Justice Architecture

Custom courts call for special design

By Ed Brock
1 December 2007
American City & County

A problem-solving court should have a different atmosphere from a traditional court, says Frank Greene, chair of the advisory group for the national American Institute of Architects' Academy of Architecture for Justice. While traditional courts often are designed with images of authority and power, such as a towering bench for the judge and sterile, security-minded décor, alternative courts must be more open and inviting to encourage cooperation by defendants passing through the system, he says.

New York's Midtown Community Court and Brooklyn's Red Hook Community Court are new examples of the specialized courthouse design model, says Julius Lang with the Center for Court Innovation (CCI), a New York-based non-profit agency that serves as a de facto research arm for the city's court system. “In the case of these two courts, the problems we were studying were how to deal more constructively with low-level crime and also how to address the fact that public confidence in the court system was lower than our chief judge feels is appropriate,” says Lang, who previously managed the Midtown court for several years.....