivating
manner as any Sophist, expounds on the role of technē. We had the knowledge and
technical ability to build cities, but were unable to live in them until we received
the divine gifts of dikē and eidos. As humans, we possessed the means to make war
before we had the means to keep peace among ourselves. This ability to make war
is what Stiegler refers to as the fault of Epimetheus, that we have technē, fire and
knowledge of how to use it. Our ability to live with one another came later, as a
corrective gift from the most powerful of gods.44
The fault of Epimetheus is that we, as humans do not have built in protection, we
must think for ourselves and plan ahead. Our ability to develop the art of cities and
living in them is the result of a forgetting, and of a theft; a double fault. Prometheus
and Epimetheus need to work together – we can plan ahead, but only based on
past experiences.45 Epimetheus’ name suggests heritage and the knowledge that
accumulates from experience so that we may learn from our mistakes. Epimetheus
has an important place for us in the understanding of cities and how we live in
them, why we build them, and their relation to justice. Epimetheus also helps us to
understand the relation of eidos to dikē, and how a technē became an aretē.
Where lies the ‘truth’ or eletheia in the discussion? Justice is always justice.
No matter who translates it, or when it is translated. As Arendt points out, in
the Athenian polis the main concern of citizens was ‘talking with one another’.46
Questions reveal more answers, and through interpretation and translation we
can only hope to discover our own interpretation of the city of justice or justice in
the city. Simonides suggests that ‘the city teaches a man’, and again, in the poem
discussed in the Protagoras suggests:
A sound and healthy man, one who well knows

Justice, the city’s profit …47
The notion of the polis, political community, or citystate, draws attention to

the theme of how we live together in cities. While Plato’s Protagoras compares
‘learning’ justice to learning to play a flute, Aristotle’s Politics suggests that the
citizen is the flute-maker, and the city leader is the flautist ‘laying out a masterful
and compelling tune across the city’.48 Humans, may have been forgotten by
Epimetheus, but through sneakiness and ingenuity, have gained divine qualities
that promote the success of the community as a whole. The point of the myth is
that not only do we all have justice and a sense of moderation but that these are
divine gifts of the highest order. Prometheus may have been afraid to go directly
to Zeus for qualities to steal but humans get something anyway. They are evenly
distributed, and all have them.
The dialogue presents us with the Socratic method of learning, and while
each, Socrates and Protagoras begin at one side of the argument of whether or
not aretē may be taught, they end on the other demonstrating just how this kind
of method operates. In this sense Protagoras resembles Epimetheus: he enters
the discussion like a Sophist, as a mere ‘contest of words’ but without foresight as
to where it will lead him.49 At the conclusion while Protagoras and Socrates have
somewhat reversed their positions the actual issue has not been resolved. The
Protagoras ends with the conclusion that until we know what aretē really is we
may not know if it is teachable. And we end our discussion as Plato concluded
his dialogue:
(…) ‘with that we left.’
‘That ended the conversation and we left.’
‘Having said and heard these things, we went away.’
And
‘Here our colloquy ended, and each went his way.’ 50
notes
1 Plato, Protagoras, trans. C.C.W. Taylor (Oxford, 1889); Plato, Laches, Protagoras, Meno,
Euthydemus, trans. W.R.M. Lamb (Cambridge, 1924); Plato, Protagoras, trans. M. Ostwald
(New York, 1956); Plato, Plato’s Protagoras, trans. B.A.F. Hubbard and E.S. Karnsofsky
(Chicago, 1982); Plato, Gorgias, Menexenus, Protagoras, ed. M. Schofield, trans. T. Griffith
(Cambridge, 2010).
2 Plato, Protagoras, trans. Taylor, 322d and 323b.
3 Edward Schiappa, Protagoras and Logos; A Study in Greek Philosophy and Rhetoric
(Columbia, 2003).
4 Richard Kraut, The Cambridge Companion to Plato (Cambridge, 1992), p. xii.
5 Plato, The Protagoras of Plato, trans. E.G. Sihler, ed. H. Drisler (New York: Harper
and Brothers, 1881) and A.W.H. Adkins, ‘Αρετη, Τεχνη, Democracy and Sophists in
Protagoras 316b–328d’, in Journal of Hellenic Studies, vol. 93 (1973).
6 Plato, Republic, trans. A.D. Lindsay (London), 433a–b.
7 Adkins, ‘Αρετη, Τεχνη’.
8 Plato, Thaeatetus, Sophist, trans. H.N.Fowler (Cambridge, 1921), 152a2–4.
9 Plato, Protagoras, 356–7a.
10 Hermann Sauppe and James A. Towle, Commentary on Plato: Protagoras (Boston and
London, 1889).
11 Plato, Protagoras, 318e–319a.
12 Plato, Protagoras, 319a3.
13 Adkins, ‘Αρετη, Τεχνην’.
14 Plato, Protagoras, Sauppe and Towle.
15 Leslie Kavanaugh, ‘The architect as humanist’, in The Humanities in Architectural Design
(London, 2010), p. 37.
16 Plato, Protagoras, trans. Taylor; Hubbard and Karnofsky; Griffith, 319a.

17 Plato, Protagoras, trans. Taylor; Lamb; Ostwald; Hubbard and Karnofsky; Griffith.
18 Adkins, ‘Αρετη, Τεχνη’, p. 5.
19 Plato, Protagoras, 320c–328d.
21 Plato, Protagoras, trans. Hubbard and Karnofsky, p. 85.
22 Michael White, Political Philosophy; An historical introduction (Ann Arbor MI, 2003), p. 69.
23 G.R.F. Ferrari, ‘Plato and Poetry’, in G.A. Kennedy (ed.), The Cambridge History of Literary
Criticism, vol. 1 (Cambridge, 1989).
24 Aeschylus, The Persians and Other Plays; The Persians/Prometheus Bound/Seven Against
Thebes/The Suppliants, trans. Alan Sommerstein (London, 2009).
25 Hesiod, Theogony and Works and Days, trans. M.L. West (Oxford, 2008), pp. 511 and 522.
26 Plato, Protagoras, 320d–321b.
27 Hesiod, Theogony 566: ‘and I discover the secret source of the fire filling the hollow of
the reed’ also translated ‘within a hollowed fennel stalk’; also Hesiod, Works and Days,
50–53: ‘… Prometheus, … In the hollow of a fennel stalk he slipped it away, unnoticed
by Zeus … .’ Plato presents Olympus as a city of his own era, in which the rulers occupy
the citadel and the people the lower city.
28 Plato, Protagoras, trans. Lamb, 322a.
29 Plato, Protagoras, trans. Ostwald, 322a.
30 Plato, Protagoras, 322b5–323b.
31 Plato, Protagoras, trans. Taylor; Lamb; Ostwald; Hubbard and Karnofsky; Griffith.
32 Plato, Protagoras, 322b3.
33 For the distinction between politikē and polemike technē see A.W.H. Adkins, Merit and
Responsibility (Oxford, 1960). Also see technē as art of war in Aristotle, Nichomachean
Ethics, 1094a.
34 Larry Goldberg, A Commentary on Plato’s Protagoras (New York, 1983).
35 Plato, Protagoras, 322d.
36 Plato, ‘Apology’, in Dialogues of Plato; Containing the Apology of Socrates, Crito, Phaedo,
and Protagoras, trans. Henry Cary (London, 1888), 38a.
37 Plato, Gorgias, 521d8.
38 Plato, Protagoras, trans. Griffith, 324d–325.
39 Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago, 1958), p. 48.
40 Plato, ‘Meno’, in Laches, Protagoras, Meno, Euthydemus, trans. W.R.M. Lamb (London,
1924), 73c9.
41 Arendt, The Human Condition, p. 26.
42 Jean-François Lyotard, and Jean-Louis Thébaud, Just Gaming, trans. W. Godzich
(Minneapolis, 1999), p. 100.
43 Richard Sennett, The Craftsman (London, 2008), p. 291.
44 Bernard Stiegler, Technics and Time, 1: The Fall of Epimetheus (London, 1998).
45 Stiegler, Technics and Time, 192.
46 Arendt, The Human Condition, p. 27.
47 Plato, Protagoras, 346c.
49 Sauppe and Towle, Commentary on Plato: Protagoras, p. 14.
50 Plato, Protagoras, trans. Taylor; Griffith; Hubbard and Karnofsky; Lamb, 362a3.
17
Ensemble Performances: Architects and Justice
in Athenian Drama
Lisa Landrum
This chapter attests to the antiquity of architecture’s practical and poetic

involvement with justice by describing three ancient Greek plays in which
‘architects’ figure into the dramatization of just acts. The plays to be discussed
include: Aeschylus’ fragmentary Dikē Play, Aristophanes’ comedy Peace, and
Euripides’ satyr play Cyclops.
FOUNDING INSTITUTIONS AND DISTRIBUTING HONOUR:

ARCHITECTING IN AESCHYLUS’ DIKĒ PLAY 1
Among the fragments of Athenian drama one finds a few lines of tattered script
belonging to a play by Aeschylus in which the activity of Dikē, the personified
figure of Justice and daughter of Zeus, is arguably cast in terms of ‘architecting’.
Although the textual remains of this play are slight, one can nevertheless
discern from them that a pivotal scene is unfolding: Dikē, having arrived as a
stranger to an unnamed land, is in the midst of persuading a group (presumably
the play’s chorus) to receive her kindly. As Dikē explains, ever since Zeus ‘justly’
overcame Kronos, she has shared a place of honour on Zeus’ throne. Now, at
Zeus’ bidding, she has descended from her divine seat with a beneficent intent.
Prompted by questions from the chorus, Dikē pronounces her name: ‘Justice,
who has the greatest primacy in heaven.’ She then elaborates on her special
role, or office: for ‘the just’ she extends their ‘life in justice’; for the brash, she
chastens them. How does she do this, ‘by the charms of persuasion, or by the
method of force?’ the chorus asks. ‘By writing’, Dikē responds, ‘by writing their
transgressions on the tablet of Zeus’, then disclosing these inscriptions at the
ordained time. In the last intelligible fragments of this play, Dikē testifies to
her benefits by recalling how she once reformed the most violent of gods:
presumably Ares, whom she brought to trial before a divine assembly, thereby
founding Athens’ first court.2 Finally we learn how Dikē is likely to be received,
for the chorus predicts that the ‘people’ will welcome this divine stranger who
brings procedures for fair treatment and proof of her civilizing benefits.
Being the only surviving Greek drama in which Justice performs as a
personified agent, this play of Aeschylus, partial as it is, nevertheless contributes
to our understanding of the institution and representation of justice in the fifth
century bce.3 Yet, more to the point, this rare dramatization of a personified
Justice also adds to our understanding of architectural performance, since upon
learning Dikē’s name the chorus asks her a leading question:
What sort of honour do you architect? 4
Dikē responds, as mentioned above, by indicating that she rewards ‘the just’ by
extending their life ‘in justice’, and chastens the brash by making their transgressions
known. If a long life ‘in justice’ is the sort of ‘honour’ Dikē brings to mortals, then
her manner of extending, withholding, distributing and adjusting such honour,
as well as her mode of making dishonour apparent, must together qualify her
role, or office. It is this complex office that the chorus suggestively introduces as
architecting.
Given the fragmentary status of this script – including a gap of several letters
in the critical verb – it is risky to say more about its architectural implications.
However, in spite of this risk, the suggestion that the office of Justice is associated
with architecting warrants further consideration, especially since Aeschylus
made this association in the mid-fifth century bce – at a time when architects (as
we know them) were only just beginning to gain that title and so appear for the
first time as figures of public significance.5 Thus, before introducing later plays in
which ‘architects’ are more definitively involved with justice, it is productive to ask:
what may have prompted Aeschylus to qualify Dikē’s distribution of honour as an
architectural activity?
One may approach this question by considering the historical context – the
contemporaneous ground of the play’s performance. It is appropriate, however,
to first seek out the poetic grounds for Aeschylus’ trope. In this respect, Justice
herself provides a clue to the mythic model Aeschylus had in mind when
choosing his figure of speech. This clue points directly to Zeus and his triumph
over Kronos. According to Hesiod’s Theogony, after overcoming Kronos, Zeus
commenced his first official business: re-distributing ‘honour’ to each and every
god Kronos had oppressed. Hades, for instance, was allotted the honour of
influencing the dead, while Poseidon earned dominion over the sea. Aphrodite
gained sway over the alluring ways of women, and so on for each of the
immortals. Like the ‘honour’ Dikē purportedly architects in Aeschylus’ play, the
‘honour’ Zeus allocates in the Theogony is also called timē. For Hesiod, however,
Zeus did not ‘architect’ this timē, instead, he ‘declared’, ‘arranged’, ‘apportioned’,
‘divided’ and even ‘subdivided’ it. Such manners of distributing honour suggest
that Zeus not only entitled each god to influential powers and privileges but
also arranged appropriate accommodations for them. Indeed, just as one (in
the position to do so) might divvy-out spoils among comrades after a lucrative
Ensemble Performances: Architects and Justice in Athenian Drama 247
raid, or partition land among citizens when founding a city, Zeus allots to each
god both an appropriate mode of influence and a correspondingly influential
placement. Zeus himself, as the new sovereign, fittingly ascends to a new place
of honour: high atop Mount Olympus. Other Olympians rise as well to dwell there
with him. Hades and Poseidon come to be situated elsewhere: below the earth
and within the sea, respectively. Yet, it is not only these new ruling gods who
earn honours and placements from Zeus, since the poet also sings of the revised
honours and reordered arrangements of other more contentious and marginal
agents. The transgressive Titans, who had brashly attempted to overthrow Zeus’
rule, are stripped of honour, banished and imprisoned deep below the earth in
Tartaros. The gigantic Hundred-Handers, who had helped Zeus resist the Titans,
are deployed to an appropriately supportive place: beneath the sea ‘at Ocean’s
foundations’. The monstrous Gorgons, and other agents dangerous to mortals,
are placed at another limit: beyond Oceanus – ‘at earth’s end’.
This survey of gods receiving ‘honours’ in the Theogony could be expanded,
yet it is sufficient to show how Zeus’ distributive activity is not only resonate
with the office of Justice (as presented by Aeschylus) but also analogous to
architecting. For, in having declared due honour for each god, Zeus concurrently
elaborated a broadly differentiated topography of upper, lower and liminal
regions. And within these differentiated regions diverse agents – both
complementary and conflictual – were appropriately accommodated: in poetic
correspondence to their unique mode of influence; in telling relation to one
another; and in anticipation of mortals, who would come to dwell diversely and
in conflict in the terrestrial region bounded in their midst. Although Zeus is not
said to architect this topography in the Theogony, he does acquire a capability to
which Hesiod gives a tectonic title. Upon rising to his new office, Zeus takes for
himself (indeed swallows) his first wife named Mētis, who personifies ‘cunning
intelligence’, and who Hesiod qualifies elsewhere as a tektōn of dikaion: an ‘artisan
of just judgements’, or ‘fabricator of what is just’.6 It is only after assimilating this
discerning feminine agent – who might ‘advise him in matters good and bad’ –
that Zeus’ governance begins to prosper.7 And, so, together with Zeus, and the
story of his original distribution of honour, Aeschylus may have also had Mētis in
mind – as first ‘tektōn of what is just’ – when he figured the discerning office of
Dikē in terms of architecting.
Before moving to other examples, I must touch on the play’s performative
context. Although the dating and circumstances of this play involving Dikē are
not certain, some scholars contend that the fragments belong to Aeschylus’
most unique drama: neither a tragedy nor a satyr play (as he annually composed
for the Dionysian festival in Athens), but rather an aetiological composition – a
dramatization of origins – commissioned by Hieron, the new ruling tyrant of
Sicily, to celebrate his founding of Aetna in 476 bce. Ancient testimony tells us
that Aeschylus put forth such a drama optimistically as ‘an omen of good life for
the settlers of the city’.8 If the founding of Aetna was indeed the occasion for this
play’s performance then it would only have added to the aptness of Aeschylus’
architectural trope, for the arrival of Dikē to this newly founded land would aim
to initiate – most dramatically and auspiciously – both the beginning of justice

for the settlers and a just beginning for the city they would build.
I must forego a discussion of this play’s colonial implications in order to
introduce two complete scripts in which ‘architects’ again become involved
with justice, but in different contexts and with different motives, tactics and
mythic models in mind. I will first treat Aristophanes’ Peace, a comedy staged
at the Dionysian festival in Athens in 421 bce (fifty-five years after the optimistic
founding of Aetna), during the tenth agonizing year of the Peloponnesian War.
RESTORING COMPREHENSIVE JUSTICE: DARING TO ARCHITECT IN

ARISTOPHANES’ PEACE 9
Unlike Aeschylus’ Dikē Play, which features a divine Justice descending to a

receptive mortal plane, Aristophanes’ Peace begins with a discontented mortal
rising boldly to the heavens in search of a comprehensive justice, which the
region has not yet found. In a parody of war-weary Athens, Peace depicts the
city’s institutions as dysfunctional and its citizens as self-interested sycophants,
who reluctant to compromise are eager to condemn.10 Caught in this problematic
situation, Trygaeus, a farmer, decides to take his concern for society’s well-being
directly to the highest authority: Zeus. However, after flying a dung-beetle to
the heavens, Trygaeus discovers that Zeus has abandoned his post. Only Hermes
remains to explain that Zeus – having himself become fed-up with warmongering
mortals – has allowed War to take over his place. When Trygaeus learns that War has
imprisoned Peace in a pit and resolved to destroy the cities and citizens, he initiates
a plan to rescue Peace (sister to Justice) and, thus, restore order to all.
Trygaeus begins his plan with a summons, to which a chorus of labourers
responds. As this group bursts into the orchestra in exuberant dance, their own
leader calls out to Trygaeus:
If it is necessary for us to do anything (in view of peace),

direct us and architect.11
Following this performative command, given as an imperative verb (architektonei),

Trygaeus begins more officially and collaboratively what he had himself already
begun: restoring Peace, a task that now involves directing others in a common
purpose so that, together, they may hoist Peace up from the pit.
Subsequent events in the play reveal plenty about architectural activity, for
when Peace finally appears she appears as an appealing statue, which Trygaeus
ceremoniously ‘installs’.12 However much this installation may have reflected an
aspect of architectural work at the time, our attention here must focus on how
justice figures in the architect’s overall scheme.
In addition to figuring in absentia into those situations of injustice that motivate
Trygaeus to act in the first place, justice also performs overtly in the paradigmatic
stories prefiguring Trygaeus’ deeds. For, in flying a dung-beetle ‘straight to Zeus’,
Trygaeus mimes the extraordinary flights of certain justice-seeking heroes known

from myth. These paradigms for just action include: Bellerophon, who took flight
on Pegasus to slay beasts on behalf of society; and a tiny dung-beetle, who in a
fable of Aesop flew directly to Zeus, boldly seeking justice against an eagle on
behalf of a wronged rabbit. In Peace, Trygaeus evokes both the flight of ‘Pegasus’
and the story of ‘Aesop’, just as he commences his own justice-seeking ascent on
behalf of others.13 Where Trygaeus appears willing to engage more conventional
procedures, it is to boldly indict Zeus. For, as he takes flight on the ‘beetle’, he warns
that if Zeus refuses to reveal a plan for restoring worldly harmony he will ‘write him
up’ – the same mode of prosecution that Justice herself claims as a definitive part
of her office in Aeschylus’ Dikē Play.14 Trygaeus’ comic appropriation of such divine
and mythic agencies of justice is heightened by his use of the ‘beetle’, since this
‘beetle’ was the deus ex machina – the theatrical stage-machine, which typically
enabled gods to bring resolution to earthly conflicts.
Aside from figuring in the situations and stories that motivate and guide
Trygaeus, justice is found also in the peaceful conditions he leads others to recover.
When Trygaeus and the chorus draw Peace out from the pit and into the light,
comprehensive social justice is drawn out with her: people are released from
military service to return to healthier pursuits; farmers are freed from fortified
cities to resume agrarian livelihoods; and citizens of formerly conflicted city-states
are ‘reconciled’.15 By drawing-out Peace, a vital prerequisite for open-minded
governance is also recuperated, since Theōria, a lively personification of ‘Beholding’,
emerges together with the statue of Peace and is restored directly to Council.
Trygaeus himself accomplishes this reparation by leading Theōria to a prominent
place among Councillors seated in the theatre’s front row. This meta-theatrical
episode is one of many in Peace wherein the intimate bonds between political and
theatrical representation are made dramatically apparent.16
Along with these social and institutional reparations, recovering Peace also
revitalizes a more elemental justice, since alongside Peace and Theōria comes
‘Harvest’, a voluptuous figure of agricultural abundance whom Trygaeus (whose
own name implies ‘Harvester’) ultimately takes as his bride.17 Trygaeus and his
collaborators draw-out this fertile figure both physically, with their rope, and
verbally, with catalogues of earthy benefits. These show forth palpably in song as
plentiful produce, seasonal regularity, and proper mortal toil, such as ploughing
fields, planting crops, harvesting produce, preparing feasts and marrying brides.
This bountiful and vigorous imagery not only projects a prodigious future but
also recalls a mythic past, since the imagery resonates with scenes of peace and
prosperity in Homeric poetry. These exemplary scenes, which Trygaeus (and
Aristophanes) must have had in mind when pursuing (and composing) Peace,
include: the scene of ploughing, reaping and ‘harvesting’, as animated on the
shield of Achilles; and the comparable scene of an ever-blooming orchard and
vineyard, together with their rhythms of ‘harvesting’, as portrayed in the land
of the Phaeacians.18 And within each of these peaceful scenes, one finds as well
the enactment of justice: situated within the ring of cultivated land on the shield
of Achilles is a circle of elders, who are each deliberating judgment on a case;
and bounded by the generous orchard and vineyard of the Phaeacians is their
hospitable palace hall, where a stranger (Odysseus) is kindly received, judged on
the merits of his speech, and duly awarded honours.
If the peace and justice that Trygaeus (and Aristophanes) sought to architect
were modelled after these Homeric scenes, then we ought also to regard how
each scene entails architectural conditions. Upon the shield of Achilles, such
conditions are found in the configuration of deliberating elders, who are seated
in a ‘sacred circle’ upon a ring of ‘polished stones’, as well as in a configuration of
circling youths, ‘running round with cunning feet’ upon a ‘dance floor’ modelled
after the choros of Daedalus.19 Similar conditions are actively initiated by
Phaeacian officials as they prepare a ‘dance floor’ by levelling the ground and
marking its limit. Architectural conditions are also woven into the hospitable
Phaeacian halls – with their golden doors, silver doorposts, bronze threshold,
and elaborate walls with fixed seats extending ‘from the threshold to the
innermost chamber’ – wherein Odysseus’ stories are shared and judged.20 What
must be emphasized here is that each of these architectural settings – the sacred
circles, dance floors and ornamented halls – are not only elaborately crafted and
appropriately arranged for dwellers and their activities, but are also active in
sponsoring practices constitutive of peace and justice: deliberating judgments,
hosting strangers, and exchanging stories. Taken together with the ever-
blooming orchards and vineyards (and their related activities), these original
situations of peace and justice may be regarded as the bases for Trygaeus’ and
Aristophanes’ schemes – the exemplary ‘beginnings’ from which Peace, the play,
and peace, the comprehensive condition, gain poetic orientation, mythic depth
and enduring relevance.
To early Greek poets, such ‘beginnings’ were known as archai, which were
more like poetic foundations than philosophical principles.21 Given that Trygaeus
was seeking to architect such founding conditions, it is not surprising that the
Peace he recovers is repeatedly associated with archai in the play: Peace is said
to re-inaugurate, or ‘begin’, many good things; to revive choral performances
with ‘original’ themes; to reinvigorate ‘ancient’ customs; to recall ‘archaic’ ways
of life; and to remix amiable affiliations – just as these were ‘in the beginning’.22
Conditions of archē, then, are also drawn-forth when this architect-protagonist
draws-up Peace: not only Peace and her benefits but her pre-conditions. And
Trygaeus makes these archē-conditions apparent for others not by pointing
forlornly to some abstract peace lodged inaccessibly in the distant past, but by
revealing Peace as a vital potentiality, the ‘beginnings’ of which are available to
all those assembled right there in the present. For, in spite of the dramatic conceit
that Peace lay hidden in a remote heavenly pit, Trygaeus and his collaborators
draw her out from the very grounds of the theatre. They then give this act more
enduring presence by refounding ‘archaic’ Peace anew: ‘installing’ her appealing
statue as a dramatic figure in the orchestra. From this position on the ‘dance
floor’, Peace not only becomes available for all to ‘behold’, but also re-activates
the theatre as a primary arena for such peace-building activities as deliberating
judgments, hosting strangers, and exchanging stories.
By his bold initiatives, then, this architect-protagonist reveals the ‘beginnings’

of peace and justice as being latent within the very situation that he, the chorus,
the poets and diverse spectators share.
AGENTS OF POETIC JUSTICE: ARCHITECTS IN THE LAND OF THE CYCLOPS 23
Within a few years of Aristophanes’ Peace, Euripides presented Cyclops at the

Dionysian festival in Athens (circa 424 bce). Being a satyr play, Cyclops would
have been staged after a trio of Euripides’ own tragedies, thus culminating
a day of tragic immersion with a kind of comic relief. As its title suggests, the
plot of Cyclops follows the story Odysseus tells in book nine of the Odyssey.
Euripides departs from his Homeric model, however, in a number of significant
ways: by setting the action in Aetna (instead of a mythic terrain); by eliminating
the obstructive stone at the mouth of Polyphemus’ cave (replacing it with the
traversable opening of the skēnē); by involving a requisite chorus of satyrs and
their father Silenus (devotees of Dionysus); and by implicating ‘architects’, since
Odysseus confers this plural title upon himself just as he reveals his scheme to
punish Polyphemus. For Euripides, then, the situation involving architects and
justice begins as follows.
Like Aristophanes’ Peace, Euripides’ Cyclops begins with circumstances of
injustice: at the beginning of the play Silenus and the satyrs are already trapped
against their will on the island of Polyphemus. Having become shipwrecked, while
searching for Dionysus, these revel loving creatures now suffer in servitude to a
reclusive giant. Yet, the situation soon becomes hopeful: as the satyrs sing their
desire for Dionysus and Dionysian ways, Silenus spots Odysseus’ ship. Odysseus
and his crew subsequently appear, pronouncing their own basic desire for food.
Hence, Odysseus and Silenus initiate a trade. To Silenus’ delight, Odysseus has
wine to offer, and for just one cup of this Dionysian substance, Silenus is prepared
to give away all of Polyphemus’ flocks, cheese and milk. But this exchange is
interrupted when Polyphemus suddenly struts into the orchestra. Silenus, now
terrified at being caught giving away the food, misrepresents Odysseus and his
crew as hostile bandits. Neither Odysseus’ verbal self-defence, nor the satyrs’
protest that Polyphemus do no ‘injustice’ to the strangers, nor even Odysseus’
elaborate attempt at dissuasion succeed in moving the giant, who, in response
to these pleas, delivers a detailed counter-argument upholding his Cyclopean
ways. He then demands that Silenus ready the fire and sharpen his knives, for he
shall roast (not host) these strangers. As Polyphemus forces the hapless crew into
his cave, Odysseus utters a prayer soliciting the vigilance of Zeus. Then, he, too,
disappears behind the skēnē, leaving the chorus of satyrs to musically conjure
the hidden horrors of the cannibal’s meal.
But Odysseus eludes the beast. Sneaking out of the cave and into the orchestra,
he delivers vivid testimony: two sailors have already been devoured, and those
remaining (himself included) will soon be killed, cooked and eaten if he fails to
act. And, so, Odysseus has risked crossing the cave’s threshold to persuade the
satyrs to collaborate in his scheme to subdue the giant (by wine), then blind and
flee the beast. If successful, his scheme will release the endangered sailors, free
the captive chorus, and allow Odysseus himself to resume a homeward course.
But that is not all. Odysseus also emphasizes that his scheme will appropriately
punish Polyphemus. Thus, having fully disclosed the improper conditions within
the cave and the many details of his ‘retribution’, Odysseus urges his potential
collaborators with these pivotal words:
Be silent now – for you know my scheme completely – and

when I command, be persuaded (to follow) the architects.24
Although, when the time comes, the satyrs will not follow Odysseus’ command
directly, Odysseus ultimately leads his scheme to completion. For, with the help
of the satyr’s song (and other influential agencies), Polyphemus is, in the end,
blinded and left alone on his island, while the full ensemble of satyrs and mortals
– liberated – together flee.
There is much in this play for architects to consider, but the ways in which
justice performs in Odysseus’ scheme must remain our focus. To begin, Odysseus
acts justly because, like Trygaeus, he acts on behalf of disadvantaged others:
ostensibly, the sailors and satyrs. Like Trygaeus, Odysseus also exposes injustices:
notably, the cannibal’s consumption of men within the cave. More important than
the horrific details of this transgression, however, are the underlying injustices
that the extreme physical mistreatment allegorizes.
Much in the same way that War’s concealment of Peace makes mortal’s
obstruction of peace alarmingly apparent in Aristophanes’ comedy, Polyphemus’
enslavement of satyrs and murderous consumption of sailors in Euripides’ satyr
play provide extreme dramatizations of basic improprieties: namely, the abuse
of ‘customs’ (nomoi) associated with Dionysian rites and hospitality. Polyphemus
himself makes this abuse clear by arrogantly dismissing all ‘customs’ as trivial
ornaments to life. Over the course of the play, we gradually learn the full scope
of this dismissal. Polyphemus renounces not only hospitality and Dionysian rites
(musical expression, dancing and wine-drinking), but also poetic language and
honest discourse, for he censures Odysseus’ ‘well-shaped words’ and dismisses
the satyrs’ moralizing speech, while embracing Silenus’ flattery as ‘most just’.25
Polyphemus also rejects working in harmony with the seasons and the land,
for he cultivates no grain and nurtures no vines. Correspondingly, he has no
concern for the weather, no interest in portents (such as thunder), and no
thought for the future. Having founded neither cities nor households he fosters
no institutions or laws, and follows no rules beyond the unquestioned rule of
the self. Finally, in maintaining no altars, he worships no gods besides his own
belly, ‘the greatest of divinities’, which he singularly honours and ceremoniously
sacrifices to.26
With such impious, asocial, anarchic and apathetic demonstrations, one
recognizes that in the land of the Cyclops not only are there no social ‘customs’ but
there are no conditions for architecture. It is no wonder, then, that an ‘architect’
would lead a scheme to flee such a land and attempt to restore those improperly
confined there to more propitious dwelling conditions, for Odysseus specifically
promises to return his mortal crew to their homeward bound ship, and to restore
the devout satyrs to the ‘halls of Dionysus’.27
Like the protagonist of Peace, the ‘architect’ in Cyclops restores displaced and
disempowered individuals – both mortal and divine – to appropriate settings
supportive of those individuals and their vital modes of being. Yet, Odysseus’
full range of action may resemble more the manifold office of Dikē as portrayed
by Aeschylus. For, like Dikē, Odysseus not only extends honour but also makes
dishonour apparent by graphically blinding Polyphemus. As aggressive as this
mode of ‘retribution’ seems, the Greek word for it (timōria) suggests a more
broadly sanctioned act meant to safeguard ‘honour’. This is because timōria
is a compound term, joining together timē, ‘honour’ (such as Dikē and Zeus
distribute), and oromai, the act of keeping watch or ‘looking on’ with vigilance.28
Such vigilance is demonstrated at a critical moment in the satyr play: as the sailors
are forcibly marshalled into the cannibal’s cave, Odysseus implores Zeus to ‘look’
and see the injustice underway: ‘Zeus, Protector of Strangers… look upon these
things’.29 In performance, Odysseus’ command would have appealed not only to
Zeus in the heavens but also to the spectators in the theatre. Thus, all eyes would
turn to witness the dramatic events as violations of honour.
Bearing all this in mind, Odysseus’ blinding of Polyphemus can be regarded
somewhat more positively and reciprocally. For, by turning away Cyclopean vision
while simultaneously turning collective attention toward the ‘customs’ that such
vision threatens, Odysseus restores the primacy of those contested ‘customs’ and
renews appreciation for the ‘social order’ (eunomia) that their continued practice
aims to ensure.
Although Odysseus’ restorative aims in Euripides’ Cyclops liken him to
Trygaeus and Dikē, his performance also diverges in telling ways. Where
Odysseus diverges most from these kindred ‘architects’ is in his tactics. For,
Odysseus neither ‘writes up’ transgressions on behalf of Zeus nor ‘raises up’
himself and absent gods with stage machines. Instead, this oddly plural
‘architect’ brings about his scheme of restoration, liberation and retribution with
a subtler mix of agencies: persuasive speech, alluring props and potent wine. It
is the wine in particular – itself representative of dramatic transformation and
Dionysian influence – that is most closely linked to dikē in the script, and most
palpably felt to bring about cultural renewal in the land of the Cyclops. This is
because just before blinding Polyphemus, Odysseus first intoxicates him, by
treating him – in a feigned symposium – to a strong taste of the very ‘customs’
(hospitality and Dionysian rites) he had previously denied. In this dramatic and
ironic way Odysseus accomplishes poetic justice, chastening Polyphemus while
symmetrically restoring manifold honours: to the mistreated sailors and satyrs;
to the dishonoured gods, Zeus and Dionysus; to the disrespected ‘customs’
these gods exemplify; and to the spectators, who had themselves assembled
for the Dionysian festival to participate in the very social and sacred practices
Odysseus defends.
At the end of Cyclops, then, as at the end of Peace, comprehensive order and
justice are dramatically reconstituted by an architect-protagonist, who leads others
to collectively rediscover desirable conditions and practices latent in their midst.
PRE-PHILOSOPHICAL GROUNDS OF ARCHITECTURE AND JUSTICE
The plays introduced above do not present a philosophy of justice. In fact,

it is their pre-philosophical (symbolic, allegorical and situational) manner
of dramatizing certain dilemmas and deeds of justice that make them so
strangely important for understanding the gradual emergence of justice as an
abstract moral concept.30 It is worth recalling that Plato, who would eventually
ask ‘what is justice’ in his Republic, was himself but a child when Peace and
Cyclops were performed. We are perhaps right to wonder, then, whether the
injustice in Polyphemus’ cave and the idealism of comic heroes like Trygaeus
remained active in the philosopher’s imagination as he later crafted the logos
of his philosophical dialogues. In lieu of elaborating on the relevance of these
plays to philosophy, I offer in conclusion a way to consider these three unique
dramas (involving three different dramatists and three distinct genres) as a
meaningfully coherent trio involving architecture and justice.
It is no doubt an accident of history that the surviving corpus of Athenian
drama contains only three protagonists – Dikē, Trygaeus and Odysseus – who
are each qualified as ‘architect’ while acting as an exemplary proponent of
justice, peace and social order. This particular trio of conditions, however, was
not a random cluster in Greek myth and thought. Neither was their association
with architectural beginnings unprecedented. For these three vital conditions –
Justice, Peace and Social Order – were together known as the Hōrai, daughters
of Zeus and Themis.31 As agencies constitutive of worldly harmony, these three
sisters not only figured into the genealogy of gods but also the genesis of cities,
since the lyric poet Pindar portrayed Justice, Peace and Social Order dwelling
among mortals as the ‘firm foundation for cities.’32 This image of architectural
and civic cohesion reminds us that Justice, Peace and Social Order are palpably
vital yet vulnerable conditions that any architect-protagonist may endeavour to
establish, defend, honour and restore.
Notes
1 Unless otherwise noted, all translations follow Alan H. Sommerstein, Aeschylus III:
Fragments (Cambridge MA and London, 2008), pp. 276–87.
2 According to myth, the site of this trial was thereafter named the Areopagus, or ‘Hill of
Ares’. Aeschylus’ Orestia dramatizes an alternative version of this founding myth.
3 On the representation of Justice in epic and dramatic poetry, see Eric A. Havelock, The
Greek Concept of Justice (Cambridge MA, 1978); and Hugh Lloyd-Jones, The Justice of
Zeus (Berkeley CA, 1971).
4 Dikē Play 16, author’s translation. This translation accepts the reconstruction of
architektoneis by D.L. Page, ‘P.Oxy. 2331 and Others’, Classical Review, New Series,
7/3–4 (Dec. 1957): 189–92.
5 The earliest ‘architect’ term is otherwise found in Herodotus’ Histories, circa 425 bce. The
earliest inscription bearing ‘architect’ (IG i3 32) dates to 447/6 or 432/1 bce, see Hendrik
Svenson-Evers, Die Griechischen Architekten Archaischer und Klassischer Zeit (Frankfurt
am Main, 1996), pp. 237–43.
6 Frag. 343/294.14, Glenn W. Most, Hesiod II (Cambridge MA and London, 2007),
pp. 351–3.
7 Theogony 900. On the importance of Mētis for Zeus’ governance, see Marcel Detienne
and Jean-Pierre Vernant, Cunning Intelligence in Greek Culture and Society (Hassocks,
1978), pp. 57–105.
8 Vita Aeschyli 9, with C. J. Herington ‘Aeschylus in Sicily’, Journal of Hellenic Studies,
87 (1967): 74–85; Lloyd-Jones, Justice of Zeus, p. 100; and Sommerstein, Aeschylus,
pp. 6–9.
9 Unless otherwise noted, all translations follow Jeffrey Henderson, Aristophanes II
(Cambridge MA and London, 1998). My interpretation of Peace has been enriched by
the detailed introduction and commentary of S. Douglas Olson, Aristophanes’ Peace
(Oxford, 1998).
10 On Peace’s relation to contemporaneous circumstances in Athens, including the ‘Peace
of Nicias’, see Olson, Peace, pp. xxv–xxxi.
11 Peace 305, author’s translation.
12 Peace 923ff. This ‘installation’ is dramatized as a hidrusis—a veritable rite establishing
a divinity’s influence at a particular site. See Walter Burkert, Greek Religion (Boston MA,
1985), pp. 88–92.
13 Peace 76, 129–34. On other mythic schemas underlying Peace’s plot, see A.M. Bowie,
Aristophanes: Myth, Ritual and Comedy (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 142–50.
14 Peace 107; Dikē Play 21.
15 Peace 540, 526–55.
16 Peace 877–908. On metatheatricality in Aristophanes, see Niall W. Slater, Spectator
Politics (Philadelphia PA, 2002). See also Lisa Landrum, ‘Performing Theōria:
Architectural Acts in Aristophanes’ Peace’, in Marcia Feuerstein and Gray Read (eds),
Architecture as a Performing Art (Farnham and Burlington VT, 2013).
17 On Trygaeus’ special name, see Olson, Peace, note to line 190; and Edith Hall, The
Theatrical Cast of Athens (Oxford, 2006), pp. 321–52.
18 Iliad 18.541–572; Odyssey 7.112–132.
19 Iliad 18.503–504, 590–606.
20 Odyssey 8.258–264; 7.81–102.
21 See William Mullen, Choreia: Pindar and Dance (Princeton NJ, 1982), pp. 116–17.
22 Each quote denotes a word cognate with archē (singular of archai) in Peace 436, 780,
572, 694, 996, 1327.
23 Unless otherwise noted, all translations follow David Kovacs, Euripides I (Cambridge
MA and London, 2001). I must also acknowledge my debt to Richard Seaford’s detailed
introduction and commentary, Cyclops of Euripides (London, 2003).
24 Cyclops 476–8, author’s translation.

25 Cyclops 274.
26 Cyclops 335.
27 Cyclops 430.
28 Fiona McHardy, Revenge in Athenian Culture (London, 2008), p. 3.
29 Cyclops, 354.
30 See Havelock, The Greek Concept of Justice.
31 Hesiod, Theogony 901–3.
32 Olympian Ode 13.6–7.
18
The Architecture of Lincoln Cathedral and
the Institution of Justice
John Hendrix
The façade of Lincoln Cathedral reinforces the

authority of the kings and Old and New Testament
figures. The organization of the cathedral reinforces
the hierarchical organization of a just society based
on Christian morality, in facilitating the rituals of
the worshippers and the clergy in the liturgical
mass. The Dean’s Eye and Bishop’s Eye, the stained
glass windows at the north and south ends of the
great transept, reinforce the authority of the Dean
and Bishop of the cathedral in the maintenance
of the Christian ideal of the just, or the good. Most
importantly, all of the details of the architecture of the
cathedral reinforce the intellectual comprehension of
the just or the good on the part of the worshipper.
The details are designed to facilitate the ascension of
the mind of the visitor from the physical particulars
of sensual reality, the temptations of which are the
source of unjust acts, to the intelligible universals of
a metaphysical reality, which reinforce justice in the
concept of the good, the universally just state.
In the Republic of Plato, a just, well-ordered state
depends on the just, well-ordered soul of each individual. The cathedral institutes 18.1 View of the
the well-ordered soul of each individual in order to facilitate a just state. The soul of nave elevation
and vaulting of
each individual becomes well-ordered, through the experience of the architecture,
Lincoln Cathedral
as it ascends from the multiple particulars of experience to the universal laws (photo by author)
which govern experience. This is enacted in the architecture through the transition
from the compositions of the elevations and vaulting (Fig. 18.1), in geometrical
and mathematical relations, to the purity of the light in the stained glass windows,
the spiritual light, or lux spiritualis, which conveys the universal concept of the just
18.2 View of or the good. The mind of the viewer ascends from its material intellect, the nous
the Dean’s Eye, pathetikos of Aristotle, which is passive and easily influenced, to an active intellect,
Lincoln Cathedral
the nous poietikos of Aristotle, which is a universal, divine intellect. As the active
(photo by author)
or divine intellect begins to participate in the mind of the viewer through the
experience of the architecture, the viewer begins to understand the concept of
justice in morality, in universal truth rather than individual need or desire.
The remains of the original Norman wall in the west front contain Norman
sculpture from the time of Bishop Alexander. The figures represent incidents
from Biblical history but are haphazardly arranged, suggesting that they were not
original to Lincoln. The figures are three feet six inches tall, and are placed above
eye level. From north to south, the figures depict the torments of the wicked, and
Christ triumphant over Satan in the jaws of Hell. Jamb figures represent saints,
Christ weighing souls, Lazarus taken up to Heaven, the expulsion of Adam and Eve,
the call of Samuel, Samuel and Eli, and God’s injunction to Noah. Other figures on
the wall represent Man tilling the soil, Noah building the Ark, entering the Ark,
and Daniel in the lion’s den. More statues were added later in the mid-fourteenth
century by Treasurer John Welbourne, of English kings from William I to Edward III.
The main source of light in the cathedral is the rose windows. At the north end
of the great or west transept is the Dean’s Eye (Fig. 18.2), and at the south end is the
Bishop’s Eye (Fig. 18.3). The windows are the best example of stained glass in the
early thirteenth century in England, preceding the stained glass at Canterbury. Both
windows in the transept are twenty-four feet in diameter. The Dean’s Eye retains its
original tracery, while the tracery of the Bishop’s Eye is from the Decorated Period
The Architecture of Lincoln Cathedral and the Institution of Justice 259
in the fourteenth century, inserted around 1320 in honor of John of Dalderby. Both
windows are described in the Metrical Life of Saint Hugh, and they would have been
completed during the bishopric of Robert Grosseteste. The Dean’s Eye faces the
deanery to the north, while the Bishop’s Eye faces the bishop’s palace to the south,
next to the Galilee Porch, the ceremonial entrance to the cathedral for the bishop.
As described in the Metrical Life of Saint Hugh, the Dean’s Eye protects the cathedral
from the spirit of the Devil to the north, while the Bishop’s Eye invites the Holy
Spirit to the south into the cathedral. The Metrical Life was the second biography
of Bishop Hugh of Avalon, written by Henry of Avranches, a friend of Grosseteste,
between 1220 and 1235, when Grosseteste became Bishop of Lincoln.
The subject of the images in the glass of the Dean’s Eye is the Church on Earth,
the Church Militant, paired with the Church in Heaven, the Church Triumphant, in
sixteen circular openings surrounding a quatrefoil. Christ is seated in the center
surrounded by the blessed in Heaven. Four compartments surrounding the central
image, which are probably not in their original positions, forming the quatrefoil,
show various subjects, including the relics of Saint Hugh. Subjects in the sixteen
outer circles of the window include angels with the instruments of the Passions,
Saint Peter conducting people to Heaven, the Resurrection, and bishops and
archbishops. Below the window, five lancet windows can be seen through an
arcade of seven lancet arches. Large lancet windows on either side of the Dean’s
doorway, dating from the fourteenth century, contain images of angels playing
musical instruments and geometrical patterns. The musical instruments of the
angels are a reference to the musica cosmica in contrast to the musica mundana,
that there corresponds to all music created by human beings a celestial music
from above, in the same way that the geometrical patterns represent a celestial
intelligence in relation to human intelligence.
In the Commentary on the Posterior Analytics (I. 17)1 of Robert Grosseteste, a lux
spiritualis floods over intelligible objects, or res intelligibiles, like the light through
the stained glass window in the cathedral, and over the mind’s eye, or oculus mentis,
and stands to the interior eye, or oculus interior, and to intelligible objects as the
corporeal sun stands to the bodily eye and to visible corporeal objects,2 following
Aristotle, Themistius, Alfarabi, Avicenna, and Averroes. The lumen spiritualis, the
light produced by the lux spiritualis, allows the mental sight, the visus mentalis, to
apprehend the intelligibles in the virtus intellectiva, or nous poietikos, as the light
of the sun, the lumen solare, makes vision possible. The lumen spiritualis is the
‘first visible’ in interior sight, visus interior, as the coloured body is the first thing
receptive of the light of the sun (I. 19). The coloured glass in the stained glass
window corresponds to the lumen spiritualis in the oculus mentis.
The more receptive the intelligible object, the species apprehensibilis, is to
the lux spiritualis, the more visible it is to the oculus mentis. The object which is
most similar to the light, the least material, is the most receptive of it. The power
of the mind, the acies mentis, is a spiritual light, an irradiatio spiritualis, which
operates in the virtus intellectiva to illuminate the species apprehensibilis, and the
virtus is strongest when the object is the least material and conforms most easily
to the immaterial species. The architecture of the cathedral presents a hierarchy
of materiality in forms, like the hierarchy of the celestial spheres, following the
‘principle of divisibility’ of Scholasticism, in the multiplication and division of the
architectural forms, culminating in the pure lux spiritualis which enters through the
stained glass window.
Each of the stained glass windows at Lincoln is the oculus mentis of the body
of the cathedral. The coloured glass is the lumen spiritualis, and the geometry
of the tracery is the species apprehensibilis, the intelligibles of the architecture,
and the structure of the cosmos, visible to the oculus mentis. The sight of the
mind, the visus interior, is turned toward darkness and idleness when deflected
from the lumen spiritualis, and is occupied with ‘corruptible bodily things’ (I. 14),
as Grosseteste describes in the Commentary, but when it perceives a trace or
vestigium of the lux spiritualis, it seeks it out, as the visitor to the cathedral seeks
out the stained glass window, and then the visus interior is able to perceive the
lumen spiritualis within.
The analogy of spiritual light to corporeal light was applied by Grosseteste to
elements of the operations of the Church. In De Libero Arbitrio, or On Free Will, the
analogy is applied to the Trinity, as the lux spiritualis is the mediation between
the intelligible and material in the same way that the Holy Spirit is the mediation
between the Celestial Father and the Body of Christ. In De Libero Arbitrio, the
light shining through the stained glass window of the cathedral is seen as the
operation of divine grace through free will. In his Epistolae, Grosseteste compared
his relationship as Bishop to the clergy of the cathedral, and the relationship
between the Pope and his prelates, including Grosseteste, to a mirror reflecting
light into dark places. The Bishop illuminates the minds of the clergy by reflecting
the species apprehensibilis by the lux spiritualis into the oculus mentis of the clergy,
so that the species apprehensibilis can become the species sensibilis, sensible or
perceived form, as a tangible rule of operation, in the correct operations of the
Church, and the Bishop can assert his authority. The universal law is translated
into material operations.
In the Metrical Life of Saint Hugh, the round stained glass windows are
compared to heavenly bodies, whose ‘circular display, facing the north and south,
outshines all the rest [of the windows in the cathedral] with its twofold light’.3
While the two windows in the transept can be seen as the sun and the moon,
the rest of the windows ‘may be likened to common stars’. The two windows
are not only like the sun and the moon, but ‘they excel: for the sun, reflected
on the clouds, produces the rainbow; while these two flash without the sun …’
The windows represent the Bishop and the Dean, as the Bishop, as described
by Grosseteste in the Epistolae, illuminates the minds of the clergy by reflecting
the species apprehensibilis, the intelligible form provided by the lux spiritualis, as
through the stained glass window, into the oculus mentis of the clergy, in order
to establish the rules of operation for the church. As Grosseteste explained in
De Libero Arbitrio, the light shining through the stained glass windows is the
‘operation of divine grace’, as a light without a corporeal source. Inscriptions
above the windows describe ‘dwellers in the Heavenly City and the weapons with
which they overcame the Stygian Tyrant’, of the River Styx, so that the windows
represent the heavenly cities, as in the De Civitate Dei of Saint Augustine. The 18.3 View of
windows allow the architecture to play the role of reinforcing standards of the Bishop’s Eye,
Christian justice in medieval society. Lincoln Cathedral
(photo by author)
The Bishop’s Eye is the greater of the two windows, because it faces south to
receive the Holy Spirit, while the Dean’s Eye faces north to protect the church against
the Devil. The two windows illuminate the cathedral from the ‘lantern of heaven’,
the great transept, which ‘with these eyes surveys the gloom of Lethe’, the oblivion
of the river of forgetfulness in Hades. While the two great windows symbolize the
Bishop and Dean, the clerestory windows below symbolize the canons, and in the
aisles, the vicars, in a descending hierarchy from spiritual to more material affairs.
The hierarchy of windows can be seen as a diagram of the order of the Church, an
imago generalis ecclesiae, and as the reflection of light described by Grosseteste in
his Epistolae, from the Bishop to the clergy of the cathedral.
In the Metrical Life, the colours of the body of the church represent the virtues
of the heavenly cities. ‘The hewn white stone stands for the chaste and wise:
whiteness is decency [and purity] and its shaping, doctrine [or justice].’ In the dark
marble, ‘smooth, shining, dark, is signified the Bride [or the virgin Mary], frank,
virtuous, afflicted. Its smoothness truly exemplifies her utter candor, the polish her
virtues, and the darkness her distress.’ The colours are the product of the lumen
spiritualis, the spiritual light reflected in the corporeal world, in the species sensibilis,
by the lux spiritualis.
The ‘consummation of the whole allegory’ of the church is that ‘the insentient
stones conceal the mysteries of stones that live; the fabric made with hands
displays that of the spirit; the outward appearance

of the church shines doubly, enriched with twofold
array.’ The architecture of the church combines the
material and the spiritual, the virtus cogitativa and
virtus intellectiva in intellect. The architecture is
the imprint on matter of the idea of the architect,
participating in divine intelligence, discernible to
someone whose intellectual ascension allows divine
intellect to participate in their material intellect. As
in the Republic of Plato, the mental faculty of the
initiate described by Socrates ‘will not rest content
with each set of particulars which opinion takes for
reality, but soars with undimmed and unwearied
passion till he grasps the nature of each thing as it
is’ (490).4
In the architecture of Lincoln Cathedral, the
Trinity is present especially in Saint Hugh’s Choir
(Fig. 18.4), in the grouping of three lancet windows
per clerestory bay, and in the triradial vaults in
the ceiling, where three tierceron ribs emanate
from each boss along the ridge pole, causing
the asymmetrical syncopation. In the choir the
18.4 View of lux spiritualis shines through the triune lancet windows and mediates between
Saint Hugh’s Choir, the spiritual and physical, as in the Trinity, and shines the species apprehensibilis,
Lincoln Cathedral
represented by the forms of the glass windows, onto the oculus mentis, the mind’s
(photo by author)
eye of the observer, in the form of the species sensibilis, represented by the triradial
ribs in the vaulting, as they take the form of corporeal geometry, in mathematical
relations.
The transition from the windows in the clerestory to the vaulting of the ceiling
represents the transition from the species apprehensibilis to the species sensibilis; it
represents the formation of matter through light, where matter becomes denser
and more substantial as the lines of the rays of light become more multiple and
the virtus becomes stronger, in the process of condensation and rarefaction; and
it represents the formation of the material world from the point to line to surface
in the two-dimensional pattern of the lancet windows, and the line to surface to
solid in the vaulting pattern, concave surface, and volume of the vault. Conversely,
the transition facilitates the ascension of the soul, or anima rationalis, of the viewer,
from nous pathetikos or virtus cogitativa, reason connected to material things, to
nous poietikos or virtus intellectiva, reason which is disconnected from material
things and composed of intelligibles, in particular the concept of the good, or what
is universally just. Virtus intellectiva involves the participation of intelligentia, divine
intelligence, as described by Grosseteste in his Commentary.
The architecture is an edificium of the hierarchies of intellect described by
Grosseteste, and it is a talisman for the intellection of the observer; the perception
of the catechism of the architecture inspires the viewer to engage the virtus
intellectiva, to understand the relation between reason and intellection, material

world and spiritual world, body and soul, and to transcend the dictates of the
body in the material to the dictates of universal laws in the spiritual. Saint Hugh’s
Choir consists of four bays. There are two arches in each bay of the triforium, each
divided into two sub-arches, with trefoils and quatrefoils in the tympanum above,
corresponding to the trivium and quadrivium of Scholasticism, heaven and earth.
The Trinity, which is the manifestation of the One, divine intelligentia, transforms the
lux spiritualis through the windows into the lumen spiritualis reflected in the choir,
and the lumen spiritualis is further materialized through the Trinity, as it presides
over the corporeal world, in the form of the triune groupings in the vaulting, which
describe the structure of the corporeal world.
Peter Draper5 compared the contrapuntal arcading in the aisles of Saint Hugh’s
Choir to an illustration in the De statu ecclesiae of Gilbert, Bishop of Limerick, the
first papal legate in Ireland, which can be found in Cambridge University Library.
In the illustration, tiers of arches are arranged in a complex pattern of arcading
to illustrate the hierarchy of the Catholic Church. The arcades are offset so that
the shaft of one arcade overlaps the arches of the arcade underneath, as in Saint
Hugh’s Choir. The arches represent the people of the Church, which is seen as a
macrocosm or organism as represented by the system of arcading. The arcading
represents a diagram of the order of the Church, in what the text calls an imago
generalis ecclesiae. The arcades are organized in a series of pyramids; the smallest
units are at the bottom, and work up to the largest units at the top. The basic units
are the parish, run by the priest, and monastery, run by the abbot. The units are
divided into ranks and categories, including oratores, or those who pray; aratores, or
those who plough; and bellatores, or those who fight. The parishes and monasteries
are governed by the diocese, which is governed by the archdiocese, the district of
the archbishop, which is governed by the highest ranking bishop, primatus, of the
Church. The Church is governed by the pope, who is governed by Christ. A secular
hierarchy is established to correspond to the ecclesiastical hierarchy.
The arcading of the illustration is set on a continuous plinth, as in Saint Hugh’s
Choir, and the Gothic pointed arches are set on piers with bases and capitals. The
continuous plinth represents the broad base of the Church and its open arms in
embracing all people. The pointed arches in the upper level represent the more
narrow and disciplined life, the arcta via, of religious and ordained people. The
intersection of the arches as they overlap represents the close relationships
between those religious or ordained. The arcading is set inside a major arch,
representing the macrocosm of the Church, the ecclesia generalis. The arcading set
inside the major arch represents the ability of the Church to subsume variation,
particularities and individualities under an overarching whole. Romanesque
towers appear at the top of the arcading. The Romanesque towers contrast with
the delicate membrification of the arcading, which reflects the emphasis on light,
transparency, structural clarity, and progressive divisibility, the principle of the
manifestatio, associated with Gothic architecture. The illumination is an edificium
in the same way as the cathedral; it is a catechism of a structure of knowledge, and
the institution of justice, communicated in visual and structural terms.
The analogy between scripture and building as edifice is found in the Moralia
in Job of Gregory, and the Didascalicon of Hugh of Saint-Victor. The edifice of
scripture has both a structure, or history, and a superstructure, or allegorical
content, in the same way that architecture has both a structure and an allegorical
or metaphysical content, the ideas associated with its forms. In the Metrical Life of
Saint Hugh, Lincoln Cathedral is compared to a honeycomb, yielding sweet inner
meaning, the allegory of divine communion. Hugh of Saint-Victor compared
history, as the foundation and principle of sacred learning, to a honeycomb,
from which the allegory is extracted as honey. The structure of the cathedral
corresponds to the history of the Church, its foundation of learning and institution
of justice, and the metaphysical role of the architecture in communicating ideas
corresponds to the allegorical content of spiritual development. The image of
the honeycomb can be compared to the tiered arcading of the illumination of
Gilbert, and to the syncopated arcading of Saint Hugh’s Choir. In each case the
reticulation, as an instrument of the progressive divisibility of the manifestatio in
Scholasticism, contains the synthesis of reason and faith, in the comprehension
of the good and the justice of the ecclesiastical hierarchy. The reticulation also
occurs in the masonry of the crossing tower and the west front, in the Y-tracery of
the stained glass, and in the vaulting of Saint Hugh’s Choir, the nave, the Morning
Chapel, the Consistory Chapel, and the chapter house at Lincoln.
In a letter written by Robert Grosseteste from Oxford, in around 1200 or 1225,
to Master Adam Rufus, a former student, Grosseteste began, ‘To make clear
how God is the form of his creatures … the meanings of this word “form” must
be explained.’ Here the Latin forma can be translated as design, form, mould,
pattern, or shape.6 ‘It is said that the design is the model (or exemplar) to which
the craftsman looks to make (or formet) his handiwork, in imitation of it and in
its likeness.’ Grosseteste continues, ‘Thus the last [a block shaped like a foot], to
which the cobbler looks to form the sole accordingly, is called the pattern of the
sole.’ The basis for the design of the architecture is the basis for the activity of any
artisan, any urban professional of the era. ‘Thus too the lives of good men, which
we regard in order to form the manners of our life in their likeness, are called our
pattern of living.’ Grosseteste likens good design to ethical and moral behavior,
on the model of the good; the basis for all artistic activity is also the basis for the
ethics and morality of the era.
In the letter to Adam Rufus, Grosseteste asks the reader to ‘imagine, even
though it be impossible, that the will [or solertia] of the same architect wishing
to build the house were so powerful that this will alone need be applied to
shape the material into the house of the design in the architect’s mind, so that
by this application will be fashioned into the house’. The process of architectural
design requires the penetrating ability and clarity of vision of the oculus mentis
in relation to the divine intelligentia, as aided by the irradiatio spiritualis, in the
intellectual ascension of the virtus intellectiva. If the process of architectural
design is successful, then the architecture will accommodate the same intellectual
ascension in the mind of the viewer, and the same vision of an ordered and just
society.
notes
1 Robert Grosseteste, Commentarius in Posteriorum Analyticorum Libros, ed. Pietro

