Keywords

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

The architectural core of the courthouse is imagined as a centrifugal scheme developed around the modular arrangement of courtrooms. The tripartite arrangement of this core is considered here as the most flexible one to give a single entry to the public and two adjudication spaces on each side. The area and volume of the building envelope is then the single factor to decide the number of these tripartite modules. This courthouse as a whole is conceived to inspire, to suggest and to transport, leaving to the visitor a sense of awe but also to create a compelling work environment for its inhabitants. Behind this proposal there is a strong belief that architecture, through its powerful means can and have to create a strong sense of place, a memorable image, an appealing environment, and a pedagogical gift which can deliver to the public a different meaning about the role of law in the society. The site of the courthouse at Phoenix, Arizona, brings the opportunity for a dialogue with the existing courthouse by Meier, the challenge of the local climate, and a young, multiethnic, dynamic jurisdiction on a vast territory with incredible natural beauties and Indian reservoirs. The organic architectural language of this project has been inspired in part from conics and spirals, so ubiquitous in Nature, but in particular from the Arizona geo-logical formations and its ancient architecture. The overall design process was driven by the action of carving and digging a solid, like the action of wind and water on the soil; an imitation of nature but also a metaphor of the long law’s evolutionary process expressed in architectural terms. These strong, primitive actions, simple and recognizable, are combined with the pre columbian building tradition and the Arizona nature to create a civic comfortable open space under the harsh hot climate of Phoenix. The result is a balanced tension, a manifest expression of the dialectic, proper to the realm of Law, maintaining nevertheless the formality of the urban context and an overall elegance and harmony.