1. Introduction
In the architectural design by Dominique Perrault of the fourth (2008) and fifth (2019) renovation and extension of the buildings housing the Courts of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in Luxembourg, the lead colour is gold. This colour comes to expression in, for example, the main courtroom where the judges sit beneath a golden-draped ceiling before gold-panelled walls on chairs upholstered in gold (Figure 1); and in the exterior of three high-rise towers, top-to-bottom coloured gold (Figure 2), as well as in many of the individual features of the interior that have been reported to be ‘some of the most extraordinary yet created for the EU’,Footnote 1 including a top-floor restaurant described by one former judge as ‘pure gold’.Footnote 2 This article poses the question: why gold? Or, more precisely, what is the architectural story told in gold? When asked, ‘why gold?’, the architect Dominique Perrault commented:
If the law were a colour [it would be gold] (…) Why gold? ‘Because this is not a criminal court. It’s not a place concerned with prisons and punishments. It’s [to] do with relations between European countries, with constitutional concerns. And anyway, I thought the sky over Luxembourg is often so sad that it would be nice, somehow, to catch the sun and bring it here.Footnote 3
CJEU main courtroom (Photo: Renske Vos).
Figure 1. Long description
A photograph showing the overwhelming presence of the colour gold in the CJEU main courtroom. The photograph shows the empty courtroom with gold-coloured wall panelling, drapes, upholstery, and the grand ‘baldachin’ hanging above the courtroom.
Detail of CJEU exterior (Photo: Renske Vos).
Figure 2. Long description
A photograph of the exterior of the CJEU showing three high-rise towers against a grey Luxembourg skye. The three towers are top-to-bottom executed in a completely gold-coloured material.
The point about the Luxembourg sky is well taken, but might there not be more? What is it about the relations between European countries and constitutional concerns that calls for the CJEU to be gilded? May the abundance of gold also be taken as a statement of power, of celebration, of wealth, of divinity? Artist and photographer Lisa Barnard connects seemingly unrelated stories about gold across time and space.Footnote 4 Her work shows gold as an ancient and mythical symbol of power, beauty, purity and wealth. She also traces how, throughout history, gold has marked the relentless drive of both individuals and states to accumulate it at almost any expense while, at the same time, the gold price has been taken as a measure of economic stability. Although Sweden, Finland and Bulgaria produce some gold, very few of the world’s gold resources are found within Europe.Footnote 5 Barnard points out how the extraction of gold has driven exploitation, migration and environmental damage, as well as innovation. Gold is used in our computers and mobile phones, and even in nanoparticles in COVID-19 tests. That gold is first mined in places such as Peru, South Africa, Ghana and Mali,Footnote 6 and later ‘harvested’ from electronic waste by modern ‘miners’ in China. All over the world, including in Europe, gold has a prominent role in practices of worship and in displays of (royal) power.Footnote 7 Religious icons and altarpieces can be adorned with gold, and gold objects such as crowns or thrones signal the status of monarchs – and, moreover, convey an elevated or even divine status. Gold is rare, and therefore valuable; it also does not rust, which means it keeps its value. This, in turn, informs its symbolic value signalling purity and eternity.Footnote 8
I am interested in the myriad social imaginaries and inherent contradictions evoked by gold, and that the CJEU architecture plays at or creates space for. To approach these, I mobilise research analysing architecture as a ‘story’ told through material form.Footnote 9 This ‘story’ may seek to signal certain values, ideals or a particular kind of relationship with the host city on the part of the institution that is housed in the building, and that may have commissioned itFootnote 10 – as is the case for the CJEU. As such, architecture can be a very literal act of image-building,Footnote 11 even if the message sought to be conveyed by an institution cannot always be known and may be received in varying and conflicting ways.
Below, I first situate this approach amidst a longer tradition of literature on the relationship between architecture and courtrooms and an emerging literature on EU legal geography. I build on work in international law, architecture and materiality, to which I add the study of colour. The piece then ‘visits’ the Court in Luxembourg to pay close attention to the use of colour in its architecture. I will effect this visit through a thicker description of the architecture to make it visible to a reader in written form. I do this in keeping with a tradition of aesthetics research that maintains that some things need to be shown to be said.Footnote 12 Accordingly, I invite the reader to shamelessly stare at the interiors.
In the architectural design of the CJEU, the colour gold shines bright against a backdrop of the colour black. In describing the use of these two colours in turn, the piece simultaneously zooms in on two design narratives put forward in relation to these colours. The first is a reference to the history of the European Community of Coal and Steel. The second revolves around the theatre of the classical Greek drama. These narratives are communicated by the CJEU itself – for example, on the website of the Curia.Footnote 13 I take this to signal that, beyond the intention of the architects, these design narratives are also part of the self-presentation of the Court. Even if the CJEU did not necessarily expressly commission a building in gold at the outset, it did embrace the design and agree to go ahead with it. In this light, it is good to recall that Dominique Perrault has also authored other designs in his signature colours black (Berlin’s Velodrome) and gold (Paris’s National Library; a new entrance gate to Versailles). Equally, it is important to stress that large parts of the two design narratives pre-date the work by Perrault, whereas other parts may have been found retrospectively to narrate the meaning of the building in its redesign. I then take the two design stories as told by, and therefore reflective of, the CJEU. I show and analyse these two narratives each in their own way as stories of origin and being that ultimately position the Court at the centre of the EU project.
In detailing the two design narratives in black and gold, I draw heavily on my own observations during five visits to the CJEU and on conversations with staff at the Directorate for Protocol and Visits and at the Directorate for Buildings and Security, as well as with former staff at the Court, and on materials and special publications prepared by the court’s Directorate for Communication.
During one of these visits to the Court, a guide commented that Perrault had allegedly opted for gold as it supposedly has ‘no meaning’ attached to it – unlike, for example, the colour green, which comes with connotations of sustainability, or blue, which, although associated with the EU, Perrault is reported to dislike. Initially, I was puzzled by the comment. In my analysis below, I spin out precisely some of the web of connotations and meanings imbricated in perceptions of gold. In the conclusion of this piece, I reflect on the manifold views potentially held on the part of observers. I show how, whether taken as solemn and serene, or incredibly ‘bling’, the colour gold is far from absent of meaning. Upon reflection, however – and as I will ultimately argue – the attunements to the CJEU mediated through the colour gold can be so wide-ranging that the myriad imagery of gold works precisely to amplify whichever view was already pre-held by an observer. This, too, holds for the CJEU itself: the design stories and their underlying imaginaries now expressed in black and gold were present before, but the colour gold further brings them out and advances them.
2. Law, architecture and colour
The relationship between architecture and courtrooms has long been the subject of study in socio-legal studies.Footnote 14 Here, research has paid attention to visualisations of justice and the physical architecture of courtrooms, or the space of the trial, as expressions of ‘our relationship with ideals of justice’.Footnote 15 In their seminal work, Linda Mulcahy, Judith Resnik, Dennis Curtis and Allison Tait firmly focus attention on the importance of space and place in ‘creating and reinforcing courtroom identities’,Footnote 16 and on how those who authorise new courthouse buildings signal the ‘centrality of adjudication to their identities’ through the ‘monumentality’ of court construction for which ‘world-renowned architects’ are dispatched.Footnote 17 Their work has been instrumental in developing a critical perspective on the architecture of justice and power, and on the performance and staging of the legitimacy of the trial. Their research has sparked related studies centring on specific court buildings and their individual complexities.Footnote 18
More recently, research in both international law and architecture studies has signalled how international law’s architecture makes law physical and visible.Footnote 19 The buildings housing the headquarters of international organisations and international courts or tribunals are both of vital importance to the day-to-day functioning of institutions and, in some cases, have become icons in themselves.Footnote 20 As argued by Miriam Bak McKenna, the spatial dynamics of institutional architecture that are resorted to ‘elicit faith in international law’s ideals and principles, and project international legal discourse to the outside’.Footnote 21 Specific architectural expressions have been looked at for their manifestation of institutional ideals, functions and values, but they are also considered indicative of deeper and darker undercurrents: exclusions, hierarchies and colonial pasts.Footnote 22
Discussions of architecture and law have been greatly aided by critical scholarship on legal materiality. On the one hand, legal materiality looks for how ‘law comes to matter’, or how law comes to materialise meaning in the world.Footnote 23 On the other hand, materiality has looked for the physical objects and spaces that make law visible and tangible to its audiences and constituencies.Footnote 24 The two moves provide different starting points for an inquiry that is in constant oscillation. Sandra Dudley accordingly describes materiality as ‘the form and the materials of which an object consists, together with the techniques by which it may have been made or formed, any additions or presentational conventions … and all and any traces of the passage of time and, especially, physical human interaction’.Footnote 25 This interaction implies too an encounter and engagement, in which materiality combines tangibility and imaginaries. Following these understandings, buildings – as very large objects – are not only a critical part of the infrastructure through which institutions operate; they are also one way whereby international legal institutions literally materialise in more and less tangible ways that can be apprehended through our senses.