Rossi (Florence, 1981).
2 Steven P. Marrone, William of Auvergne and Robert Grosseteste: New Ideas of Truth in
the Early Thirteenth Century (Princeton NJ, 1983), p. 196.
3 Metrical Life of St Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln, ed. J.F. Dimock (Lincoln, 1860), ll. 833–965,
quoted in John Harvey, The Medieval Architect (New York, 1972), pp. 237–9.
4 Plato, The Republic, trans. Desmond Lee (New York, 1955).
5 Peter Draper, The Formation of English Gothic: Architecture and Identity, 1150–1250
(New Haven CT, 2007).
6 John Harvey, The Medieval Architect (New York, 1972), p. 23.
19
Politics and Architecture
Raymond Geuss
In 2001 some of the Faculties of the University of Frankfurt began to move physically
from the often shoddy and distinctly run down looking post-war accommodation
that had served them since the early 1950s into an architecturally spectacular
set of buildings designed by Hans Poelzig in the late 1920s and set in a large
park with an impressive view over downtown Frankfurt. Unfortunately, these
buildings, known collectively as the ‘Poelzig-Bau’, had served as the Corporate
Headquarters of I.G. Farben between 1931 and the occupation of the city by the
US Army in March of 1945. What this means is that in the year 2009 a student
could find that he or she was taking a seminar on Descartes, on Rimbaud, or on
early Church history in the very rooms in which in the early 1940s gas chambers
and crematoria for extermination camps were designed. In the period between
1945 and 1995 the complex served as the Headquarters of General Eisenhower
and then of the Fifth US Army. When the US military moved out upon German re-
unification, the question arose of what to do about the huge I.G. Farben complex,
and it was only after a certain amount of political wrangling that the decision was
taken to move the University into it. There was finally a sense that if the complex
was not simply to be torn down, it would have to be symbolically detoxified,
but how could that be done? The solution finally reached was that a permanent
exhibition about its history would be installed in the building, which would be
as uncompromisingly truthful about its past as possible, the main building itself
would retain the historical name ‘I.G.-Farben-Haus’, and the large and impressive
open space one encounters upon first entering the building, which is now the
student café, but in the late 40s was the antechamber of Eisenhower’s offices,
would be named the ‘Eisenhower Rotunda’. Finally, one of the squares on the new
campus would be named after a former forced labourer in one of the I.G. Farben
Works: ‘Norbert Wollheim’, a name that has special resonance for a philosopher
because it is the surname of an important British philosopher, Richard Wollheim,
who happened himself in the second World War to have participated in the
liberation of Belsen. It is possible, in fact almost inevitable, that there will be no
consensus on whether this series of decisions and actions was in fact appropriate
and adequate – that is in the nature of a complex historical and political process
like this one – but I would ask you now to accept for the sake of argument my
view that this was a reasonable and laudable attempt to deal with a difficult
situation. Let me, however, now engage in some counterfactual history. Suppose
the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe had not been the traditionally
conservative Eisenhower, but Field Marshal Douglas MacArthur, who was during
the same period effectively Supreme Commander in the Pacific. MacArthur was
a man of extreme right-wing political views, who came to be notorious for his
persistent advocacy of the use of nuclear weapons against the North Koreans and
Chinese during the Korean War. MacArthur saw this as a prelude to the extension
of the war to be conducted with nuclear weapons into China proper, which he
also advocated. When he failed to obtain authorisation for this policy, because
the then US-President Harry Truman refused to countenance it, he tried in various
ways to use his military position to undermine or circumvent the civilian political
apparatus in the US, until Truman was finally forced to dismiss him from his
post. I suggest that naming the entrance to Poelzig’s complex the ‘MacArthur
Rotunda’ would not have had the same effect of at least partially rehabilitating
the building. On one final note, I should mention that parts of the Poelzig-Bau
served as the Headquarters of the CIA in Germany, and that in the 1970s and
1980s it was the object of three terrorist attacks, probably by members of the RAF
(‘Rote Armee Fraktion’), a splinter group that had its origin in the German Student
Movement of the late 1960s. In a bomb attack by the RAF on 11 May 1972, one US
officer was killed and thirteen further people wounded.1
I would not now be discussing this case at all if I did not think that the Poelzig-
Bau was a most impressive piece of architecture. However, the more I think about
this, the more difficult it seems to me to separate the strictly architectural aspects
of my reaction to this building from the historical and political, and, what is more, I
do not think that this is so unusual.
The very term ‘architecture’ itself suggests a closer connection with politics
than might be thought to be the case with any of the other arts or crafts. The
Greek word ‘ἀρχιτέκτων’ signifies the person who is in charge of and has control
over builders. ‘ἄρχω’/ ‘ἀρχή’ in fact is one of the usual terms for a political
relation of domination. On the very first page of his treatise on the good human
life, Nichomachean Ethics,2 Aristotle appeals to the example of the architect to
discuss the notion, especially important for him, of the hierarchical relation
of human activities one to another, and the differential forms of value which
such hierarchically ordered activities have. The study of ethics, for Aristotle,
is subordinated to that of politics just as the builders are subordinated to the
architect. This metaphor of the ‘architectonic’ is one that recurs in many later
views to refer to relations of subordination between different parts of a theory.
Such relations may, of course, be ones of mere logical, epistemological or
paedagogical dependence or of pragmatic subordination, rather than specifically
political subjection. It is not, in any case, as easy as it might initially seem to say
exactly what a ‘political’ relation, for instance a relation of political subordination
in the relevant sense, is.
Politics and Architecture 269
It has often been pointed out that there is a basic ambiguity in the concept of
‘politics’. There is what I will call a ‘wider’, ‘broader’ or ‘less specific’ construal of the
term, and a narrower or more specific construal. In the broader and less specific
sense, ‘politics’ means simply any human activity of structuring or directing or
coordinating the actions of a group. So we can speak of a ‘politics’ of the family
or gender politics. The actions of different human beings can be ‘co-ordinated’ in
any number of different ways. Thus, if one thinks of a pre-industrial society living
in a small mountain valley, there may be a very high degree of ‘co-ordination’, in
the sense of simple regularity, exhibited by the action of the members of that
society. For instance, if there is only one pass over the mountains, it might well
be the case that virtually anyone who ever tries to leave the valley in the winter
does so through this pass. This is certainly a regularity we might observe to hold,
but it is not in itself an archetypically political phenomenon because we think
that using this pass to exit from the valley is a matter of simple necessity. That one
goes through this exit, if one leaves at all, is not anything that is ‘in our power’ or
‘up to us’, and that means it is not itself a political matter but simply a natural fact.
In addition, however, to such ‘natural’ co-ordination, there is also co-ordination
that results from specific forms of human intervention such as persuasion,
emulation, or coercion, and these are the characteristics of politics.
Thus, when certain philosophers have called freedom a precondition of politics
or politics a ‘realm of freedom’, they are most sympathetically understood as making
not some kind of ontological claim, but rather as describing a way of looking at
the world. ‘Politics’, that is, especially in this first wide sense, is best understood as
referring not to a special domain, like biology or astronomy, but to a way of seeing
or considering the human world. The basic statement in politics is not: ’This is a
political phenomenon’ as parallel to ‘This is an organic (or inorganic) compound’ or
‘this is a prime number’. Rather the paradigmatic claim is ‘this is a political question
or issue’. ‘This is a political matter’ means it is a matter considered in some sense to
be potentially in our power and up for decision, and which we have some potential
interest in dealing with in one way rather than another.
If this is right, three further things would seem to follow. First, although in a
primitive society the weather might simply be a given, not in itself a matter for
political discussion, the question of what we might do about the weather can well
be a political issue: Do we distribute umbrellas to everyone or not? Do we put up
a communal awning or tarpaulin on poles over the village green? Or do we let
everyone fend for themselves?
Second, what is a political question or issue is itself historically variable in a way
in which questions like ‘What is an organic compound?’ or ‘What is the sum of seven
and nine?’ are not. What are political changes with changes in what we can and
could do.
In pre-industrial times the weather is not in itself a political issue, subject to
the caveats just mentioned above, but if we were able technologically to change
and control the meteorological conditions, then it might very well become a
political matter, in the weak sense, whether it rains on a certain day or not. That
would mean that someone had decided to make it rain on that day or had failed
to decide anything, leaving it up, as we might say, to ‘nature’. Note that in the pre-
industrial period people were not failing to decide on the weather, since they had
no control over it, it was just there as a brute fact, a matter not of politics, but of
natural necessity.
Third, suppose it really is the case that politics concerns things that are either
in fact in our power or at any rate which we could imagine might come to be in
our power, and suppose then further that any state of affairs that cannot be other
than it is (such as whether a certain number is prime) stands outside the domain of
political deliberation. If, then, I have a special interest in maintaining some feature
of the present social or political regime, for instance, because it differentially
benefits me, I may have a strong interest in trying to present this feature as a part of
the order of ‘natural necessity’. Think of Margaret Thatcher’s constant refrains about
the ineluctable necessity of tolerating unemployment as a means to controlling
inflation, or of bowing to the imperatives of the market. This is the point at which
it is sometimes tempting to appeal to claims about the objectivity of scientific
results, and, of course, there often are well supported scientific results that are
relevant to political decisions. However, it is also the case that sometimes political
agents have a strong motivation for presenting as the only possible reading what
is in fact only one specific reading of the existing evidence among others, namely
that reading which seems to give support to their own projects and interests.
The appeal to ‘objectivity’, whether justified or not, is so effective because it is
responsive to deep-seated and perfectly comprehensible human needs. We seem
to have good inductive reasons to cultivate our existing desire not to be grossly
deceived about the world in which we live, if only because in most cases we have
found that complete illusions turn out to have very painful consequences for us.
This comprehensible desire for what we call ‘objective truth’ can often come into
a sometimes slightly unholy connection with our human need to find, or invent,
determinacy, stability, fixity, at almost any cost. The world is unstable and insecure,
and our life in it is uncertain. It is painful for us to confront this fact. It also is exhausting
having constantly to calculate again, to exercise context-dependent judgment or
reopen questions apparently definitively settled. In the face of ‘objectivity’ we can
relax and succumb to inertia, simplifying some aspects of the painful process of
decision by leaving it, as it were, up to reality itself. Unless the shoe pinches us very
badly so that we cannot overlook it, we would like to think the form of the shoe
which happens to be customary in our society is the natural one or the ‘objectively’
given one. The idea that humans ‘naturally’ like ‘freedom’ or ‘choice’, if that means
that they like continually to have to exercise their unbridled judgment or make
decisions under the conditions of great uncertainty, is unfounded. This does not
mean, of course, that they like to be in painful bondage, and much of human life is
an attempt to find a path through the world which is responsive to the two forces
of avoidance of novelty, and choice and avoidance of the painful consequences of
failing to revise one’s beliefs and attitudes when that is necessary.3
So much, then, for the first, the wider and weaker, which does not, of course
mean ‘less important’ of the two concepts of politics. ‘Politics’ in this wider sense is a
matter of any form of co-ordinating action regardless of the means used to achieve
this coordination. Our more usual, or what I will call the ‘narrower’, concept of politics
contains some further components in addition to those that constitute ‘politics’ in
the wider sense. These are that the ‘political’ coordination of social action makes
use of at least the threat of recourse to coercion, force or violence, and that there is
some appeal to systematic forms of legitimation. So in the wider sense of ‘politics’
I can speak of the politics in a chess club as people jockey for influence, a certain
kind of power, and a certain advancement through established offices. However
this structure is not directly connected to the possible use of force. The Chairman
of the chess club may make decisions about who plays which game against whom
in which room and at what time, may adjudicate disagreements etc. and in these
matters his word may be Law, but he cannot whip, or probably even threaten to
whip, any of the members or lock them up against their will. On the other hand,
a gangster can assault me, lock me up, and take away my possession by force, but
does not make a claim that what he is doing is either morally good or politically
legitimate. The full and narrower sense of politics comes into play only when the
use of force or the threat of the use of force is a possibility, and when the potential
recourse to coercion, force or violence is presented as being not merely a fact to be
accepted, but as in some way ‘legitimate’. The major agency in the modern world
that makes this claim to legitimate use of coercive power is the state. ‘Political’ in
the narrow sense means having to do with coordination of action through the use
of state-power, or with the attempt to influence, infiltrate, or put oneself into a
position to exercise that state-power.4
‘Architecture’, too, is a term which is used ambiguously, although the ambiguities
are comparatively harmless. Thus it can either mean a certain skill, craft, or artistic
ability or the exercise of that skill or craft in the activity of designing and constructing
physical objects of a certain kind. Or finally it can refer to the objects thus designed
and constructed themselves. Architecture seems to be different from many of
the other arts in several ways. First architectural objects are palpably physical and
inherently public: they are large objects, literally almost always bigger than any
individual person, and they stand out, form physical obstacles to free movement,
and shape the very space in which we live. Of necessity, then, they affect us a
way that is different from the way in which most novels, pieces of music, or easel-
paintings affect us. If I do not like the novel or poem I am reading, I can shut the
book; if the picture displeases me, I can turn my head away. I cannot so easily exit
from a large cathedral in which I find myself placed, or change the properties of the
houses that face onto the streets down which I must pass to get to the city centre.
This at least mildly and potentially more coercive feature of architectural objects
makes them more political than the products of the other arts. It could, of course, be
argued that every painting I see shapes my perception in a potentially permanent
way and therefore makes me see everything in the world in a different way. Still, I
do not usually have to look any particular painting. I do, however, have to live in
whatever building or part of the city I happen to live in. I can, of course, choose
to live in one kind of building rather than another, and can change the building
I live in either by moving or by reconstructing it, but I cannot in the twenty-first
century simply do without some built surroundings, as I can do without easel-
paintings. It is, of course, true that this difference between architecture and other
arts became even more pronounced during nineteenth and the twentieth century,
when forms of literature, music, and aspects of the graphic arts became highly
privatised, than it was in some previous periods. Thus, in the ancient world the basic
form of consumption of what we now call ‘literature’ would not have been silent
reading in an empty room, but the massive choral singing and dancing which was
characteristic of the performance of a tragedy in Athens, or a public performance
of epic by a rhapsode or the reading of a speech or dialogue by a slave to a group
of gentlemen of leisure. Nevertheless, a constructed object like a house had in one
obvious sense a firmer place as an opaque, solid, intransigent, three-dimensional
part of the public fabric of a city than any ephemeral grouping of citizens did.
There is, therefore, an important further political issue here. Should buildings
be unobtrusive, retreating into the background to allow agents to pursue their
own self-chosen goals, as far as possible without apparent obstruction? If one has
the view that any building in one way or another structures the space in which it
stands, then this might seem slightly dishonest, a way of covering up what is in
fact a choice about structuration and allowing it to pass unnoticed. The building
may come to be taken as ‘a fact of nature’ in the urban landscape rather than the
result of distinct intervention. Surely, however, one might think, the consequence
of this should not be that buildings should be hyper-assertive, constantly calling
attention to themselves and their effects. There is no optimal resolution to this
tension. Perhaps for that reason reflecting on and theorising about architecture
will always have a place in our intellectual life.
Furthermore, given the persistence of the material from which most buildings
are made, the structuration of the environment which they produce also
extends into the indefinite future, and thus concerns an indeterminate number
of ‘anonymous’ other humans, who by the very nature of the case cannot be
consulted. Architectural works completed now impose on future people a way of
living by channelling the way human activities will be able to proceed. It is, then,
coercing them at any rate in a minimal sense, making it easier for them to live in this
way, and more difficult for them to live in that way, so any present construction is
an act of political faith in a certain possible future.
Architecture has also often been held to be different from other arts in that it
straddles the distinction between craft and fine art, between producing practical
objects of use in a relatively predictable way, which is assumed to be the basic
characteristic of a craft, and producing potentially unique aesthetic objects, which
is associated with our modern idea of fine art. This dichotomy might also be
associated with the distinction between being a ‘mere’ builder and being a proper
architect. There is a functional dimension in architecture and also an expressive
dimension, and much of the discussion at least during the past two centuries or so
has revolved around the proper understanding of each of these dimensions, and,
most importantly perhaps, the proper relation between the two of them.
It is also an important fact about our society that people do not simply engage
in the activity of designing and building, but some of them also do this as a
profession, and in our society ‘profession’ designates a very specific social role with
associated legal rights, social and legal duties, and expectations.5 As a professional
architect in our society, one is embarking on a life of entering into contracts with
people to build things which they, within certain limits, specify. This immediately
raises straightforwardly political issues. Do you enter into contract with just
anyone, on what conditions, for whose benefit? Last month I happened to meet
and have a conversation with a German engineer whose family had built up the
oldest and largest cement works in Central Europe (Dyckerhoff ), and who were
understandably very proud of the extremely high quality of their cement. During
World War Two they had provided the cement for the building of the ‘West Wall’, the
line of German fortifications on the coast of Western Europe designed to protect
the Continent from Anglo-American invasion. When my new acquaintance’s
grandfather was called to account for this by the US occupation authorities after the
war, the elderly patriarch produced the original set of specifications and contracts
for the building of the large pediment on which the Statue of Liberty in New York
Harbour rests. In these contracts it was specified that the pediment must be made
of Dyckerhoff cement (‘or cement of similar quality’, as the contract apparently
specified). In fact Dyckerhoff & Co. provided the 8,000 ‘bins’ of cement from which
the pediment was constructed. This line of response was apparently immediately
accepted by the occupation forces without further question. Regardless of what
one might think of the substantive rights and wrongs in this case, the issue is not
whether the occupation forces ought to have accepted what might seem to us to
be something too pathetically weak even to be called an ‘argument’. It was merely
an attempt, successful as it turned out, by the accused to evoke certain sufficiently
strong positive sacral associations in the mind of the accusers as to blind them and
deprive them of the use of whatever weak ratiocinative faculties they may have had
in the first place. The real question, however, is what this tells us about the nature
of our own conceptual space. These are in no sense irrelevant or unimportant
questions, but they have more to do with the social role ‘architect’ than with the
inherent nature of what the architect does. We might think that a doctor is, or
should be, by virtue of his or her very role immune from politics. A military doctor
should care for all the wounded on the battlefield, friend or foe, and civilised
countries make it a point of pride to provide equal care for all combatants and for
civilian victims including those who are now usually subsumed under the rubric
‘collateral damage’. This does not mean that there is no politics in being a doctor,
but only that we have decided that it would be a good idea, not an idea proposed
to us by any notion of ‘justice’ but by such notions as humanity, decency, charity,
benevolence, and also probably by various utilitarian calculations, artificially to
insulate the practitioners of the medical profession from making certain everyday
political discriminations.
There is yet a further way in which architecture was traditionally distinct from
other arts, and this is in the more inherently social, and potentially political, nature
of the activity itself – the activity of collective building. Aristotle’s architect had the
power to exercise a kind of social control, namely to give orders to the people who
actually do the building. This power was not arbitrary, it did not come from nowhere,
and it was not unlimited. It was a power based on the authority purportedly
provided by knowledge (and perhaps also secondarily by experience, although

many builders have more experience of construction than younger architects do).
This immediately raises the question of what kind of knowledge there can be in
this area. This question is especially pressing for architecture, more perhaps than
for many other areas of human endeavour because precisely of the binary nature of
the enterprise, that of designing and producing practically useful and aesthetically
pleasing buildings. We do not have much difficulty in understanding the kind of
knowledge that will contribute to making it likely that the building will be useful.
It will have to stand up, and the technical discipline of statics gives us a relatively
straightforward answer to that. But what notion of ‘knowledge’ underlies the claim
of the architect to produce an object of great expressive value?
The problem for the architect, then, is that if his authority is based on knowledge,
the builder and engineer also have that, but if what makes him distinct from
the (mere) builder, and hence entitled to some special kind of authority, is the
aesthetic or expressive dimension of the product, that seems more reasonably to
be construed as having to do with faculties like that of ‘taste’ rather than with any
form of knowledge. How does ‘taste’ give authority? It is completely unclear what
kind of authority an architect can deploy and in particular whether the architect
has any coercive authority at all.6
In the previous discussion of ‘politics’ in the narrow sense, I left one important
aspect of the concept unexplored. I spoke in a vague way about politics as being a
realm of coercion, force, or violence, as if these three things were the same, or at any
rate did not need to be distinguished. It is not obvious, though, that coercion and
violence are at all the same thing. I can be reasonably said to have been ‘coerced’
to do something in many kind of circumstances even if no one uses anything we
would naturally call ‘violence’. If you lure me into a room and lock the door, you
have forced me or coerced me into staying in that room until you unlock it, but you
do not seem to have used ‘violence’ on me in the same way you would have, had
you bodily picked me up and thrust me into the room. Similarly, it does not seem
odd to say that by lying to me you can ‘force’ me to do various things, in the sense
that if I believe you, I might think I have no alternative to the course of action you
wish me to take. Still, it seems a stretch of our current linguistic usage to call ‘lying’
a form of violence.
A further relevant distinction is that between active and passive or doing
and permitting/ allowing to occur. This distinction is highly controversial among
philosophers, or rather it is controversial whether it has any deeper significance. At
an everyday level it is perfectly clear:
a) active: I push you into the water so that you drown.

