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When a civilization ends, it does not leave behind a tombstone. Instead, it leaves stackings of stones (i.e. buildings.) We lose the remembrance of individual people, the things they said, did, and wrote, but we remember what they built because those things endure for much longer. The Ancient Greeks and Romans tell us about themselves through their Classical Architecture. We remember the Medieval period in Europe from its castles and Gothic Cathedrals. We remember the early 20th century from the Art Deco buildings it left behind. The style tells us something about their priorities, what they believed, what they knew, and what their hopes were. In a sense, the buildings that a culture leaves behind are a kind of epitaph.
Let’s look through the structural epitaphs of our ancestors.
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Peace Palace (The Hague, Netherlands)
My first reaction to this picture is that something about this Neo-Renaissance building feels… ominous. For a place called the “Peace Palace” I don’t feel calm or uplifted when seeing it. It contains many of the elements of beauty you might expect to see in a great old Netherlander building. The tower is visually eye-catching. The ground level arches and the general construction style look quintessentially Dutch European. And yet… something about this building seems foreboding. I think it’s the roof that gives the game away. Something about it just seems alien to me.
If you’re familiar with the idea of “uncanny valley” this building is – for me – an architectural version of that.
The uncanny valley effect is a hypothesized psychological and aesthetic relation between an object’s degree of resemblance to a human being and the emotional response to the object. The uncanny valley hypothesis predicts that an entity appearing almost human will elicit uncanny or eerie feelings in viewers.
You might expect, for example, a vampire to look *almost* human… but there will be clues that are supposed to warn you about what you’re seeing. Canine teeth might be a bit too prominent. Skin could be a little too sallow and pallid. Etc. A good example of what I mean, with respect to someone looking almost human, but just not quite right, such that it feels uncomfortable is the picture of the man below (an example which was relatively viral about 15 years ago.)
This building gives me that same type of feeling. Something about it just feels… off.
Before I continue to judge the building too much from its picture above, it occurs to me that maybe it would be better to look at the building from other angles, or even from above via drone footage.
These angles are a big improvement. The roof definitely looks a lot better from a downward angle. The video also helped me to understand my creeping sense of dread when first looking at this building. This “palace” is a law building with a law library. I hated law school. There’s something soul draining about living within minutia, splitting hairs, and massaging technicalities in the pursuit of the right answer. Some people enjoy it and thrive in that environment, though. They’re called vampires. Legal buildings are haunts for energy vampires. Imagine a vampire calling his house a Peace Palace. But then again, everyone always calls an energy vampire when they get in trouble. And I guess technically I graduated from energy vampire school and got a license. Maybe I’m being a bit unfair. Let’s give the vampires have their say.
The palace officially opened on 28 August 1913; it was originally built to provide a home for the PCA, a court created to end war by the Hague Convention of 1899. Andrew Dickson White, whose efforts were instrumental in creating the court, secured from Scottish-American steel magnate Andrew Carnegie US$1.5 million ($50,000,000, adjusted for inflation) to build the Peace Palace. The European Heritage Label was awarded to the Peace Palace on 8 April 2014.
History
Background
In 1908, Thomas Hayton Mawson won a competition to design the grounds. Because of budget constraints, he also had to discard design elements: mountains and sculptures. He made use of a natural watercourse on the site.
Conception
Vase given by Russia
The idea of the palace started from a discussion in 1900 between the Russian diplomat Friedrich Martens and American diplomat White over providing a home for the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA). White contacted Andrew Carnegie. Carnegie had reservations, and at first was only interested in donating money for the establishment of a library of international law. White, however, was able to convince Carnegie, and in 1903 Carnegie agreed to donate the US$1.5 million ($50,000,000, adjusted for inflation) needed to house the court as well as to endow it with a library of international law. White described his idea to Carnegie:
“A temple of peace where the doors are open, in contrast to the Janus-temple, in times of peace and closed in cases of war […] as a worthy testimony of the people that, after many long centuries finally a court that has thrown open its doors for the peaceful settlement of differences between peoples”.
