Keywords

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

Courthouses are mirrors of the values of the people and societies that make them. Past, contemporary and new courthouses reflect one-to-one this worldmaking. This project for the new courthouse in Mobile AL, takes its clues from the city of Mobile and the most emblematic of its cultural staple: the Mardi Gras parade. The architecture of Mobile, with its delicate loggias, porticoes, iron balconies and prominent green squares, is transformed on parade days to celebrate the streets of the city. The main concept for the courthouse is to embrace how the culture of Mobile captures the classic figure ground relationship of a courthouse and a public park. This idea is further pushed on, not only by bringing the park up and into our courthouse, but by bringing the street, and therefore the symbolic and literal procession of the parade through our building. The tiered landscape of the park and the public exterior areas of the courthouse become the iron porches Mobile is known for: viewing platforms for a parade that can pass in its entirety through the base of the courthouse. In this way, the ideal of a courthouse is captured as a truly public project. The circulation bridges encircle a six-story atrium that allows natural light into the courthouse and giving visual access to the procession path in the plinth below.