b) passive: I fail to respond to your cries for help even though I easily could.
The reason this distinction is of relevance to this discussion is that political theory,
especially of a liberal kind, has tried to focus on active, even deliberate human
intervention. Politics then is construed as in the first instance about preventing
other people from actively using violence on others. The result however is to
skew the political realm. This is especially important for architecture because a
building was historically an archetypically inert, but persistent, structure. I, or
rather the builders, may have been active in putting it up, but once it was up, it
was just there, and could be expected to stay there, if it was properly built, for a
very long time. It can change its function over time, as when buildings originally
constructed as fortresses become prisons, so whose deliberate intentions are
significant, the person who built or those who now use? It is the very geometric
structure of the building that forces people to act in one way rather than another,
and also to fail to act in certain ways; if the structure works, it prevents the inmates
from ‘escaping’. This passive nature makes coercion ‘softer’ and harder to see as
it were from the outside, although not to feel, if one actually must live in such a
structure. It makes it also no less effective, and the question is whether it is not
equally reprehensible.7
I have spoken of important ambiguities in the concept of ‘politics’ and of various
different ways in which we speak of ‘architecture’ as a skill, an activity, a kind of
object or a profession. It will then come as no surprise that I also think that the
concept of ‘justice’ is multiply ambiguous. I would like to distinguish at least four
rather distinct notions.
First of all, ‘just’ designates that which accords with existing, established, legal
codes. Second, we call that ‘just’ which accords with what we – whoever ‘we’ in
each case happen to be – think ‘ought’ to be the enforced legal code. Third, ‘justice’
is used simply, as Aristotle put it, to refer to ‘all the human excellences together’.8
That is, in this third sense ‘just’ refers in a rather indeterminate way to that which is
socially excellent, desirable, etc. in whatever sense and for whatever reason. I note
that it is extremely important not to confuse this third sense of the term with the
second because there might well be things we think are socially desirable which we
also think cannot for various reasons be formulated in a legal code. Thus I might
think it highly desirable that people in a society be grateful to those from whom
they have received benefits, but I might also think it completely wrong for this to be
formulated as a requirement of any kind of legal code. First of all, a legal code must
be enforceable by reference to external indicators, and I might think ‘gratitude’ is
not the kind of thing that is sufficiently close to any external indicators to figure in
a legal code. Second, I might think that precisely an important part of the value of
gratitude is that it be exhibited without it being the case that it is legally required,
and would be sanctioned. Its virtue is that it is extra-legal, not forced, etc.
The fourth conception of justice is one which focuses on questions of distribution.
There has recently been significant disagreement among theorists about what
it is that is supposed to be distributed, whether goods, welfare, opportunity, or
the possibilities of agency, and there is a similar disagreement about whether the
principles of distribution should be some version of equality or of proportionality,
for instance that goods and benefits should be distributed equally to each or to
each proportionally to their perceived merit or contribution, whatever ‘merit’ or
‘contribution’ mean.
Recently, meaning during the past forty years or so, there has been a strong
tendency to understand politics in a highly artificial, restrictive, and impoverished
way. Following John Rawls many theorists have essentially tried to construe
politics as a form of human behaviour devoted primarily to the attempt to realise
one particular social ideal, the ideal of justice.9 They have then further eviscerated
the concept of ‘justice’ so as to construe it merely as some general property of the
distribution of goods and services in society.
I think that this multiple ambiguity in the concept of ‘justice’ has been a source
of almost inestimable confusion. If ‘justice’ is used in the third sense, namely that
is just which is in any sense socially desirable, then of course, it is no news that all
politics is about justice. It is no news because it is just a tautology. However, it is
easy to move, without noticing it, from that tautology to something that is by no
means a tautology, namely to the claim that all politics is appropriately construed
as concerned with the equitable or proportional distribution of pre-existing goods
and benefits.
If one starts from the notion of politics which I sketched at the beginning, it
is not difficult to see that not all politics is about justice, but also at least about
the coordination of action, the exercise of influence and the control of the use
of force (among other things). Arguably, ‘justice’ is not even one of the more
important human values which can be instantiated in the political or social sphere.
This is particularly clear in emergency situation, but, putting them aside, think, for
instance, of welfare, efficiency, humanity, activity, security, dignity, and decency,
not to mention creativity, a sense of self-affirmation and aesthetic grace. All of
these are important social virtues, and none of them is self-evidently completely
detached from the world of the political (at least in the wider sense).
In short, then, two associations of the concept of ‘justice’ seem to me unfortunate
and unhelpful in the context of architecture. The first is the presumption that
justice will have something to do with codes, rules, and conformity to such
existing codes, or, for that matter, with conformity to a better set of ideal rules.
The second that justice has to do with properties of distribution of goods that are
considered to exist antecedently. When Marx in the nineteenth century attacked
the focused attention which the political theory of his day turned on ‘justice’, it
was because justice-centred theories took the goods in question at face value, as
objects that had come into existence in ways that it was irrelevant to discuss.10
Rather, Marx suggested that political theory should look carefully at the activities
through which such goods were produced in the first place, and at the social
relations that structured those productive processes. These, he thought, were
the most important features of any society, and the rules of distribution, that is
both justice in the sense of conformity to a legal code and justice in the sense of
some scheme of distribution, were secondary.11 What I would like to suggest is
that architecture would do well to concentrate on the generation and fostering
of varieties of free activity, and on the structure of the relations that will hold
between the humans who need to interact, rather than on justice in the sense
either of conformity to some code or the distribution of goods.
Unfortunately, then, I must disagree with one of the basic assumptions on
which this conference is based. The prospectus for the conference states that
‘Justice is fundamental to our notions of societal order, that is to the order
sustained between ourselves without recourse to force.’ When I say I disagree

with this, I do not mean to say that I think that this assertion is incorrect in the
sense in which it is, for instance, incorrect to think that the sun moves around the
earth. Rather I disagree with it because it gives the strong impression of being a
clear substantive claim, but on closer inspection it turns out to be no such thing.
On some of the readings it expresses an unobjectionable or even tautological
claim. If what it means is, ‘We tend to use the word ‘justice’ to refer to whatever
we discover is essential to the maintenance of our social order’, then this may be
true, but it is uninteresting. Even here, to be sure, one might wonder whether we
wish to say that justice is whatever is fundamental to our existing social order
or whether what we really have in mind is that justice refers to what would be
essential to some ideally desirable order we can envisage. The trivial readings of
this claim about ‘justice’ are, however, easily confused with other uses in which
the statement expresses a highly contentful and controversial claim, for instance
that equal (or proportional) distribution of goods is in fact fundamental to our
social order, or to an ideally ‘good’ social order. In addition, I might add, what is
so special about ‘our’ notions of societal order? Are we to be satisfied merely with
recognising that they are the conceptions we, for whatever reasons – good, bad,
or indifferent – happen to have acquired?
Note, too, that this formulation seems to make the tacit assumption that societal
order is good in itself, and ‘our’ conception of social order especially good, and
that force plays no major constitutive part in our society. I take it that tacitly this
includes the threat of the use of force. What if some use of force turns out actually
to be required to maintain ‘our’ social order? This possibility does not seem even
to be canvassed. So there is a highly specific set of liberal assumptions built into
the very way in which this text is formulated which I, for one, would be inclined to
reject.
I spoke earlier about our horror at the uncertainty of human life, about the
vertigo we experience in the face of the indeterminate. and about our anxiety at
having to exercise judgment and decide in each case afresh how to act toward
our world. This is part of the strongest motivation for the focus of politics on
the concept of ‘justice’, as it is part of the motivation to cling with limpet-like
inertia to theories we have once committed ourselves to, even when they have
revealed themselves to be seriously flawed. This is also part of the origin of
our tendency to exaggerate the level of determinate objectivity we have been
able to discern in our world. To start from ‘justice’ gives one the illusion that
there is at least one distinct kind of determinate thing out there to which all the
multiform indeterminacies and incommensurabilities of our forms of valuation
can be reduced. If that were the case, we think, to some extent we would not
need to exercise judgment. This, however, is exactly the problem with trying to
reduce politics to discussion of ‘justice’. This does not, in turn, in any way imply
that political discussion is merely indeterminate or merely a matter of arbitrary
choice. There are things which at any given time we have no real alternative
but to accept, and valuing one thing is often really incompatible with valuing
something else equally. No one can be a champion boxer in the morning and
a subtle and accomplished violinist in the evening. Merely employing the term
’justice’ to cover whatever we find of value will not in itself either solve any
problems or cause there to be more unity and coherence among what we value
than there otherwise would be.
To return once again to Aristotle, he thought that politics was in itself a
constructive and ‘architectonic’ activity. It was really about creating the conditions
for free, valuable action and the social genesis of the right kind of person, the
proper citizen of the city-state. Aristotle also thought that the city-state was the
only social form within which the highest and most complex kinds of human
activities could be carried out. One can accept Aristotle’s general claim that politics,
and (by extension) architecture, are about enabling positively valued forms of
collective human activity and about creating a certain kind or type of person
without necessarily accepting his hierarchical views about human activities or the
further claim that the most valuable life is possible only within the rigid format of
an ancient city-state.12
Of course, the routine tasks of everyday building have to go forward, and of
course architects have to honour their contracts, take care for whom and with
whom they build, and what effects their building will have on the minimal provision
of necessary goods, but architecture might also be seen, and has in the past been
seen, to have an aspirational component, to be attempting to be ‘constructive’
in more than just the literal sense. In the nineteenth century some philosophers
spoke of the basic task of the architect as being to build a dwelling suitable for
God.13 We twenty-first century atheists don’t use this kind of religious language any
more, but it is not difficult even for us to associate a clear and plausible meaning
with that thought.14 Architects should try to create structures which by channelling
human energies in novel ways focus and intensify some of them while thwarting
and dispersing others. We have a variety of complex reasons for judging that the
intensification of some activities has made our lives richer and more worthwhile, or
that, alternatively, it has been a huge mistake.
Thus, we judge that forms of human interaction, of relation to self and other,
have become more or less efficient, more or less focused and intense, more or
less socially aware and benevolent, more or less constructive in relation to other
valued outcomes, and so forth. Some of these ways of evaluating it we call ‘moral’.
Also there is no particular reason to expect that the standards or criteria we now
use for judging will never change. In some cases they will change as a result of
interventions we make. If I were an architect, it would be the highpoint of my life
to discover that people who antecedently knew, as it were, all there was to know
about the building I designed for them and who thought they had good reason
to detest it, came through living in it to change their minds and love it. I would
have helped them to change their way of looking at the world, their standards
for evaluating what is good, and their taste. Perhaps one could appeal to various
systematic considerations to argue that some particular change had not been for
the better – after all, sheer habituation has caused people to come to think they
liked some extremely peculiar things – but the argument would need to be made
in detail and evaluated on its merits.
Not all the evaluative standards we use in political philosophy, then, can
reasonably be thought to be subordinated to a single notion of ‘justice’. If the
demand that architecture should take account of ‘justice’ is merely an exhortation
to architects to look beyond their fees, and consider the different ways, for good or
for ill, in which their buildings will be used, and the different ways in which those
buildings will encourage or discourage certain uses, then this is unobjectionable,
but also rather trivial. To put emphasis on its aspirational and humanly constructive
component is to try to think about architecture in a way that very much goes
beyond the framework of thoughts about ‘justice’.15
notes
1 See Von der Grüneburg zum Campus Westend, brochure by University of Frankfurt
(2007) to accompany the permanent exhibition in the I.G.-Farben-Haus. I am also
grateful to Prof. Axel Honneth of the Philosophisches Institut of the University of
Frankfurt for discussion of some of these issues.
2 EN, 1094a-1095a, 1141b; Metaphysica, 980a–981b.
3 Friedrich Nietzsche, Sämtliche Werke: Kritische Studienausgabe, ed. Colli and Montinari
(Berlin: De Gruyter, 1967), vol. 1, pp. 875–90, vol. 5, pp. 15–39, vol. 6, pp. 88–97, et passim.
4 Max Weber, Politik als Beruf (Berlin: Dunker & Humblot, 1977).
5 This line of thought has been very fruitfully developed by Zeev Emmerich in a recent,
as yet unpublished work, and in general I am very indebted to him for discussions of
the topics in this paper.
6 For what is still one of the most interesting discussions of this topic, see Friedrich
Schiller’s, ‘Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen in einer Reihe von Briefen’, in
Sämtliche Werke, ed. Fricke and Göpfert (München: Hanser, 1967), vol. 5.
7 Michel Foucault, Surveiller et punir (Gallimard, 1975).
8 EN, 1129b–30.
9 John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Harvard, 1971).
10 See Marx-Engels-Werke (Berlin: Dietz, 1968), vol. 19, pp. 18–22; Ergänzungsband, 1,
pp. 534–5.
11 Karl Marx, Grundrisse (Berlin: Dietz, 1974), pp. 5–19.
12 See Karl Marx, Grundrisse (Berlin: Dietz, 1974), pp. 387–8.
13 See G.W.F. Hegel, Werke in zwanzig Bänden, ed. Moldenhauer and Michel (Frankfurt:
Suhrkamp, 1970), vol. 14, pp. 266–72.
14 See Friedrich Nietzsche, Sämtliche Werke: Kritische Studienausgabe, ed. Colli and
Montinari (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1967), vol. 3, pp. 524–5.
15 Stuart Hampshire, Thought and Action (1970) and Justice is Conflict (London:
Duckworth, 1999).
Index
Achaea 223 architecture

Actor-Network Theory 106, 108, see also architectonikes 223
nonhuman ἀρχιτέκτων 268
Adam and Eve 258 architectural institutions 86
ADPSR (Architects/Designers/Planners for Chinese 131–47
Social Responsibility) 14 church 171
Aeschylus 226, 235, 245–9, 253 citadel(s) 10, 39, 72, 160, 236, 243n27
Dikē Play 245–9 fortress 10, 12, 125, 227
Prometheus 226, 243 humane 9, 13, 16
Prometheus Bound 235, 243 Napoleonic 86
Aesop 249 prison 9–21, 24–35, 43
African(s) 119, 122, 156, 159–60, 163 sensual dimension of 17
American 163, 184 architecture parlante 41, 145
jail 117 Arendt, Hannah 163n32, 240, 241
AHMM’s Health Centre 17 Aristophanes 232, 245, 248–57
AIA Academy of Architecture for Justice Birds 232
15 Clouds 232
Alberti, Leone Battista 170–72, 175–6 Peace 245, 248–57
De pictura 170, 175–6 Aristotle 169, 221–3, 237, 241, 243n33,
Alexander, Michelle 184 258, 259, 268, 273, 275, 278
Alexander I 42, 49 Nichomachean Ethics 221
Alfarabi 259 Politics 241
alienation 17, 105, 115, 126, 156 arts 236, 237, 255, 271–3
Allen, William 45 Asia 185
American Institute of Architects (AIA) 14, Assemblage Theory 106–8
15 Assizes 73–4, 76–7, 82n6
anarchists 160, 162 Augustus 223
Anaximander 218–21, 225–8 Australia(n) 18, 24, 27, 30, 45, 63, 78, 81, 111
Fragment 225, 228n15 Perth xix
Antinous 223 authority 55, 58, 65, 72, 77, 85–9, 92, 105,
apartheid, post-apartheid 115–17, 122, 152, 154, 159, 162, 187n7, 209, 217,
127 232, 257, 260, 273–4
appropriation 53, 204 Averroes 259
Aquinas, Thomas 225 Avicenna 259
Arc-et-Senans 41 Avranches, Henry of 259
Babylonia(n) 216, 220 Burgess, Ernest 177

Balzac, Honoré de 38 Burke, Edmund 41
Bamford, Samuel 60–62, 64
Banks, Sir Joseph 54 Calvinism 154
Barthes, Roland 166–7 Canada 4, 190
Baudelaire, Charles 38 British Columbia 189–202
Barlinnie Special Unit, see prison —— Beaver Harbour 191–2
Baxandall, Michael 170–73, 175n13, —— Fort Rupert 189–202
201n3 —— Pacific Coast 189–90
Beccaria, Cesare 39–40 —— Vancouver Island 189–90
Beckford, William 38 Canberra High Court 78
beginnings (archai) 101, 250 capital 45
Beeching Commission 76–7 accumulation 152, 155
Being 217, 220, 222–3, 228n15 punishment 24
Beirut, Lebanon 207–8 capitalism; capitalist 48, 152–8, 160–63
Belgium; Belgian 157, 159–60 Capri 223
Antwerp 157 Carceri 2, 38–9
Brussels 151, 157, 159–61 Cardinals 152
Belsen 267 Caribbean 154
Bengalis 154 Antigua 154
Benjamin, Walter 205 Jamaica 154
Bentham, Jeremy 2, 10, 26–7, 41–8 —— Kingston 154
Bentham, Samuel 42 Plantation Quay 154
Berger, John 201 Carnarvon Committee 1863: 31
Bidwell, Austin 31 Carr, John 74
Bishop Alexander 258 Casement, Roger 159, 163
bourgeoisie 152–8, 160 cathedral(s) 3, 5, 10, 51–6, 58, 61–2,
revolution 151 64–6, 154, 157, 225, 257–67,
utopia 155 271
Blackburn, William 27, 40 Canterbury 55, 258
Blantyre House; see prison Durham 55
Blondel, Jacques-François 41 Lincoln 2, 51–6, 58, 64, 257–67
Bloody Code 24 —— Bishop’s Eye 257–61, 261
Boas, Franz 194, 199 —— Chapter House 54–5
Boffrand, Germain 41 —— Close 52–3
Bonaparte, Napoleon 86, 87, 97 —— Dean’s Eye 257–61, 261
Borromini, Francesco 224 —— Exchequer Gate 53, 56
Boullée, Étienne-Louis 40–41 —— Galilee Court 54
Bourdieu, Pierre 109 —— Galilee Porch 53–4, 56, 259
Bourse 86, 158 —— Saint Hugh’s Choir 262–4
Boyle, Jimmy 18 Monreale 225
Bramante, Donato 66n18, 173 Norwich 55
Brando, Marlon 159 Winchester 55
Breay, Claire 55 Catholic Missionary Oblates of Mary
Breda, see prison Immaculate 193
Brians Penitentiary, see prison de Certeau, Michel 13
Brunelleschi, Filippo 171–2 la chaise 89, 91
bureaucracy 109, 138, 151, 159 Chambre des Députés 86
index 283
Chandigarh 78 Coppola, Francis Ford 159, 163

