Abstract
AbstractSituating itself in current debates over the international legal archive, this article delves into the material and conceptual implications of architecture for international law. To do so I trace the architectural developments of international law’s organizational and administrative spaces during the early to mid twentieth century. These architectural endeavours unfolded in three main stages: the years 1922–1926, during which the International Labour Organization (ILO) building, the first building exclusively designed for an international organization was constructed; the years 1927–1937 which saw the great polemic between modernist and classical architects over the building of the Palace of Nations; and the years 1947–1952, with the triumph of modernism, represented by the UN Headquarters in New York. These events provide an illuminating allegorical insight into the physical manifestation, modes of self-expression, and transformation of international law during this era, particularly the relationship between international law and the function and role of international organizations.
Highlights
Have come to occupy a dynamic space at the intersection of international law and international politics, as both facilitators of international law and promoters of international polity,10 their design and development have been highly influential in framing international law’s imaginaries. These architectural endeavours unfolded in three main stages: the years 1922–1926, during which the International Labour Organization (ILO) building, the first building exclusively designed for an international organization was constructed; the years 1927–1937 which gave rise to the great debate between modernist and classical architects over the building of the Palace of Nations; and the years 1947–1952, with the triumph of modernism, represented by the UN Headquarters in New York
Later the idealistic desire for international unity expressed on a political level in the founding of the United Nations was at the same time manifest in the aesthetic discourse of the ‘boundary-less’ modernist expression, dubbed the International Style, which was represented by Niemeyer and Le Corbusier’s modernist vision for the UN Headquarters in New York
If law is ‘constructive of social realities rather than merely reflective of them’, as Clifford Geertz once asserted, than law’s relationship to the haptic and aesthetic organization of space is as enmeshed.149. In this account I have sought to suggest that the architectural design of the structures of international law reveals something precise about how ideas of international legal order and authority are reproduced and expressed through time, beyond the monolithic representations of international institutions produced by their mandates and by the outside perspectives that focus only on the content of their documents and public statements
Summary
Architecture synthesizes both artefact and place-making and for this reason it provides a unique historical record. While architecture is only one aspect of the way in which power operates spatially, it is uniquely reflective of particular attitudes, cultural practices and ideologies, and of strategies for staging and encoding that power onto physical space. by virtue of its patronage and resource requirements, it provides a commentary on certain social, political, and cultural struggles within a society. If it was to be separated from the politics of the nation what sort of visual language could be said to represent a borderless free space of the ‘international’?39 The tension between those who saw international law as a ‘law of nations’ embodied in the early modern approach exemplified by the writings of Grotius, and those who sought a new rhetoric that surpassed the nation was to reflect what Martti Koskenniemi calls the ‘pervasive opposition between more or less “idealistic” and “realistic” approaches that still structure professional imagination in the field’.40. A national (Dutch) aesthetic, in a visibly grand and historicist style, reflecting the preferences of a selective elite composed of mainly Western diplomats and academics (much like the supposedly universal ideals the Palace was said to embody).45 This can be seen in the visualizations of the story of universal justice in the Palace’s decorations and gifts, which were ‘littered with symbols of Christian and humanist virtue’.46. Rather than elevating one single nation style, the structure blended North and South American expression by combining contemporary Beaux-Arts expression with elements alluding to the Spanish colonial architecture of the Latin America member states, such as the terracotta roof, ornamental bronze work, Aztec and Mayan artwork, and tiled central courtyard that featured flora from across the Americas. The harmonious combination of these various national design elements, and its more contemporary and unique aesthetic, could not be more estranged from the dated visual expression of the Peace Palace
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