Strikingly, the key interest that is furthered in discussions on legal materiality is not unlike a more recent call to bring a spatial inquiry to the study of EU law voiced by Floris de Witte.Footnote 26 This piece takes up the invitation to seek to understand with specific regard for the EU ‘how law constructs space, and, conversely, how space affects law’.Footnote 27 To me, interested in this reverse question of how space affects law, there does not seem to be a better place to find how ‘existing tangible or intangible spaces are understood to impact on the way in which law is formed, articulated, or applied’Footnote 28 than the physical space of the CJEU.
After all, on the inauguration of the latest extension of the Court in September 2019, CJEU President Koen Lenaerts evoked ‘through architecture, Europe as a construction, as a space and as a perspective’.Footnote 29 Moreover, he drew attention to the tandem efforts of ‘the builders of Europe and the builders in Europe’,Footnote 30 in reference to the project of building the EU’s legal architecture in both jurisprudential and concrete form. In this way, Lenaerts highlighted the importance of the CJEU’s physical architecture for its work:
Building Europe as an area of law, freedom and citizenship on a solid foundation of rules cannot succeed without adequate architecture. [This is] what Dominique Perrault would call ‘the process’ of edifying buildings susceptible to helping those who work on the success of this historical development consisting of bringing the European people together within a Union founded on law.Footnote 31
In this spirit, I advance an engagement with the architecture of the CJEU, which I anchor through one of the main features of its design: gold. In line with the sensibility proposed by EU legal geography, I mobilise this inquiry into architecture and gold as one way into the detail, stories and lives that make up the CJEU.Footnote 32 I thus use EU legal geography here as an umbrella term to include the study of architecture and design, materiality and finally colour, to which I now turn.
Research has drawn attention to how colour-use shapes and participates in social imaginaries.Footnote 33 Rune Andersen, Juha Vuori and Xavier Guillaume point out how ‘even though colours are a natural phenomenon, their meanings are societal products, and part of our constructed visibilities’.Footnote 34 Gold has the interesting property that it is both a material and a colour. In case of the architecture of the CJEU, it is (just to be clear) mostly – indeed, almost entirely – a colour, albeit a colour evocative of a material. As a natural phenomenon, one could maintain that a pure gold light unites all colours in it, and that it can therefore be considered to be ‘neutral’. However, as a societal product, manifold meanings are attributed to gold, and these meanings can subsequently be studied. Yet analytical consideration of colour in research on institutional architecture in law has thus far been almost entirely absent.Footnote 35 Andersen, Vuori and Guillaume have laid out approaches for how to study the constructed meanings imbricated in colour-use.Footnote 36 Notably, they propose a method of chromatology: the study of colour in relation to people through multimodal social semiotics.Footnote 37 In this article, however, I approach the socially produced meanings and possible individual attunements to gold, through architecture and the visual arts. The approach I take is to ‘follow’Footnote 38 (some of) the individual strings of association tied up with gold, notably those articulated by the CJEU itself, to untangle the myriad social imaginaries and inherent contradictions evoked by gold evokes.
Lisa Bernard, the artist and photographer cited in the introduction to this article, admits that the stories about gold she traces ‘teeter on the periphery of being too vast to comprehend’.Footnote 39 Her work successfully interweaves these broad associations into a loose web. She follows different threads across four continents: from the golden fleece, to the Incan empire, to the American goldrush, into space travel and beyond. In this way, she shows how gold is both ruthlessly pursued and revered as an ancient and mythical symbol. The more and less convincing linkages between the historical occurrences of gold that Barnard maps out signal some of the myriad responses that the golden CJEU architecture may equally evoke with a broader audience. Such responses may range from admiration for or ambivalence over this splendid glory to unease over this display of opulence, via concerns over the extraction of gold from the mines of former European colonies, conflict zones or toxic electronic waste. Thoughts may range in other directions still. I return to some of these broad-ranging considerations in the conclusion, but first I zoom-in on the two design stories the CJEU itself tells through the use of colour.
3. Black – architecture and the history of the CJEU
The CJEU building was not always gold, nor was it always located on the Kirchberg. Yet from its move to the Kirchberg in the 1970s, its two design narratives now presented in black and gold became apparent: a reference to the history of the European Community of Coal and Steel central to this section; and an allusion to the theatre of the classical Greek drama, central to the next. These two design narratives thus pre-date the engagement of Dominique Perrault with the architecture of the CJEU, and outlast the involvement of previous architects of the Court. This helps to attribute the design narratives to the CJEU itself, as it indeed communicates these through its official channels.Footnote 40 Rather than seeing these narratives as entirely separate from the CJEU’s self-perception, or as only an initiative on the part of an architect, the design amplifies these stories.