Chartism 153 Corinthian 74, 153
Chesterton, George Laval 29 cosmic order 138, 216
China 133, 137, 143, 144, 268 Counter-Reformation 224
Beijing 131 County Buildings 153
—— Forbidden City 131 Court(s) 23, 26, 55, 59, 87–8, 91, 98,
Neixiang 133, 145 101–13, 116–17, 119–26, 131, 138,
Chomsky, Noam 166 177, 184, 188n21, 203, 229n25, 246
Christ 56, 217, 258–60, 263 of Appeal 85
Christian; Christianity 28, 56, 62, 66n16, Assize 59, 73–8, 82
107, 172, 198, 223–6, 257, 261 Crown 57, 61, 77, 81
Chu, Djang 131 distributed 104, 111n20
CIA 268 law 4, 53
CIAM 227 Magistrates 76, 78
Cicero 170, 223 standards and Design guide 77–8, 80
Circle 17 virtual 101–13
citizen(s) 2, 46, 57, 105, 115–16, 119, 123–4, courthouse 54, 57–8, 61, 98
126, 145, 180, 182, 184–5, 219, 220, 225, courtroom 4, 5, 54–5, 65, 66n18, 71–83,
231–7, 239–41, 247–8, 250, 272, 278 89, 101–2, 105–9, 140–45, 151–64
civil code 86, 89 courtyard 40, 43, 134, 137, 139, 142–5
Civil Justice Centre 71, see also Crawford, William 28
Manchester Crecheff 42
Civil Rights Movement 184 crime 177–8, 181
Cleisthenes; Cleisthenic 220, 222 criminal classes 30
Code of Ur-Nammu 216 criminology 182, 185
coercion 269, 271, 274, 275 custom(s) (nomos(i)) 131, 144, 216, 223,
Coldbath Fields House of Correction, see 252–3
prison
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 38 Daedalus 250
collaboration 117, 207 Daily Mail 16
colonial exploitation 151, 154–5 Dalderby, John of 259
Commission of Police 152 Dally, Frederick 197–8
commodities 151–7 Dance, the Younger, George 41
commodity fetishism 157 Daoist cosmology 144
communication technologies 106–8 Dasein 218
Communist 154, 157 David, Jacques-Louis 86
Manifesto 157 Davis, Mike 12, 177–8
Confucius 133, 138 De Geerhorst, see prison
Analects of 144, 145, 146n5, 146n6 De Pauley, W.C. 40
Congo 157–9, 160 De Quincey, Thomas 38–9
conquest 85, 146n12, 155, 159, 187n7, 222 De Schie Penitentiary, see prison
Conrad, Joseph 157, 159 decorum 217
Heart of Darkness 157 defendant 73, 75, 80–81, 87–9, 102–3,
Constantinople 223 105, 137, 139
Constitution 4, 49, 115, 116, 125 remote 103, see also remote court
Constitutional Court 117, 119–21, 123, 125 participant
Constitution Hill Precinct 115, 117, 119 Defoe, Daniel 56
Constitutional Square 122 deindustrialization 179
Deleuze, Gilles 174, 187n7 Euclid; Euclidean space 166–7, 218, 222,
deliberation(s) 2, 52, 59, 62, 65, 224, 270 230n43
democracy 75, 119, 123, 219, 232, 240 eunomia, see social order
democratia 221 Euripides 245, 251–3
democratic order 215 Cyclops 245, 251–3
Denton Corker Marshall xxiii, 71 Europe; European xix, 4, 14–15, 25,
Descartes, René 37, 267 40, 81, 126, 143–5, 151, 157, 159,
deus ex machina 249 163n32, 168, 169, 185, 186, 223, 224,
Dickens, Charles 28 268, 273
Dionysus 253 eu-topia 215, 221
diversity 109, 119, 121, 123–4, 209, 251 Evans, Robin 26
Divided Line 220 exclusion 115, 124, 126
Doric 74 Existenzminimum 46, 48
Dossetter, Edward 193, 198–9 exploitation 151, 157, 162n3, 168, 226
Douglas Treaties 189–91, 196, 200
Draper, Peter 263 faith 56, 162, 264
Duchy of Lancaster 58 feng-shui 144
Dumont, Étienne 42–3 Fergusson, James 145
Dyckerhoff & Co. 273 First Nations 189
Fort Rupert Kwakiutl Band 189, 191,
Eastern Penitentiary, see prison 201n1
East Midlands 63 Kwakwaka’wakw First Nation 189,
Edward I 54 201n1
Edward II 54 Fort 117, 124–5, 189–201
Edward III 258 fortification 57, 61, 75, 123–4, 194, 273
Egypt, Egyptian 156–7, 216, 222–3 Foster and Partners 17
Alexandria 215, 222 Foucault, Michel 1, 4, 12, 17, 20n18, 42–3,
Cairo 227 45–8, 88, 89, 168
Eisenhower, General Dwight 267, 268 Discipline and Punish, the Birth of the
Eisenstein, Sergei 39 Prison 1, 4, 42–3, 275
Elizabeth I 37 Le mots et les choses 168
Empedocles 219–20 France 3, 15, 39, 85–99
Empire 49n28, 86–7, 131, 137, 154, 159, Aix 41
163n20, 217 Brest 15
Engels, Friedrich 157, 160 Paris 39, 86, 89, 98, 157–8, 226
English 24, 38, 39, 43, 55, 72–3, 75, 91–6, —— Arc de Triomphe 85
98, 131, 154, 198, 258 —— Colonne Vendôme 86
Civil War 53, 56–7 —— Hôtel-Dieu 45
Heritage 72 —— Madeleine 86
Enlightenment 39, 42, 88, 226, 240 Parisian Academy of Architecture 41
environmental repurposing 205–6 University Paris II Pantheon-Assas 89
Epicurean 223, see also Lucretius freedom 269–70
episteme 221 struggle 117
equality 14, 77–8, 81, 116–17, 121, 221, 227 French 38, 40, 42–3, 85, 89, 91–3, 98, 157,
Estabrook, Carl 53 206, 226
d’Etaples, Jean Lefèvre 169 French Revolution 40, 85
Grammatographia 169 Fry, Elizabeth 26
Ethos; ethos 91, 116, 221, 226–7 Fuller, Michael 14, 15
index 285
G4S 11 Grimm, Samuel 54

Gacaca Courts 203 Grosseteste, Robert 259–2, 264
Gadamer, Hans-Georg 223 Commentary on the Posterior Analytics
Galois, Robert 193 259
Gandhi, Mahatma 4, 117 De Libero Arbitrio (On Free Will) 260
Gandy, Joseph Michael 43 De Luce 225
Garland, David 179, 180, 183 Epistolae 260–61
Gartree and Grendon Underwood Guarini, Guarino 224
therapeutic communities, see prison Guattari, Félix 174, 187n7
gated suburbs; community 178, 183
Gautier, Théophile 38 Habermas, Jürgen 215
Geneva 43 Hades 246, 247, 261
geometry 80, 171, 172, 215, 217–18, Hadrian 222–3
221–2, 224, 260, 262 Halden, see prison
German(s); Germania; Germany xx, 157, Hales, Stephen 26
158, 224, 267–8, 273 Hammurabi, Stele of 4, 216–18, 220
Berlin 158 hanging(s) 58–9, 63
Frankfurt/M 267 hard labour, hard board, hard fare 2, 31
—— University of 267 Hardwick, Thomas 42
Gibbs, James 56 harmony 138, 173, 222, 225, 226, 250, 254–5
Gilbert, Bishop of Limerick 263 Harou-Romain, Nicolas Philippe 43
De statu ecclesiae 263 Harvey, David 4, 165, 167, 174
Gilmore, Ruth 179, 180 Social Justice and the City 4, 165
Gladstone Committee 25, 30, 32 Haycock, John H. 27
Glen Parva, see prison Haussemanian 87
god(s); goddess 134, 216–23, 235–7, heaven 40, 193, 221–2, 225, 245, 248–9,
239–41, 246–9, 254–5 252, 254, 258–9, 261, 263
God 30, 137, 138, 146n6, 155, 156, 224–5, Heavenly Jerusalem 55, 224, 260
258, 278 Hegel, Georg W.F. 155
Gothic 10, 38, 51–2, 61, 71, 74, 78, 157, Heidegger, Martin; Heideggerian 48, 218,
263 211
Government 2, 9, 11, 18, 26–31, 49, 58, Hell 258
77, 79, 86, 117, 127, 131, 138–9, 151, Hellenistic 224
153, 182, 185, 189–91, 194–5, 231, culture 215, 222
234, 237, 240 post-Hellenistic 216
Grand Place 157–8 Helvétius, Claude-Adrien 41
Great Depression 182, 187n15 Henry II 53
Greater London Council 77 Henry III 52
Great Recession 178 Henry of Avranches 259
Greece; Greek 5, 138, 153, 156, 186, 215, Heraclitus 219–20
217, 220–22, 232–5, 239–40 heritage 116–17, 119, 121, 123, 169, 208,
Athens 154, 223, 232, 240, 245, 248, 241
251, 272 Herodotus 255n5
Athenian Republic 153 Hesiod 218, 235–6, 243n27
Greene, Frank J.; Ricci Green Associates Theogony 218, 246–7
15 Hill, Francis 52
Gregory 264 HMS Clio 193, 199
Moralia in Job 264 HMS Plumper 192
HMS Sparrowhawk 193 Irene (peace) 218

Hoidal, Are 16 Irish famine 153
HOK 14
Home Office 77 Jacobs, Jane 186, 227
homeownership 181–2 Jebb, Joshua 28, 43
Homer, Homeric 239–40, 251–2 Jencks, Charles 17–18
honour (timē) 245–7, 250, 252–4 Jesuit 224
Hōrai 218, 254 Johannesburg 3, 116–17, 119, 124, 126
Horta, Victor 160 Johannesburg Development Agency
Maison du Peuple 160 (JDA) 117
Hoskins, Gareth 17 John, King of England 55
Houses of Parliament 85 judge(s); judgement 2–4, 24, 45, 55,
housing boom 177, 186 58–9, 75, 80–81, 87–9, 103, 105,
Howard, John 26–7, 39–41 108, 111n20, 112nn37 and 39, 121,
Huang, Liuhong 131, 132, 137–9, 144–5 133, 136–9, 144–5, 161, 168, 174–5,
Complete Book Concerning Happiness 215, 224, 225, 230n51, 233, 235,
and Benevolence 131 251, 278
Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) 189–98, 200 Last 224
Hugh of Avalon, Saint and Bishop of of Solomon 224
Lincoln 52, 259 jury 2, 24, 75, 80–81, 87, 105
Hugh of Saint-Victor 264 just; unjust 1, 2, 9, 65, 115, 167, 205,
Didascalicon 264 215–18, 221, 232, 238, 245, 247, 252,
Hugo, Victor 38 257, 262, 264, 275
Hull 63 Justice (Dikē) 156, 218, 220, 221, 225,
Human Rights xx, xxi, 65, 98, 103, 236–9, 241, 245–9, 253–4, 275–9
116–17, 121, 205 distributive 221, 224, 227, 247
Day 119 injustice(s), adikia 1, 4–5, 52, 56, 65,
European Charter of 81 109, 115–17, 119, 124, 189, 201,
Humber River 55 208–9, 218–19, 233, 249, 250,
Hunt, George 194, 196, 198–9 252–4
Hunt, Robert 193–4, 198 facilitation of 205
Huxley, Aldous 38 Rawlsian 116, 124
Hydrographic Survey 196 social 115, 117, 249
I.G. Farben 267 Kafka 210

ideology 72, 86, 156 Kalyx 11
Imperial Campus Martius 223 Kassite period 216
Imprisonment; incarceration 2, 10–11, Katseiris, Paul 78
14, 42, 51, 54, 63, 117, 177–88 Kentish Town 17
mass 177–9, 182, 184–6 Kerckhoven, Van 159
industrial revolution 45–6, 156 Keswick, Maggie 17, see also Maggie’s
integration 116, 123, 125–6, 181 Centre(s)
Ionic 74, 153 Koepel, see prison
Ireland 185–6, 208, 263 Kolkata 154
Dublin 16 Koolhaas, Rem 43
—— Dóchas Centre (aka Mountjoy Korean War 268
Women’s Prison), see prison kudurru, boundary stone 58, 216
Irish Prison Service 16 Kypselos, Chest of 218
index 287
labour 2, 28–31, 46, 153–7, 160, 162 Lincoln Gaol 57–64

Lacan, Jacques 167 Lucy Tower 57, 61
Lancaster 43, 58 Observatory Tower 57
land 27, 47, 116–17, 126, 156, 179, 180, Lincolnshire 51, 57, 63
182, 189–94, 196–8, 204, 206, 221, Boston 63
245, 247, 249, 251–3 Fossdyke Canal 63
Latin 138, 169, 220, 264 River Trent 63
Latin America 185 River Witham 63
Laugier, Marc-Antoine 46, 48 lines of confrontation 207–8
law(s) 1–5, 24–5, 39, 41–2, 52–3, 65, Liverpool 50n37, 151, 153–7, 161–3, see
72–80, 85–100, 105, 107, 117, 126, also prison
131, 138, 143, 151–63, 175n13, logos 220–22, 235, 238, 240
177, 179, 183, 189–90, 205–6, 210, Lord Provost 154
215–16, 218–23, 229n25, 232, 236, Buchanon; Dennistoun; Glassford;
257, 260, 263, 271 Ingram; Mitchell; Oswald; Speirs 154
good 218, 253, see also social order, Lorenzetti, Ambrogio 224–5
eunomia Lucas, Mary 56
lawyer(s) 1, 55, 73, 75, 88, 95, 98, 102–3, Lucretius 223, see also Epicurean
105, 138, 151, 157, 185–6, 201n4 Lynch, David 158, 183
Lazarus 258
Lebanon, Beirut 207 MacArthur, Field Marshal Douglas 268
Le Corbusier 45, 78, 226 McConville, Sean 12
Chandigarh 78 MacKinnon-McBride Commission 194
Modulor 226 Maggie’s Centre(s) 17–18
Plan Voisin 226 magistral 3, 85, 96–8
Poème de l’angle droit 226 Magistrate(s) 4, 26–31, 58, 64, 76, 78,
Ledoux, Claude-Nicolas 41 87–9, 91, 102–3, 131, 133–4, 137–46,
Lefebvre, Henri 12, 166–7 191, see also Court
The Construction of Space 166 Magna Carta 55, 65
legal text 216 Maison de Cygne 158
legion d’honneur 86 Mallarmé, Stéphane 38
Leopold II, 158–60, 163 Mammon 152
Lequeue, Jean-Jacques 86 Manchester 61, 71–5, 156, see also
Lethe 261 Peterloo riots
Leverhulme, Lord 159 Mandela, Nelson 4, 117
Leverville 160 Mao 131
Lévi-Strauss, Claude 165–7 Marcus Aurelius 223
Lincoln 51–67; see also Cathedral Marduk 216
Brayford Pool 51, 63 Marolles 158
Castle Hill 59 Marx, Karl 156–7, 160–63, 276
Guildhall 57 Communist Manifesto 157
Outer Bailey (upper-town) 52 measure; analogia; analogy; proportio 4,
Stonebow 57 160, 168, 174, 215–30
Lincoln Castle 52, 57–64 memory 96, 124, 127, 134, 159, 161, 168,
Chapel 64 170, 199, 208
Cobb Hall 57–8, 61–2 merchants 153–7, 160, 225
County (Crown) Court (Hall) 57, 59, Merryweather, John 3, 59–62
61–3 Mesopotamia(n) 4, 216, 219
Mētis (cunning intelligence) 247 Daniel 258

