Keywords

Shaping Justice studio; Courthouse design; Visual computation; Typology; Variation; Landhuggers

The courthouse is set here against the typical icon of the courthouse as a figurative volume inserted in the center of a site. The design invites different ways of exploring the interface between the courthouse and the public space having spaces under the ground, spaces above the ground and spaces in-between reimagining the very idea of a public plaza in reference to the Greek agora. Here, the ground (plinth) is the interface between the public circulation on the plaza and the courthouse services under the ground. The visual interaction is introduced by several patios bringing in the necessary light to these underground offices. The mediation of light has been enabled through a series of longitudinal cuts on the plinth to produce a series of public patios. The courtrooms are rising above as formal molds out of the topographisation of the terrain, distorting, stretching, and bending the ground, and creating a spatial wave and a loop wrapping in the air the nine courtrooms of the program. This sculptural ribbon exemplifies the critical space of the interface between the state and the citizen.