by davidgilmanking
My initial step was to take the courtroom, what I perceived as the symbolic heart of the law, and move it from its coveted central location in the courthouse to the exterior. I wanted this move to both serve as a symbolic gesture of the interconnection between the law and the surrounding community as well as to physically allow the community to see into the courtroom as ‘law’ takes place. I built what I saw as an early parti model as seen below that separated and moved the eight courtrooms to the outside to serve as cornerstones to the courthouse itself. I then played with the shape of the courtrooms in relation to each other.
At the same time I was looking at the macro level, I was also thinking about the micro-climate of the courtroom itself. It was important to my concept to interconnect the activity in the courtroom with the public. I wanted to erode a wall and literally make the courtroom feel as if it was spilling outside. In order to remove distractions to those inside and to serve as a security measure, a wall would divide the two spaces. This wall would serve as a ‘Translation Wall’, a wall that would have different levels of opacity to signify the varying ways people interpret and read the law. This translation wall would pierce the structure as a figurative and physical threshold.
[space + justice] 