History is of interest as a line of inquiry to the study of architecture in at least two ways, which are both relevant to the CJEU. First, scholars have pointed out how historical developments become embodied in architecture.Footnote 41 In this tradition, Sven Sterken shows how, by tracing NATO’s different seats of power, it is possible to trace NATO’s shifting visions for itself and to discern how the successive headquarters each become ‘ever-more important both in the quantitative (size, scale) and qualitative (role, importance) sense’.Footnote 42 As Fredric Jameson argues, buildings are time-capsules of sorts, which crystallise the thinking at the time into material form, where it subsequently remains if only because of the difficulty of radically altering a building once it has been built.Footnote 43
Second, reference to a particular historic period or a specific history – for example, through the mobilisation of a particular historic style – can be used to symbolise a particular allegiance to that history. In this vein, Miram Bak McKenna denotes UNESCO’s commitment to modernism to symbolise a ‘universalised ideal of culture and identity’ in the design of its Paris headquarters, which turned out to be also ‘limited and Eurocentric’.Footnote 44 Equally, Daniel Quiroga-Villamarín problematises how Africa Hall in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia – intended as ‘the diplomatic center of a new Africa’ by its initiator Haile Selassie, then emperor of Ethiopia, and designed as ‘a symbol of African independence’ – was nonetheless executed in the eurocentric style of modernisation so influential at the time (1959–61).Footnote 45
The historic trajectory of the CJEU as an organisation is clearly embodied in the architecture of the court buildings. From the inception of the CJEU, the development of the architecture housing it has been driven by a constant and growing need for space, following both an increasing caseload and the accession of new Member States to the Union, along with new judges and their cabinets and translators. I discuss the different stages of development and expansion of the CJEU to show how they are still present in its architectural manifestation today, and to show how it is possible to ‘read’ the Court’s own history in the progression of the CJEU’s architecture, aside from the nod to coal and steel.
The history of the CJEU’s residences is laid out in a publication edited by Didier Devillez and published by the Court itself. The first seven judges and two advocates general had their offices in the 18th-century Villa Vauban in the city centre of Luxembourg (1952–59), a building that currently houses an art museum. They soon had to rent additional office space for the administrative staff and translators, and moved to a building on the Côte d’Eich (1959–72).Footnote 46 The Kirchberg at the time was an open, natural place just outside the Luxembourg city centre. It would soon, in 1973, become the location of the new Palais de Justice designed by the Belgian architects Jamagne and Van der Elst and the Luxembourgish architect Conzemius.Footnote 47 The Court was to benefit from its location on the Kirchberg as being both attached and detached to Luxembourg city and the rest of the world.
Soon, however, with the addition of new Member States in the 1980s, the new building on the Kirchberg became too small. A new team of architects was contracted, consisting of the Luxembourgish architects Fritsch, Herr and Huybrecht, and the Italian architect Paczowski. They designed a series of flat buildings down the natural hill slopes, so as not to hide the beauty of the Palais. The new buildings were executed in a pink granite sourced in Luxembourg. They were meant to complement the colour of the Palais, to enable it to enter into a dialogue of sorts with it. The project involved three successive extensions: the Erasmus building (1988), the Thomas More building (1993) and, finally, building C (1994) (renamed Themis in 2022), as well as the addition of a canopy to the garden.Footnote 48 The succession of buildings accumulated on the Kirchberg still today embodies the constant expansion of both the Union and the Court over time.
The narrative of coal and steel entered the design-story with the original Palais de Justice inaugurated in 1973. The three architects leading the design had envisioned a steel colossus surrounded by gardens, where 50 judges could work in calm and serenity. This steel was to tell a dual story of both the European and the local history. The steel was meant to generally call to mind the coal and steel on which the European Community is built. Simultaneously, the steel construction was to ‘embed’ the building in its city of residence by signalling the origins of the Luxembourg mining industry.Footnote 49 To strengthen this latter message, the material sourced for the construction was a special type of corox steel made in Luxembourg.Footnote 50
When, in the 2000s, ten more Member States joined the Union, the awareness sunk in of the necessity of yet another extension, but also of the prerequisite of an overarching architectural vision that would contextualise the buildings added to the original Palais as a whole. The design narrative of coal and steel persisted in that vision. This extension and renovation of the Court was realised by Dominique Perrault, together with the architects of the Court’s earlier extensions, Paczowski and Fritsch, and 3M architects.Footnote 51 Perrault, in addition, also kept a commitment to the ‘embeddedness within the city’ of the Court, as part of the ambition for the project was to realise both an architectural and urban restructuring, which beyond the Court itself would encompass the entire district, thus warranting the name ‘Grande Extension’.Footnote 52 To embed an institutional building in its city of residence is to anchor it there by integrating it into the city’s physical and imaginary landscapes. This is a way of saying ‘we belong here, we will stay’.
