by pdgaither

Plans of the building have been my main focus for a little over a week. I have been struggling with circulation but I believe I have done a good job at condensing it. There are still a couple of places in my plans where I can shift to condense farther, but I just wanted to get what I have up. I am working on sections of the building now and those will explain the shifting and sharing of spaces much better than can be read in plan. There are four floors to the building and the courtrooms are split, 2 on one side, 6 on the other. I did this in accordance with the site, having the 6 courtrooms facing the busier street, and the 2 facing the less busy street. The forms interlock with one another allowing circulation to traverse around as well as in between the courtrooms and support spaces. Observers to every courtroom are one level above said courtroom and behind the jury. I see the observers as an extension of the jury, so having them with one another made sense to me. As I said here are the four plans with sections coming shortly.

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Finding that Balance

by fcahill

One of the first things I wanted to figure out was the courtroom design as I felt much of the form of the building would stem from that.  As my main metaphor that I’m trying to realize within the building is the idea of movement I felt it was important for that to come through in the courtrooms.  I played with curves and straight planes to try and find a balance between the two…I knew that they would be pivotal in helping bring people into and out of the courtroom but what then?  I feel that the courtroom design below finds a nice balance between the two while keeping the particular lines of sight and circulation clear and understood.

From there I moved to the form of the building, beginning in model form, but I ended up working in Rhino as it took waaaaay to long to building each courtroom-but the exercise did help in realizing how they might work together as pairs or as individuals as well as what they potentially looked like stacked directly or with some horizontal rotation.  The first two (on the middle row) play with the paired relation of the courtroom while the third delves closer into the elevation and some play with materials.

Finally, the sketches were a play in plans, elevations and sections as to how the courtrooms would look.  Interestingly, it becomes very planar even though I am cutting/viewing the curves so while there are curves they must be ‘experienced’ as you move through the spaces, which continues the idea of getting in (to the courtroom) and then getting out (and on with your life).