Metrical Life of Saint Hugh 259–60, 264 Eli 258
Michelangelo 224 Job 225, 264
Middle Ages 52, 54, 57, 59, 168 Noah 258
Miletus 219, 221 Samuel 258
Hippodamos of 221 Solomon 224
Millbank penitentiary, see prison Ong, Walter 168
Ministry of Justice 102–3 Owen, Robert 45
Mission of Assumption 193 Owenite 154
money 9, 31, 76, 86, 104, 109, 125, 127, Oxford 38, 138, 264, see also prison
151–2, 181–2
Moses 216 paifang 133, 134, 136–7
Mt. Sinai 216 palace 10, 40, 131, 146, 216–17, 219, 223,
Mulcahy, Linda 106 251, 259
museum(s) 39, 43, 117, 122, 124, 133, temple-palace 217
159, 207 Palace of Justice; Palais de Justice 3, 40,
Musset, Alfred de 38 85–100, 157–61
panopticon 2, 26–7, 40–50
Napoleon III 87 Park, Robert 177
National Health Service 85 Parmenides 219, 229n29
National Student Satisfaction Survey 95 Pashukanis, Evgeny 160
neo-classical 74, 78, 153 peace 5, 37, 56, 138, 206, 208, 211n3,
neoliberal(ism) 124, 178, 185 216, 218, 236, 241, see also
Neo-Platonism; Neo-Platonists 223, 225–6 Aristophanes
Nero’s Golden House 223 peacock 59, 62–3, 67n35
Netherlands 15, 43, 186 Pentonville, see prison
Arnhem; Breda; De Geerhorst; De Schie Peru 208
Penitentiary; Koepel, see prison Peter of Spain 168–9
Rotterdam 15, see also De Schie Peterloo riots 61, see also Manchester
Penitentiary Philadelphia 27–8
New Deal 181 phronesis 221
Newgate, see prison Pindar 254
New Lanark 45 Ping Xiang 131, 132
New Testament 217, 257 Piranesi, Giovanni Battista 2, 38–9, 41
John 225 planning 2–3, 23, 72, 74–7, 119, 125–7,
Last Judgement 224 133, 155, 165, 186, 221, 227, 231
Psalm 225 plantation(s) 63, 153–6
Nihill, Daniel, Governor and Chaplain of Plato; Platonic 4, 5, 37, 153, 220–23, 226,
Millbank Penitentiary 10 231–44, 254, 257, 262, see also Neo-
Nodier, Charles 38 Platonism; Neo-Platonic
nonhuman 106, 108 Academy 222–3, 232
Nozick, Robert; Nozickian 116, 124 Laws 221
Number 4: 117 Platonic-Pythagorean 222
Protagoras; Protagoras 5, 231–44
Odysseus 250–54 Republic 4, 37, 220–21, 232, 235, 254,
Oil 157 257, 262
Old Testament 37, 257 Symposium 226, 232
Adam and Eve 258 Timaeus 220
index 289
Plotinus 223 —— (Norway)

Plutarch 222–3, 230n42 Halden 15–16, 18, 20n40
Isis and Osiris 222 —— (Spain)
Poelaert, Joseph 160 Brians 15
Poelzig, Hans 267–8 —— Supermax 5, 18, 33
Poelzig-Bau 268 —— (UK)
polis 215, 217–21, 224, 231–2, 234–41 Albany 11
political 1, 4, 18, 37, 52, 55, 65, 66n21, Barlinnie Special Unit 18
72–3, 75–7, 85, 116–17, 123, 126, Birmingham 25
131, 137, 151, 154, 156–62, 163n23, Blantyre House 18
177–80, 182, 184, 197, 203–9, 219, Brixton 11
231–44, 249, 267–79 Coldbath Fields House of
socio- 56, 109, 232 Correction 29
politics 4, 5, 12, 75, 85, 116–17, 121, Everthorpe 25
123, 127, 178–80, 184, 223, 231–41, Gartree 11, 18
267–79 Glen Parva 18
Pompeiian 223 Grendon Underwood 18
Porcher, Capt. Edwin 193 Holloway 25
Portico of Pompey 172 Hull 25
Portuguese 156–7 Inverness 18
postmodern(ism) 121, 126, 174 Leeds 25
Power 4, 12–13, 17, 20n18, 25, 31, 32, Leicester 25
41–2, 47, 81, 85–9, 117, 119, 121, 125, Liverpool 25
127, 131, 138–9, 146n12, 151, 156, Long Lartin 11
158, 174–5, 179–80, 187n7, 217–18, Millbank 10, 27, 42
221, 225, 233, 236, 246, 259, 269–3 Newgate 41
Prague 227 Oxford 11
Pratt, John 25 Parkhurst C Wing 18
Praxis 216, 219, 221, 227 Pentonville 11, 28, 43
Praz, Mario 38 Peterborough 15
prison(s) 1–6, 9–21, 23–35, 37–50, 52–67, Shrewsbury 26, 29
72, 117, 122–3, 126, 134, 137, 139, Wandsworth 11, 25
144–6, 154, 162, 177–80, 184–8, 247, Wormwood Scrubs 11, 25
275 —— (USA)
convict 30–31 Auburn 27
correctional facilities 13–14 Eastern Penitentiary 27
local 25, 29–32 Sing Sing 25, 27
penal institutions 9, 11–17 Walnut Street Prison 27
penitentiary 10, 15, 27–8, 39 Prison Act(s) 29, 31
—— (Ireland) Proclus 222–3
Dóchas Centre (aka Mountjoy Prohibition 180
Women’s Prison) 16, 18 property 12, 92, 152–3, 156, 160, 178,
—— (Netherlands) 181, 185, 189–91, 194, 196–7,
Arnhem 43 200–202, 204, 211n3, 276
Breda 15 public space 72, 80, 115, 119, 126, 134
De Geerhorst 15 realm 4, 203, 207, 240
Koepel 43 punish, punishment, (forms of ) 1–6, 9,
De Schie 15 11–13, 19n3, 23–35, 39–48, 52, 56,
65, 134, 138–9, 156, 159, 162, 185–6, Scandinavia 15

205, 215–16, 235–6, 251–2 Norway; King of; Norwegian
Pythagoras; Pythagorean Triangle; Broadcasting (NRK) 15, 16
Platonic-Pythagorean 216, 220, 222 —— Halden, see prison
Scarry, Elaine 9
Quinlan, Stephen xxiii, 71 Scholasticism 260, 263–4
Section 4: 117, 122–3, 146n5
RAF (Rote Armee Fraktion) 268 separate system 12, 25, 27–31, 34n1, 64
Raleigh, Walter Sir 37 Serco 11
Rawls, John 4, 116, 215, 276; see also Shakespeare, William 37
Justice Shamash 216–17, 220
Rectitude 143, 226 Shaw, George Bernard 37
Reform Act 154 Siena 224, 227
Reformation 66n18, 224 Palazzo Pubblico 224
Remigius, Bishop 55 Sala dei Nove 224
Renaissance 166, 169, 174, 217, 223–5 Siéyès 88
Renovatio urbis 225 silent system 27–9
rent 156 Sing Sing, see prison
renters 181–5 Skenazy, Lenore 183
restrained acts 203–9 slavery 151–7, 162
retribution (timōria) 19n3, 77, 205, 252–3 abolition of 153–4, 157, 160
rhetoric 41, 72, 81, 102, 157, 161, 170–71, Smirke, Robert 61, 74
219–20, 223, 232–40 Soane, John 75
RIBA Stirling Prize 17 social order 5, 145, 218, 253–4, 277
Ricci Greene Associates, see Frank J. Social Security 85
Greene Socrates 232–4, 240–42, 262
Rimbaud, Arthur 267 Solon 218, 220
Roma communities 186 sophia 221
Roman Catholic 196–7, 224, 240 Sophocles 219
Rome; Roman 41, 51, 52, 63, 66n18, 157, South Africa 115–30
158, 222–3 Spain 15, 168–9, 186
Roriczer, Mathes 225 Barcelona 15, see Brians Penitentiary
Büchlein von der Fialen Gerechtigkeit 225 Spanish Civil War 162
Royal Courts of Justice 71, 74 spectators 73–88, 251–3
rubber 157, 159 Speer, Albert 158
Rufus, Master Adam 264 Sperry, Raphael 14
Russell, Whitworth 28–9 Sproat, Gilbert 193
Rwanda 203–4, 211n3 Stagnum Aggrippae 223
Stanley, Morton 159
Saint Augustine 261 Stark, William 152–3
De Civitate Dei 261 Steele, Johnny 18
St George’s 154, 156, 162n9 Stoics 223
St George’s Hall 154–62 Cicero 170, 223
Saint Hugh 259, 262–4 Marcus Aurelius 223
St Petersburg 42 Stock Exchange 151, 156
San Lorenzo 171–3 Strabo 223
Sto. Spirito 173 suburbanization 179
Satan 258 suffrage, universal 77, 154, 159, 161
index 291
sugar 151–4 —— London 41–3, 45, 77, 102, 109,

Superstudio 46, 47 138, 156, see also prison
sustainability 115–16, 127, 227 Albion Grains 45
Switzerland; Zurich 209 Criminal Justice Board 109
symbolism 3, 10, 55, 62, 72, 115–17, 119, Kentish Town 17
121, 123–4, 145, 223, 225–6 Scotland 45, 153, 185
Symbolist 226 —— Glasgow 151–3, 156, 160–61;
Glaswegian 154
Tafuri, Manfredo 38 Barlinnie, see prison
Taylor, Brian 59 Buchanan Street 154, see also
technē 221, 223, 231–43 Lord Provost
Telford, Thomas 27 Saltmarket 152
temple 85–6, 131–4, 138, 144–5, 146n6, United States 5, 14, 18, 25, 27, 154, 177–86
152, 216–17, 219, 223, 225 California 17, 179, 184, 187n8
of Athena 232 —— Los Angeles 178
Thames 55 Chicago 178
Thatcher, Margaret 270 New York 27, 186, 273
Themis 218, 254 Philadelphia 27, 28
Themistius 259 Virginia 154
Tiamat 216 Ur 217
Tiberius 223 urban 4–5, 12–13, 20n18, 41, 52, 65, 86,
The Times 28 125–6, 151, 154, 165–7, 175, 177–83,
tobacco 151–4, 156 186, 215–6, 224–7, 231, 264, 272
Tobe, Renée 182, 183 praxis 216
Townshend, Lord 56 regeneration 115–17, 124
transportation 24, 26–7, 30 renewal 225
public 183, 185 US Army 267
treaty(ies) 189–202, 203–4, 206, 211n3, 249
Trinity 260, 262, 263 values 2, 12, 115, 119, 124–7, 155, 181,
Truman, Harry 268 208, 233, 235, 239, 276
Tyburn 23 Verdi, Giuseppe 158
Verri, Alessandro 39
UK Met Office 227 Verri, Pietro 39
United Kingdom 81, 101–2, 104–5 Vesely, Dalibor 224
England 24–7, 29, 32, 40, 64, 71, 85, 258 Victoria Law Courts 74, see also
—— Bath 17 Birmingham
—— Birmingham 74, 154, see also video 50n34, 101–13
prison conferencing 102, 105–7, 109
—— Bristol 156 links 101, 104, 106
—— Canterbury 55, 258 –mediated communications 105–6
—— Cambridge 138, 263 Vidler, Anthony 39, 46
—— Manchester 61, 71–2, 74–5, 156 Vienna 218
—— Nottingham, University of 92–3 Kunsthistorisches Museum 218
—— Liverpool 50n34, 151, 153–7, 161, virtual 3, 72, 101–13
see also prison definition of 101, 104
Albert Docks 157 Virtual Court pilot 101–2, 106, 109
Lime Street station 154 Vitruvius 39, 46, 48, 170, 215, 222–3, 225
Scousers 154 Tragic and Comic scenae 225
wages 156, 180 Witham Navigation Company 63

Wagner, Richard 158 WochenKlausur 209
Walnut Street, see prison Wollheim, Norbert 267; Richard
Walpole, Horace 38 Wollheim 267
War of Independence 24 Woods, Tiger 183
Waterhouse, Alfred 74–5 working class 154, 158–9
Waugh, Evelyn 37 World War Two 182, 267, 273
Wayne, Peter 11
Welbourne, John 258
yamen 4, 131–47
West Indian Association 153
yin yang 122, 144
Westminster 73, 75
Young, Iris 116–17, 123
Wilde, Oscar 2–3, 10, 23, 37
Yourcenar, Marguerite 38
The Ballad of Reading Gaol 23, 37
YWCA 208
William I 258
William the Conqueror 55
Williams, William 42 Zeus 245–57
Willson, E.J. 61 ziggurat 217

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Architecture and Justice

Judicial Meanings in the Public Realm

The discipline of Architecture is undergoing subtle transformation as design

Other titles in this series

A Life in Education and Architecture

The Dissolution of Place

Nationalism and Architecture

Forthcoming titles in this series

Architecture as Civil Commitment:

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

ISBN 9781409431732 (hbk)

Printed and bound in Great Britain by the

List of Figures and Tables  vii

Part 1 Prisons and Prison Cells

1 The Aesthetics and Anaesthetics of Prison Architecture  9

2 Architecture and Contested Space in the Development of

3 A Simple Idea in Architecture: On the Principles of

4 The Watchman in the Vineyard: Historical Traces of Judicial

part 2 Courthouses and Courtrooms

5 Back to the Future? The Challenge of the Past for Courthouses

6 Lecture Theatre: Echoes of the Palais de Justice in Legal Education  85

7 Virtual Courts and Putting ‘Summary’ back into ‘Summary Justice’:

8 Constitution Hill: Just Space or Space of Justice?  115

9 The Architecture and Operation of the Imperial Chinese Yamen  131

Part 3 Civic and Societal Order

11 The Spatial Registers of Justice  165

12 Gimme Shelter: Mass Incarceration and the Criminology

13 Drawing Conclusions: Fort Rupert, British Columbia in 1863  189

14 Repurposing With A Vengeance: A Dance of Restrained Acts

Part 4 Philosophical Questions of Propriety

15 Architecture, Justice, Conflict, Measure  215

16 Politikē Aretē: Or the Origins of Civic Justice  231

17 Ensemble Performances: Architects and Justice in Athenian Drama  245

18 The Architecture of Lincoln Cathedral and the Institution of Justice  257

19 Politics and Architecture  267

3.2 Jeremy Bentham, ‘Building and Furniture for an Industry-House

4.5 Bronze model of Lincoln Castle, as it appears today, showing Lucy

4.7 View of the Observatory Tower from the Castle walls

5.1 Manchester Civil Justice Centre (photo by author) 71

5.2 The layout of the courts at Westminster after the Whaddon

5.4 The prescribed layout of the modern courtroom in a Crown Court

6.1 Salle de Audience 1880 87

6.3 The French Lecture Theatre and ‘La Chaise’ 90

6.4 A French Law Lecturer in his Formal Robes 91

6.5 The French and the English Law Lecturer 91

6.7 The French Insolvency Law Tutorial or ‘TD’ 93

6.8 The English Insolvency Law Tutorial, in the Tutor’s Office 94

8.2 Graph indicating declining visitor numbers to Constitution Hill

8.5 View of the human rights inscribed on the entrance wall

9.2 Left: original Chinese version of Neixiang Yamen as redrawn by

9.3 Keyed plan of the Neixiang Yamen 133

9.4 View outside the main gate (photo by author) 134

9.6 View outside the second gate (photo by author) 135

9.12 View of the small court leading through to the magistrate’s

9.13 View of the courtyard of the magistrate’s house leading to the

10.1 View of the County Court, Glasgow (photo by author) 152

10.2 View of St George’s Hall, Liverpool (photo by author) 155

List of Figures and Tables vii

1 The Aesthetics and Anaesthetics of Prison Architecture 9

6 Lecture Theatre: Echoes of the Palais de Justice in Legal Education 85

8 Constitution Hill: Just Space or Space of Justice? 115

9 The Architecture and Operation of the Imperial Chinese Yamen 131

11 The Spatial Registers of Justice 165

13 Drawing Conclusions: Fort Rupert, British Columbia in 1863 189

15 Architecture, Justice, Conflict, Measure 215

16 Politikē Aretē: Or the Origins of Civic Justice 231

17 Ensemble Performances: Architects and Justice in Athenian Drama 245

18 The Architecture of Lincoln Cathedral and the Institution of Justice 257

19 Politics and Architecture 267

5.1 Manchester Civil Justice Centre (photo by author) 71

6.1 Salle de Audience 1880 87

6.3 The French Lecture Theatre and ‘La Chaise’ 90

6.4 A French Law Lecturer in his Formal Robes 91

6.5 The French and the English Law Lecturer 91

6.7 The French Insolvency Law Tutorial or ‘TD’ 93

6.8 The English Insolvency Law Tutorial, in the Tutor’s Office 94

9.3 Keyed plan of the Neixiang Yamen 133

9.4 View outside the main gate (photo by author) 134

9.6 View outside the second gate (photo by author) 135

10.1 View of the County Court, Glasgow (photo by author) 152

10.2 View of St George’s Hall, Liverpool (photo by author) 155

10.3 View of Palais de Justice, Brussels (photo by author) 158

10.4 Marx in Brussels (photo by author) 161

11.5 Brunelleschi’s ‘compositio’ 173

13.8 Numayms of Fort Rupert, 1866, detail (photomontage by author) 200

16.2 Table of Plato’s Protagoras. Different translations of Aidos and Dikē237