By the time this extension and re-design began, the steel used in the original Palais had come to pose a problem. The corox steel, chosen for its connection to the local mines as well as for its additional favourable quality of looking naturally rusted, and so aging gracefully, had been discovered to contain asbestos. The dilemma thus arose of whether to demolish the Palais and rebuild it, or whether to preserve as much as possible and to replace and add non-toxic material.Footnote 53 The dilemma was resolved in favour largely of the latter option. The steel of the ‘ancien’ Palais was taken down and cleaned, and the new structure was painted to look like the old structure as the nouveau Palais was rebuilt. Interestingly, according to Perrault, steel was retained as construction material precisely for its symbolic value as a reference to the European coal and steel community.Footnote 54
In the redesign, the reference to coal and steel transformed in its expression. In the original design, the narrative operated through the materials of glass and steel.Footnote 55 Some of this expression is still adhered to. Yet, in addition, in the new design the reference to coal and steel works rather through the combination of black and gold: like the glass that produces a shine, the gold is reminiscent of the spark that is freed when steel is worked. The colour black thus works to contextualise the colour gold. Only together do black and gold work as reference to coal and steel, symbolising the history of the Union. Both expressions – of glass and steel, and black and gold – are in use in the new official entrance hall. This official entrance, used for ceremonial occasions only, enters onto a large, square, open space at ground level. The space is a box structure supported by an open beam construction of large steel beams in a black coating. The construction reaches all the way up to the sixth floor and is closed to the outside by glass panels, so views from inside can extend well beyond the building.
As a visitor enters through the official entrance, their gaze is drawn to the inside; it moves past a row of flags of EU Member States on the right to rest underneath a striking chandelier – or lantern – designed by Dominque Perrault especially for this space and combining the colours black and gold (Figure 3).Footnote 56 From an architectural perspective, the low-hanging lantern reintroduces an important element of human scale to the large entrance. The industrial design of this lantern is again a tribute to the lights in the mine and to the sacrifices made in the mines in Luxembourg for two centuries in the past. Its design consists of the shape of an infinity loop – a never-ending light – executed in a material that mimics the black steel construction that surrounds it. From the loop hang 263 lamps in Venetian Murano glass vessels. The lantern contains some of the only actual gold in the building: gold dust inside the glass vessels. The light produced by the lantern is subdued, contributing to perhaps a dim or ‘solemn’ atmosphere in the entrance hall, as the space is meant to ‘instigate the distance and respect necessary for the exercise of justice’.Footnote 57
Official entrance hall with steel and Murano glass lantern (Photo: Renske Vos).
Figure 3. Long description
A photograph depicting the lantern in the official entrance hall. The lantern has the shape of an infinity loop and mimics the black-coloured steel construction of the entrance hall that surrounds it. From the lantern hang 263 illuminated Moreno glass gold-dusted vessels. This is some of the only actual gold that can be found in the building.
A visitor to the space might reflect on how, although coal is clearly black, steel is not typically gold-coloured, and how glass does not fit so naturally in the coal–steel nexus. They may therefore wonder whether the metaphor holds. Indeed, the effect is more intuitive and cannot easily be pinned down, which is how affect in architecture often works. Visitors are free to miss or pick up on this affect. To me, the question of interest here is why the Court would choose the narrative of coal and steel to be presented in its architecture in the first place. What history is told here and to what end? Coal and steel are not just part of the history of the European Union; they are the myth of origin on which the Union is founded. Jennifer Beard and Sundhya Pahuja note how a story of origin provides a foundation for existence and meaning.Footnote 58 They argue, moreover, how ‘law’s origin is continually being re-sited/cited as the source of authority’.Footnote 59 The invocation of coal and steel by the CJEU places the Court in relation to these foundations or even shows it to be part of them. The design narrative of coal and steel in the CJEU architecture can then be read to communicate something along the lines of: we know our history; we were here from the start; we are the keeper of the original – and therefore the true – European Community and its norms and values; we have the authority to know what they mean. Returning to Mulcahy’s concern with architecture as an expression of justice and power, this design narrative can then be read as a constitutional and legitimising move with the CJEU as central authority to pronounce on these. In the next section, I will further pick up on this theme.
