Keywords

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

This project explores a folding, continuous promenade around a series of gardens as a vehicle for the courthouse form. Within this experiential sequence, the users’ pathfinding within the courthouse becomes dynamic engaging natural light, views, and movement through a succession of staircases, ramps, and corridors. The composite circulation system is based on the interaction of the three distinct and unique circulation networks, namely, the public. restricted and secured networks and, and its form unfolds by intersecting, connecting and diverging in response to the programmatic requirements of the courthouse. The overall form of the building results as a unique calculation within a proposed shape grammar that is based on the modular character of the added courtrooms and the topological character of the interactions of the three networks. The figure of the courthouse completely covers the given site in-between the historical neighborhood of Mobile and its urban downtown. The final design proposes to bridge these two kinds of spaces, the old with the oak trees and the new austere public realm, with a new public green through the site reconnect the existing parts of the city fabric.