Shape Computation Lab

Site Sight Cite | Federal Courthouse, Gulch, Atlanta, GA

🞩

⟨

⟩

01. Diagrammatic models of the suspended courtoom held by the three discrete cicrculation armatures

02. Diagrammatic models of gridiron frameworks representing the stacked horizontal public and restricted networks around the secure cores.

03. Axonometric view of the detached courtroom

04. Axonometric view of the detached courtroom.

05. Second floor of the courthouse. The plane between te Gulch and the urban network: Restricted access to judges and jury

06. Third floor of the courthouse: Public plan. Leveled with the urban network featuring public space and balconies to the courtrooms below

07. Fifth floor of the courthouse: Public green space, a new urban garden at the heart of Atlanta

08. Longitudinal section of the courthouse

09. Interior view of the public zone of the courthouse with access to the courtroom balconies.

Olivia Hargett

ARCH 6071: f(x) Design Studio: Shaping Justuce

Athanassios Economou, PhD

School of Architecture

College of Design

Georgia Institute of Technology

Fall 2017

Keywords

Shaping Justice studio; Courthouse design; Typology; Variation; Shape grammars

The courtroom is rethought as a jewel suspended by three folds representing the three networks that hold it figuratively and literally in the air. The courtroom is framed by a two story gridiron framework mapping into the public and the restricted horizontal networks. The courtroom becomes the sight for the public, the jewel for the site and the discourse to cite as a language for judicial architecture. The new federal courthouse in Atlanta is envisioned in the gulch linking the two sides of the urban hole by becoming a building / park. Furthermore, it relates to the federal bankruptcy building next door by linking to it underneath and continues the large urban scale of downtown Atlanta. The vertical reconstitution of the polarity of the courthouse - square issue reworks the typology of the building city and suggests a new relation of the citizens to law.