4. Gold – architecture as dramatic expression of law
In turning to the second design narrative, recalling the theatre of adjudication in antiquity staged in a temple of justice, themes of origin, the place of the Court and its centrality to the EU (legal) order remain prominent. Reference to the classical Greek temple, like the reference to coal and steel, was already part of the original 1973 design of the ancien Palais. The vision at the beginning for what is now the ‘old palais’ was to erect a ‘Temple of Themis’ in reference to the Ancient Greek goddess of justice and order, worshipped as an oracle for her wisdom and good counsel, and seen as allegory for immanent justice and judicial authority.Footnote 60 With the renovation by Dominique Perrault, principally of 2008, further references to the classical Greek theatre, and notably the drama, were added to the design. Thus the elements of temple and theatre were conflated. In this section, I engage with this second design narrative. To this end, I mobilise literature on the theatricality of courts and trials, and particularly on the relationship between law and the classical Greek tragedy, in response to the current architecture of the main and smaller courtrooms, and the role of gold as once again amplifying the narrative.
The redesign of the CJEU by Dominique Perrault is dramatic. The atmosphere of density and gravitas of the official entrance hall extends to the main courtroom. From the entrance hall, a wide flight of stairs (‘l’escalier d’honneur’) descends to an open space with the entrance to the main courtroom. Doors open directly onto the theatre of the Court. Inside, some elements in the design actually refer quite overtly to the theatre: the use of stage lighting, the theatre-style tip-up seats in the public seating area, the golden curtain behind the judges’ bench reminiscent of the theatre wings from where the performers await their cue. Other references are more indirect, such as the organisation of the judges’ chairs into an elevated semi-circle, as though they were the chorus in a classical Greek drama, or the drama itself of the lawyers descending to ‘the theatre of action’.
Adjudication itself is an ancient form, if one that has significantly changed over the course of three centuries. Resnik, Curtis and Tait analyse the transformation from a spectacle of ‘“rites” in which spectators watched judges pronounce judgments and rulers impose punishments’, to a positioning of judges as independent and empowered to rule even against the state itself.Footnote 61 In that transformation, the performance of law may have changed, but it has not been lost. There is a rich literature on law and theatre, observing the trial as dramatic spectacle.Footnote 62 Julie Stone Peters observes how concerns with ‘legal theatrics are nearly as old as law itself, and yet so is the age-old claim that law … must be “seen to be done”’.Footnote 63 Emilio Buis further notes the strong – even ‘notorious’ – parallel between legal and theatrical spaces and performances in antiquity: ‘actors-litigants in a bilateral debate or agon, facing the jury [judges] under the cautious and interested look of the audience sitting around the stage-courtroom’.Footnote 64 In Greek tragedy, he notes, ‘debate plays a prominent part, since it usually replaces action. The argumentative instinct, which we found in courtrooms, is also strong in theatrical pieces’.Footnote 65 The point of contention that these authors signal is how perceiving the court and the trial as theatre and performance acknowledges their visual and discursive spectacle, but also casts doubt on the narratives and problematises the truths that are advanced in these spaces.
Within the attention to law’s theatricality and the root of adjudication, Ancient Greece is a favourite ‘go to’ starting point. As a myth of origin, antiquity symbolises the cradle of European civilisation.Footnote 66 For the design narrative of the CJEU courtroom to invoke the theatre of adjudication in antiquity is to place the Court in a historical tradition beyond the Union’s own history of coal and steel, at the symbolic birth of Europe. It moreover foundationally signals the belief in the existence of a (pan)European tradition of adjudication, and shows the Court as imbued with this tradition. This narrative is expressed in architectural form.
The mise en scène of the main courtroom in Luxembourg is as follows. The entrance to the main courtroom sits at the same level as the judges’ seats, at the opposite end of the courtroom. From the entrance, the floor slopes down to the lowest point of the Court, where the lawyers plead. The aisle leading towards their desks runs through the middle of the designated public seating area, with rows of tip-up seats in gold-coloured upholstery on either side. The judges sit around the lawyers in a semi-circle on an elevated bench on gold-coloured chairs, reading their notes by the light of gold-coloured desk lamps, looking down at the lawyers at work in the pit of the theatre. The judges sit in front of gold-coloured floor-to-ceiling curtains, which are parted in the middle to reveal gold-coloured double doors, also floor-to-ceiling in height, that lead to a private deliberation room (Figure 1, above). To either side of the Court, behind a golden façade, are two stories of translator booths reminiscent of opera boxes, from where translators provide a running translation of the proceedings in any and all official languages of the Union according to demand. Whatever does not appear in the colour gold appears instead in a warm wood that enhances the colour gold. The wooden floors, the panelling of the judges’ bench, and part of the public seating, are all made from Doussié (Afzelia Africana), a timber sourced from Senegal especially for its warm colour.
