Celebrating the Courthouse: A Guide for Architects, Their Clients, and the Public

Illuminates the issues that must be addressed in designing a suitable and successful courthouse.

There are almost as many ways to design a good courthouse as one that is less than satisfactory. Celebrating the Courthouse illuminates, for the diverse professionals and laypeople who plan and create courthouses, the issues that must be addressed to achieve an effective and satisfying building. This book unites the skills and experience of architects, judges, administrators, and lawyer-users to guide the design of a complex building type. No attempt is made to prescribe a particular program for any model courthouse project. We live in too diverse a design world for that: courthouse programs are specific and distinct from one another. Rather, the distinguished contributors lay out a variety of solutions that can help solve the problems confronted in particular settings. Considering historical precedent, context, functional requirements, and public and client needs, they focus on the best practices in design and also upon some design failures, addressing the pitfalls presented by courthouse programs, which are among the most complex that architects face. Finally, they look at the technological revolution and the future of courthouse design.

Steven Flanders, a consultant in court administration, lives in Pelham, New York.