Keywords

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

The formal organization of the courthouse morphology is envisioned as a language of two distinct forms. A low form should house the quotidian spaces of the courthouse and an upper one should contain the honorific spaces. Clad in brick and glass, the heavy nature of the quotidian spaces below firmly anchor the courthouse into its possible site while the honorific spaces lie atop contrast to the spaces below. The skin above is the inverse of the skin below with the bricks serving as glazing and the glazing below serving as louvers. This upper skin becomes a lightweight glass beacon that reinforces the notion of a transparent judicial system and serves as an appropriate home to an “elaborate ritualism of civic ceremony” (Resnik, 2000) This language of the courthouse is set into practice here in an urban site at the heart of downtown Greenville, SC, on the edge of the central business district, adjacent to the Office and institutional district. The footprint of the new courthouse is pushed to the easternmost side of the site, opening up to the west and to the new Downtown redevelopment that has been taking place since the 1980’s. This allows for a large hardscape civic space in front of the courthouse, attracting visitors from the newly renovated pedestrian community and help reinstating the courthouse as a city’s “town hall”, as it was in 17th century America. Ideas of the collective memory of the courthouse icon as the center of a town’s communal activity are reinstated here both in the design of the public space below as well as in the in the design of the transparent spaces above to celebrate the symbolic function of justice.