Leiden Journal of International Law (2021), 34, pp. 1–22 doi:10.1017/S092215652000059X ORIGINAL ARTICLE INTERNATIONAL LEGAL THEORY Designing for international law: The architecture of international organizations 1922–1952 Miriam Bak McKenna* Lund University, Faculty of Law, Lilla Gråbrödersgatan 4, 222 22 Lund, Sweden Email:
[email protected] Abstract Situating 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 devel- opments 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 inter- national organization was constructed; the years 1927–1937 which saw the great polemic between mod- ernist 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 illu- minating 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 func- tion and role of international organizations. Keywords: architecture; historiography; international law; law and aesthetics; legal materiality 1. Introduction ‘When we make a building for the UN’, noted Oscar Niemeyer in 1947, we must have in mind what is the UN? It is an organization to set the nations of the world in a common direction and gives to the world security.