The Psychology of Letting Go

by caroothers

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Exploring the second concept of the courtroom as a block volume led to some interesting discovery.  This scheme would have led to a successful courthouse, but the concept of the line or ribbon courthouse developed a more successful form.  The conceptual model study was worth while and created an nice schematic study of program and asymmetric pairing for a court room.  These studies may lead to a different design decision further along in the full process of the courthouse.

Intertwining Public and Private

by cchlebda

As I continue to develop study models and examine the courthouse program, I am becoming increasingly interested in blending or interweaving public and private spaces of the courthouse in order to make court and the law seem more accessible to the public. Though the private spaces of the courthouse (judge/staff/in-custody/etc.) have to be completely separated from public spaces for functional and security reasons, I am interested in finding ways to weave public spaces through the private spaces. One way I have experiemented with is to insert public spaces “in-between” private floor levels. Another way is to think about the courtrooms as nodes/bridges between private and public, since it is the only space in the courthouse where all parties (judge, jury, counselors, defendants, and spectators) are present together at any given time.

I developed a series of plans and models resulting in a kind of “finger” scheme, a series of alternating public and private wedges. I then took this a step further and started to look at how to bring the park/nature into the building. I also thought about the unique position of the jury (a combined public and private entity) and how their spaces might be positioned in the courthouse. In my plans, sections, and diagrams, I have been using blue to represent private spaces, yellow to represent public spaces, and green to represent outdoor, potentially vegetated spaces. The green is present in areas (in plan) where the public and private spaces start to intersect (coincidentally, blue + yellow = green); in other words, the building starts to open up exterior spaces where public and private spaces intertwine.

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Interpretive Dance

by caroothers

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Working toward extruding the dominant courthouse circulation into a site form.  The Lines of the interior circulation become the form of the building gesturing toward the public spaces and toward the greater Charlotte City Center.  A Sketch Model development toward discovering the form of lines.

Concept Model

by mcanadayuncc

Music – Community – Courthouse

The park amphitheater space will provide a venue for local music and will be the flex space of the courthouse.  Music brings people together as a community.  Ideally, this program will open the courthouse to the public as a less intimidating space and become more inviting.  How does music connect to law and the aspects of a courthouse? 1) Community. 2) 1^st amendment: freedom of speech.

Music and interlocking figures are the motifs most prevalent in my concept sketches and models to appeal to the idea of music bringing people together as a community.

Music: an art of sound that expresses ideas and emotions in significant forms through the element of rhythm, melody, harmony, and color.

Could this, with the exemption of the word sound, not be a definition of architecture?

What is considered music (architecture) and what is considered merely crude unorganized noise (anti-space), often varies culture to culture.

Music (architecture) is emotion.

Organization of specific sounds (materials) and tones (techniques) set within a certain time structure. It is one of the oldest forms of human artistic expression.

Music (architecture) brings people together. – community

Music gives a solid emotional foundation and a sense of emotional regulation – emotional shifts – “drug-like” – music (architecture) can alter sense of perspective, sense of time, sense of distance, and mood.

Music is a vacation from reality.

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Conspiracy Theories and Interior Design

by caroothers

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There are two trains of thought with the layout for the programmatic court set.  The court, and auxiliary rooms, each have their own spacial layout that has developed differently.

The idea of a courtroom as an individual volume created the sketch model arranging the four individual volumes.  The volumes allow for different formal shapes as well as affording  unique views and site responses.  This lets each courtroom have its own characteristics and formal expression.  How can the manipulation of volumes work together to form a set of rooms which work together for a common program?

Using the strong traditional patterns of circulation with a courtroom (from back to front) the second study looked into forming an implied circulation and creating spaces through these implied moments and perpendicular planes.  The courtroom’s form ends in a pinnacle that is formed from transforming the program circulation’s penultimate moment.  It is the spaces between the planes that create new spaces within the transformed circulation.  Can spaces be created from simple planes, and how can this new space interact with other spacial arrangements with the same form?