Mid-Review Progress

by fcahill

For the mid-review last week, I was able to take stock of where I have come with my design and can now move forward with the feedback from the review.

From the beginning, I have been focusing on the building form and how that can represent as well as function as a ‘movement’ metaphor; for the public who comes to the courthouse as well as the system itself.  I presented alot of process from my beginning thoughts on movement, how it could translate to the court-set and then the courtroom design itself.  From those sketches, I jumped into the built form in conjunction with floor plans.  This was a very challenging part of the design because the 3 different circulations (public, private and in-custody) needed to be kept separate but still be economic in square footage. I was able to come to a solution by treating the courthouse as a Municipal courthouse (which it is) and not as a federal courthouse, where the separation of the private and public circulations are much more strict and necessary.  With the circulation, the biggest issue was the in-custody movement because with the rotation and setback of the courtset on each floor, if something worked on the 4th floor, it may not work on the 1st floor; I finally realized that I would have to have the criminal and magistrate courtrooms on the floors 1 and 2 in order to make it work.

Beginning Ideas

Early Plans

Courtroom Design Sketch

Form Progression

Court set (purple) + Vertical Circulation (green)

Current Plans with Vertical Elevator Circulation as ‘Constant’

View of 2nd Floor Entrance

Courtroom Rotation

Entrance and Rotation

I like where my form is at the moment, but with the feedback from Friday, I have a number of ideas that I want to try out and see where they lead.  This will also help in streamlining my plans because I feel that much of my support spaces can be better worked into the scheme of the building.

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).

Intro to Complexity

by caroothers

Moving forward with the idea of physical lines as a solution to the courtset construction, the program has begun to develop.  The program within this form mimics the overall form of the building, very linear.  With overhead planes which create implied spaces throughout the building, these linear programmatic elements are able to be pushed and pulled to create moments and develop an interaction between them. The ribbons have established a set of rules and created programmatic reference within themselves.  Some begin to become solid barriers, while others attempt to disappear in the light. The building form becomes an icon through its form.  It needs its own set of design rules that must begin to form in the program of the building.

1. Each court room will be made of 3 ribbons/lines, separating the courtroom into three distinct spaces.
2. The separation of the court rooms will be a ‘solid’ ribbon or a ‘void’ ribbon.  Solid ribbons house the court holding areas for the judicially challenged and void ribbons serve as circulation light wells.  this relationship further distinguishes the dark/light solid/void pattern that is developing in as a metaphor for the building.
3. Public circulation will be perpendicular to the ribbons through the interior of the building, weaving through the columns.  (there has got to be another metaphor here for ‘weaving’ circulation).
4. Private circulation will be perpendicular to the ribbons through the exterior of the building, weaving through ribbons.
5. The judge’s chambers will be at the exterior moment of this ribbon to allow for potential views to the exterior and a connection to the community which they serve.
6. Each ribbon will consist of more than one program, however, the programs within the ribbons will be related.  e.g. the courtroom ribbons will house the courtrooms, as well as offices for the people who work in the room.  The Solid ribbons will serve as a utility function and a security function.  Since the judicially challenged people of the court are (in this humble writer’s opinion) a commodity of the court a utility that passes through the courthouse.  This ribbon will be the holding cells, vertical circulation for those people, restrooms, and storage.

The lines themselves become a program specific element that can be defined for a specific use throughout the building.

Plan Diagrams

by JP Mays

These are the two typical plans of the upper floors of my design.  The courtrooms are double height, with restrooms stacked over the conference rooms below.  A main circulation zone runs between them, with an angled stair that punctures the facade as it increases in height, and two public elevators.  The in-custody elevator only serves one half of the courtrooms, so any criminal cases would need to be heard in those four.  There is also only one jury deliberation room per floor, which I now recognize is opposite that of the criminal courtrooms.  I will need resolve that issue as I refine these layouts.