Arguably the most striking feature of the main courtroom is the giant golden ‘baldachin’: large metallic drapes suspended from the ceiling to create the impression of a big lantern, or a huge crown, or a giant tent (Figures 1 and 4). The baldachin is a woven steel veil made from a specially designed and patented mesh by Dominique Perrault Architects.Footnote 67 It is visible from anywhere inside the Palais outside of the courtroom, as the upper walls of the courtroom – those surrounding the baldachin – are made entirely of glass. The unique quality of the mesh is such that it blocks views from outside into the courtroom. Yet, at the same time, it still allows the main courtroom to benefit from natural light, which is actually a rare feature for courtrooms. In this way, Perrault indeed ‘brings the sun here’. The glass encasing, moreover, makes it impossible for sound to travel out from the hearings, while on the inside the baldachin helps with the acoustics of the room.Footnote 68
La Salle de Pas Perdus with half-opened door into the main courtroom and view of the baldachin (Photo: Renske Vos).
Figure 4. Long description
The photograph shows the view from the top of the main stairs, l’escalier d’honneur, onto the main courtroom. A half-opened door offers a glimpse into this courtrrom. Through the large glass windows stretching across the top-section of the courtroom the drapes of the large baldachin are visible. They are illuminated by stage lighting.
Variations of the mesh material of the baldachin further run as a theme through the building. It reappears in a tapestry on the walls of the ‘anterooms’ leading into the four smaller courtrooms, and a metallic, coarser version also reappears as room dividers in the cafeteria. It has become a signature material used by Dominique Perrault to show off his handiwork. It also goes once again to show how everything – from the lights to the door handles, to the chairs – is designed especially for this building. The mesh itself was inspired by a mesh used on Italian mountain roads to prevent or protect from avalanches. Yet it is also reminiscent of a hauberk, part of a knight’s tunic.Footnote 69
In the main courtroom, the organisation of the space makes direct use of two classical figures of style: the (semi-)circle and triangle. Greek plays were performed in an outdoor theatre by a chorus and three actors. The 12 to 15 members of the chorus most typically performed in a circular space called the orchestra, with either an altar or the leader of the chorus in the middle.Footnote 70 In the classical amphitheatre, the audience would also sit in a semi-circle around the orchestra, from where spectators could look down onto the stage.Footnote 71 Meanwhile, the triangular constellation of the three actors could move freely. In his examination of the typical patterns of Greek drama, Buis shows how the chorus, through their leader – the presiding judge – would interact with the actors – the lawyers – in a form of theatre performed, like the hearing, primarily through spoken debate.Footnote 72 David Tait further adds how, symbolically and spatially, a circle provides maximum inclusion, visibility (of faces) and audibility to those around the well of the court. The triangle configuration of the judge and parties illustrates the balance of power between the parties. However, this set-up does mean that the audience sees mostly the backs of the lawyers.Footnote 73
Ritual is not only important for the performance of adjudication; it is also what joins the ideas of theatre and temple together. Dramatic representations and religious ceremonies are ritual instances, involving ‘a codified complex of systematic and repetitive behaviors’ where everyone has their place in a clearly discernible prepared scenario of solemnity.Footnote 74 The judicial procedure, likewise, can be seen as a secular ritual par excellence.Footnote 75 The ritual of the court – its proceedings, the judges’ robes, the use of specific formulations – moreover helps to legitimate the authority of the court and its decisions by instilling a sense of gravitas, solemnity and respect.Footnote 76 This sense becomes palpable at the CJEU on the occasion of the ritual of swearing in new judges, which always takes place in the main courtroom. Or it is evident when the Court sits in plenary – for example, for cases on values of the Union or constitutional principles. In these instances, the golden décor of the Court is an important medium to enhance the image of the judges and the gravitas of the proceedings. As seen, gold can signal an elevated or even a royal or divine status, as it is often used in places of worship and in displays of (royal) power. When these social imageries are evoked, they can blend – or clash – with the image of the Court.
Architecturally, part of the ritual at the CJEU is to move from the ‘impure’ outside world – the black-coloured official entrance hall – into the ‘sacred’ space of the gold-coloured temple-courtroom.Footnote 77 The two are kept separated, with the transition marked by a dramatic entrance. For the smaller courtrooms, this effect is achieved through a narrow antechamber through which visitors pass to enter these courts. For the main courtroom, there is one final element in place: the importance of void is critical to literally give space to the theatre. The use of open space is most prominent in front of the main courtroom in an area that is referred to as ‘la Salle des Pas Perdus’ (Figure 4). This can literally be translated as ‘the Hall of Lost Steps’, or informally to a more mundane ‘vestibule’ or ‘circulation space’. This open area is a typical part of a palace of justice: as a space of waiting before proceedings or during intermissions, and thus a space of anticipation. It is importantly a ‘space that separates the “profane” from the “sacred” and that permits to progressively accede to the courtroom where justice is rendered publicly and solemnly’.Footnote 78 The effect of transition from impure to sacred is realised by orchestrating the visitor to be struck by the light and gold of the courtroom as they enter straight into it. To bring out the drama of the design at its fullest, Perrault left the space open around these courtrooms at a super-human height and scale, so that the building can make its impact.
