Emotional Response to Crime & Punishment

by davidgilmanking

I visited the Mecklenburg County Courthouse on Tuesday, September 25^th.  I was able to sit in on both civil and criminal proceedings, with and without jury trials.  It was the first time I have ever just visited the courthouse to watch trials, simply as a spectator.  I have watched high profile trials on television before but never taken the time to go down to the courthouse and publicly witness law in process.  The experience is tangibly different.  I will just briefly sum up two major observances that are related to my project and research

First, walking into the courtroom is a little intimidating.  You have no idea what is on the other side of the door, whether you are in the right spot, if court is in session, or if you are even ‘supposed’ to be there.  The doors are massive and it was intimidating opening and crossing through the threshold.   The sound lock had very thin windows that were slightly opaque so seeing what you were walking into was next to impossible.   What I found most interesting was the reception that you are given upon entering, a mix of ‘who are you and what are you doing here’ to ‘are you in the right place’ types of attention.  It makes you feel slightly intrusive.  This is an interesting response to a ‘public’ trial.  After the initial response, you are mostly ignored, but I did find that sense of not belonging fascinating – I am obviously not the only one that does not go often to publically view trials.

The second was my emotional response to locking up guilty defendants.  Specifically, this occurred when a 53 year old woman on trial for the sale of a third of an ounce of cocaine.  She had obviously had a tumultuous life and one that involved many run-ins with the law, as she was a level 4 defendant.  She was 30 days from being released from probation and was holding down a job as a truck driver, despite not being able to drive out of state.  She sold the cocaine to an undercover officer for $20, which was paid to her in a marked bill.  It seemed like the situation was opportunistic as opposed to well thought out.  Never-the-less, she clearly had no case, had committed a crime, but I actually felt sorry for her and her mother that was sitting in front of me.  It was emotional as the judge read through the litany of rights she had available to her, sentenced her to 15-24 months, and then finally as she was handcuffed.  I wanted to reach out and give her a hug and say ‘hang in there’ and’ turn your life around’.  I wanted to give her mother a hug and say ‘it will be alright’.  The judge even extended a personal measure to her admonishing her to stop – the only person he really did this with during my observation.  As I left the courtroom I had a feeling that she would be back again, that the time spent in prison would not help.  It was a response to crime and punishment that I did not expect to have and one that I do not believe that I would have had sitting at home on the couch watching it on TV.

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.

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Intersection of Community and Law – Vernacular Style

by davidgilmanking

My exploration of the courthouse typology has taken me into an investigation of how community and law overlap.  This stemmed from my initial research into Sentencing Circles and Restorative Justice, or the practice of allowing the community to attach a remedy or sentence for the crime committed.  The principle behind this was to create a bridge that would allow for rehabilitation and re-admittance back into the community as opposed to the typical separation that exists in most courtroom proceedings.

        

I also researched an interesting precedent at the Superior Court in Portola, California that utilized strong vernacular architecture to blend the surrounding community and culture together with the establishment of law and order.  It uses the vernacular materials and building design to create a synthesis with the surrounding landscape and culture.

This led me to focus my site research on the vernacular of the local site where the courthouse will be located.  Specifically, I looked at site materials and the evolution of site typography.  The connection between the physical (courthouse) and the written (law) is paramount in the formation of the legal system.  If the courthouse was to be grounded in the community and of the community, I needed to understand the use of both materials and words within the community.  I needed to understand how to weave the two together seamlessly.