Were such a fabric to be created, men would make pilgrimages from all parts of the civilized world to see it. It would become a sort of holy place, prized and revered by thinking men throughout the world, and to which, in any danger of war between any two countries, the minds of men would turn naturally and normally. The main difficulty now is that the people of the various nations do not really know what was done for them by the Conference; but such a building would make them know it. It would be an “outward and visible sign” of the Court, which would make its actual, tangible existence known to the ends of the earth”—Andrew Dickson White to Andrew Carnegie, 5 August 1902
At first Carnegie simply wanted to donate the money directly to the Dutch Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands for the building of the palace, but legal problems prohibited this, and in November 1903 the Carnegie Stichting was founded to manage the construction, ownership, and maintenance of the palace. This foundation is still responsible for these issues.
Construction
To find a suitable design, the foundation called for an open international competition. The winning design, set in the Neo-Renaissance style, was submitted by French architect Louis M. Cordonnier. To build within budget, Cordonnier and his Dutch associate J.A.G. van der Steur adjusted the design. The palace initially had two big bell towers in front and two small ones in the back. Only one big tower and one small tower remained in the final building. Also to save money, the separate library building from the winning design was incorporated into the palace itself.
In 1907, the first stone was symbolically placed during the Second Hague Conference. The construction began some months later and was completed with an inauguration ceremony on 28 August 1913, attended by Andrew Carnegie, among others. At the ceremony, Carnegie predicted that the end of war was “as certain to come, and come soon, as day follows night.”[3]
In 2007, Queen Beatrix opened the new building for the Peace Palace Library of International Law, housing the entire catalogue of the library, a lecture hall and a new reading room in the bridge to the main building of the Peace Palace. Like the new Academy Hall, the library was designed by architects Michael Wilford and Manuel Schupp [de]. A Visitors Centre was added to the Peace Palace in 2012, which is also designed by Michael Wilford.[4]
Bust of Carnegie and the original plan of the Peace Palace
Inside the Peace Palace
Main hall of the Peace Palace. The background is the entrance of the Courtroom of the International Court of Justice.
Occupants
The Peace Palace has accommodated a variety of organisations:
Permanent Court of Arbitration (1913–present) The original occupant for which the Peace Palace was constructed. From 1901 until the opening of the palace in 1913, the Permanent Court of Arbitration was housed at Prinsegracht 71 in The Hague.
Permanent Court of International Justice (1922–1946) and its successor the International Court of Justice (1946–present). In 1922 the Permanent Court of International Justice of the League of Nations was added to the occupants. This meant the library was forced to move to an annex building, and the Permanent Court of Arbitration was moved to the front left of the building. In 1946, when the United Nations replaced the League of Nations, the International Court of Justice was established as the UN’s principal judicial organ.
Peace Palace Library of International Law (1913–present). Being the original vision of Carnegie, the library grew quickly to house the best collection of material on international law. Although this stature is well in the past, the library still contains some original classical works, as the original copies of Hugo Grotius‘ works on peace and law and Erasmus‘ Querela Pacis.
The palace also features a number of statues, busts and portraits of prominent peace campaigners from around the world and of all eras.
Final judgment: On the one hand, I really like a lot of the art housed here. The building looked a lot better than my initial assessment once I saw it from other angles. I also certainly support efforts to bring about peace, as opposed to war. On the other hand, even though only a century has passed, the culture and worldview that gave birth to this building is gone from the earth. That should tell us something. The pseudo-religious rhetoric associated with this building and its founding, going so far as to call it a “temple of peace,” are creepy and cultish. The building’s aesthetics also just look sinister, though in a way where they are imperfectly posturing as something good.
I might also argue that whatever the intentions of those behind the building, it’s hard to judge their stated goal as a success. Has the world been more peaceful since 1913? Do most people trust an international body like this one to administer justice fairly? So perhaps it has not only not achieved its ends, the loss of trust might make it incapable of doing so.
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