Keywords

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

Courthouses are paradoxical buildings, at once parts of the city but also set apart from it. Previous incarnations of these buildings were unfolded in townhalls next to civic halls, market halls, performance theaters, and other public buildings. The challenges for the contemporary courthouse is to reassert its position within the urban fabric and to take on the issue of disconnect between the public and the judiciary. The design here proposes a symbolic destination for the tight-knit community that combines the program of courthouse with a cultural public program – the museum of the city. The project functions as a communal place where everyone ends up, whether for jury duty or for a visit at the crowning museum at the top of the structure. Significantly, this hybridity of spaces joining a public destination and the judicial system, resolves one of the most common courthouse design plights: the perception of the courthouse relating as a bureaucratic machine. Here this design encourages communal gatherings and accommodates for the Mardi Gras parades, a tradition established in Mobile, by allowing the parades to pass directly through the building. Spanning the length of two city blocks the design features a torqued tower of courtrooms centered above the bisecting Conception Street. Bolstering the tower are two legs on the western block occupied with a more quotidian program. The eastern lot features a public park space offering a friendly urbanity on the street and respite from the trials of court. In addition, this space features a switch-back stair-ramp and network of wheelchair access ramps to the main entrance.