Barcelona Law Courts
Barcelona, Spain
Designer while at David Chipperfield Architects
Completed 2011 (Competition win 2002)
240,000sqm (2,582,000 sqft) NLA
The complex project involved working with the local architects, B720, to develop the strategy to collocate 17 inefficient buildings into one centralized facility now known as the City of Justice. Each independent, but connected, building forming the cluster of nine buildings represents the various sectors of the judicial courts system plus a forensic science building and two commercial office buildings for support firms and businesses. The nine architecturally constrained buildings intentionally do not reveal their internal function and are joined by a four storey communal central secure entry procedure plus retail amenity. I was involved in the benchmarking tours, planning, adjacencies, briefing and space planning for the cells, court rooms, judge’s offices, support offices, and visitor areas including base building core configuration and prisoner routes. The concept for the internal spaces was to keep the palette to a simple black and white materiality which is in contrast to the soft muted tones of the pigmented concrete colours.