The recurring references to the Ancient Greek tragedy and temple in the courtrooms position the Court as central, but also sacred, and highlight the importance of drama.Footnote 79 This is further expressed conceptually by showing the CJEU as the most important stone in the middle of a ring. Around the Palais a two-storey ring (l’Anneau) was constructed to hover above ground at a slight distance from the Palais at the height of the 6th and 7th floors. This ring contains the offices of the judges, advocates generals and registrars, so they may find the quiet, calm and serenity needed for their work, but also so they may hover as a protective ring around the Courts. Practically, this arrangement offers a clear separation between the more public and private area. This is important for security reasons, and enforced by card-access limitations, but it is also signalled through a different design palette. When moving from the Palais into the judges’ ring, the design shifts from black and gold to wooden floors and white walls. The Palais itself was reserved to house only the courtrooms and to cultivate the public profile of the Court through its official entrance, display of art and visitor and press reception facilities. Placing the courtrooms at the centre of this ring is an architectural expression of their importance. EU law has been central to forging the European project. This design further places the CJEU at the centre of EU law.
5. Conclusion: colour and the entangled social imaginaries of gold
It is a long time since the Court of Justice was described as ‘[t]ucked away in the fairyland Duchy of Luxembourg’.Footnote 80 Yet arguably, the Court’s golden building is even more fairytale-like now than it was in 1981. This theatre of the CJEU needs an audience – and indeed one significant objective set by the Court for the renovation by Perrault was to make the Court publicly accessible. Tellingly, among the Court buildings, only those spaces that are most open to the public are gold: the main Court and the four general courtrooms, as well as the façades of the three towers as seen by the public outside. Paradoxically, though, the image of the Court still does not feature too prominently in the public eye. At the same time, the CJEU has received nearly 550,000 visitors since 1968, and received around 16,000 visitors in 2025 alone.Footnote 81 Most are European, but some are also from outside of Europe. They are often university students, high school students, professionals, legal experts, judges, lawyers or government officials. They are received by one of a team of approximately 20 tour guides. Moreover, the Court has further opened up its hearings by broadcasting (some of them) via livestream.
This article has focused on two design narratives presented by the CJEU itself. The question remains of how – if at all – these design narratives are picked up by various members of the audience. Institutional buildings have the potential to communicate a message and identity to an (outside) audience.Footnote 82 In architecture and design, the meanings, associations and emotions that are tied up with certain colours are intentionally used to cultivate specific effects. At the same time, different audiences might or might not be receptive to this message.Footnote 83 Moreover, audience responses may shift over time, depending on social and political contexts, as well as changing aesthetic preferences.
People can hold multiple, parallel and competing perceptions at once, and this mix of perceptions may vary widely from one person to the next. How the Court is perceived depends at least in part on where the viewer stands politically. For example, in cases dealing with the common market or decisions on trademarks,Footnote 84 the colour gold may easily call to mind the idea of money, which may equally signal wealth and prosperity or greed. In a different case, that of Brexit, the image of the ECJ reading its judgment in its golden setting may play into a populist rhetoric denouncing the EU as elitist and decadent. Or finally, looking at a set of cases concerned with the rule of law in Poland and Hungary, the image of the judges sitting up high in a splendid courtroom being all-powerful may be taken as a show of strength and support needed by rule of law advocates in those Member States. In all these examples, the associations with the colour gold amplify the pre-held sentiment of the viewer, which could just as easily run into the diametrically opposite direction. Where one person may see wealth and prosperity, another will see power and gain, a third may see the crown on the project of EU law and so on. The perception of the colour gold in the CJEU will necessarily range widely. The colour gold amplifies those views.
Once a building has been built, it is difficult to radically change its design – at least until the next large-scale renovation. For the moment, the CJEU itself only speculates on future building expansion in case of further enlargement of the EU or of potential modifications to the EU’s jurisdictional architecture.Footnote 85 Meanwhile, the image associated with a building as dramatic as that of the CJEU may gain traction and begin to travel. In subtle ways, the literal space of the Court may gain new meanings or raise new expectations, and offer something to reflect on when you next have a chance to visit the Court.
Competing interests
I have no competing interests to report.
Open access
