Keywords

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

The American courthouse is a unique morphological structure as it oscilates between the two identities of the public monument and the ceremonial courthouse. It hosts both the sacred and the profane, the ritualistic proceedings and the public’s participation. The 9-Square Courthouse proposition addresses the dual identity of the American courthouse at three different scales: the scale of the city, the scale of the courthouse, and the scale of the courtroom. The nine square offers many combinatorial possibilities, but for the American courthouse, the configuration with a center void is the most intuitive. Pushing courtrooms to the building’s edges allows natural light into the well. In the Greenville case, there is still circulation about the perimeter, but this calls for a glass skin. The center void allows for everyone to circulate around a singular space, separated vertically only. This removes some of the complexity and mystery of the courthouse for the public by revealing the judge walking to his or her chambers. The vertical separation continues into the courtroom, with spectator public seated up top and active public below. Jury and public, both spectator and active, occupy two edges of the courtroom, and the resulting space, a square, is a double height space, demarcating the ceremonial space of the courtroom, the well, from other non-active, non-sacred spaces in the courtroom. The courtroom figure is demarcated from the other building spaces by orienting on a north-south grid as opposed to the site grid the rest of the building follows. The courtroom space is singled out by a rotation to true north, and the resulting spaces within one of the 9-square boundaries are programed for associated spaces, such as jury, attorney witness, and judges’ robing room.