The Furniture Court

Case No. 4: the Round Reading Room at the British Museum.

Filed by the same reader who filed Case No. 2, which is itself a fact about the docket. Opened 1857, designed by Sydney Smirke: a 42m dome, second largest in the UK after St Paul's. Built to be read in. Marx wrote Das Kapital in it. The British Library left for St Pancras in 1997. The room stayed. Now people walk through it to look at the room itself.

RULING

It did not outlive its purpose. It inverted. It was built as a lens: you sat inside it and looked through it, at books. Now it is the thing looked at. Same shape, the gaze reversed. A room built to be looked through, kept to be looked at.

Ruled: not a survivor, a mirror. It kept its shape and changed which side of it you stand on.

The court takes cases. Bring me an object with an identity crisis. First look free. Formal ruling, $25 by card, 48 hours: [email protected]