 

Variance in privacy and promoting walkability

by workbymichelletodd

For the design of my courthouse, my approach has been different than my typical strategy. Instead of working in plan first, I worked in 3D form through modeling. Now that I have decided on a massing that seemed aesthetic and capture the essence of my idea, I have moved onto plan. Working in a reverse order from what I am used to has posed its challenges considering I want to remain as true as possible to the form I have developed, but because of programmatic reasons, the design is shifting slightly. While working with the programmatic spaces, I am trying to sort out the spaces by privacy. The greater the privacy needs, the higher the floor. To help carry the idea of walkability from the future urban plan into my courthouse, I am also trying to key in on the circulation of my building. With the introduction of a entrance volume that projects into the public realm of the sidewalk, passer-bys can be lured into the building, where they can access a kitchen that will provide jobs to the people who live around the courthouse. This kitchen will provide a space that allows people to interact with the building even if they are not there for legal purposes.

In these diagrams, the orange objects are courtrooms, the light blue spaces are jury deliberation rooms, the red is the circulation column, the yellow are the judge’s chambers, the light grey are support spaces and the dark blue is the kitchen. The image on the far right is a composite of all of the plans.

by pdgaither

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Over the past week one of the ideas I have been focusing on is putting my building in the site and how it should react with the immediate context and how it will reach out to the overall community. I will focus next on the development of the corner, and investigate how to make the court more inviting while also developing a connection with the flux space I am dealing with in my design and the community at large.

by pdgaither

This past Wednesday I attended the Charlotte Mecklenburg county courthouse. Getting there was a journey within itself. I probably drove around the blocks surrounding the courthouse at least twice before finding parking deck that was still a several minute walk from the courthouse itself. Upon arrival, I went into the building through a side entrance. I say side entrance because the main entrance is at the corner of the building. I entered the building and suddenly was at security. It was not implemented within the design of the building and was very close to the entrance. As a side note, when I was leaving, exiting the same way I entered, there were several people in line and the line extended out the door. Granted the exterior portion outside of the door was covered, I do not think that people should have to wait outside just to get into a building. Especially a building where in most cases they are trying to put something behind them and move on with that part of there lives.

The first set of cases that I witnessed were in criminal court. It was a very fast paced event. There was much more activity going on than I thought there would ever be. The observation area was almost completely full. There were lawyers sitting where the jury would be located in a jury trial, waiting for there case or cases, I assume. The criminal defense lawyer represented three or four people one after the other. I was not aware that this happened. She, the lawyer, had a rather large stack of folders in front of her and every time another person would come out of criminal holding, she would just take another folder off the stack and quickly familiarize herself with it. Although most all of the cases were for probation violation, that is still a lot of case work to go through.

I then visited family court. It was on the top level of the court which made sense due to most of the matters going on there would be of more of the personal type. There were paintings on the walls and places to sit outside of the courtrooms. With all of this false sense of security for the children I still felt very uncomfortable inside of that courtroom. It was the only trial that I saw witnesses called, and I thought that it was interesting, but just to think that a family was being separated right there in front of me was in many ways very unsettling. The father was representing himself and the mother had a lawyer. The kids were not not there but people from both sides were called out of the observation/seating area to state and claim how good the respective parents were to and with the kids. Overall, being in there was a good learning experience but I won’t be going back.

The final courtroom I visited was the civil court where at the time the judge was dealing with matters of broken leases and money that was due to the landlords or owners of the property. This was very fast paced. The judge would swear the people in, take a quick look at the lease, find out the amount owed, and just like that it was over almost before it started. There was very little debate from the people being charged. It was as if they new what they owed, but they just wanted to drag it out as long as possible before they had to give up their money.

Court was and wasn’t what I expected it to be. Obviously there was no high drama or enthusiastic questioning, that would have been mentioned, but as I had hoped, justice was being served and people were having ‘their day in court.’ With all that happens in the world around us it is good to know that at the heart of the judicial system, people are doing what they can to make things right. As one last side note, I unfortunately never saw or heard a gavel.