What should a 21st-century courthouse look like? For a new federal courthouse in downtown Los Angeles, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) decided it should be glass-clad and light-filled to evoke the transparency of the rule of law, while also emphasizing a civic duty to sustainability.
Completed in 2016, the 633,000-square-foot cube sits on the side of a gently sloping hill a few blocks from the Walt Disney Concert Hall. Early on, says José Palacios, AIA, a design director at SOM, both the architects and their client, the federal government’s General Services Administration (GSA), knew they wanted to utilize as much glass as possible to emphasize the democratic openness of the judiciary system and to allow as much light as possible into the 10-story tower’s 24 courtrooms…
Mandatory and Encouraged Metrics, New United States Courthouse in Los Angeles: