• The structural order as reference to the brutalist utopias has marked the proposal for this institutional building.
• It is designed on two basic grids that are site driven, one linking it to its immediate context and the second to the larger context of Doha.

Madrid, 22nd January 2015- The proposal developed by AGi architects for the Qatar Courthouse restricted competition, organized by the Qatar Government, has been awarded second prize.

More than 30 design teams submitted their projects to this restricted invitation to tender organized in November 2014 and only four were shortlisted. The final decision on the winning project has been announced this week.

“We are very pleased to have reached the final stage of the competition and being able to transfer to our design proposal all the values and responses that an institutional program of this scope requires”, said Joaquín Perez-Goicoechea, partner and co-founder of AGi architects along with  Nasser Abulhasan.

Qatar Courthouse, AGi architects – Competition – Second Prize

Order is one of the core principles in which the AGi architects’ proposal for this institutional building is based. Order as synonymous with structure, law and justice. The building is designed on two basic grids that are site driven, one linking it to its immediate context and the second to the larger context of Doha. These grids create stunning structural and spatial possibilities that make the building stand out visually so that people can see their ideals reflected in built form -structure, order, transparency, ambition- all of which are the ideals of Qatar’s growing society. 

The project brief contained a dense program that would occupy only 40% of the site, which would yield a type of vertical structure. This verticality however in the context of modern day Doha does not read as institutional. We sought to expand the ground plane across the entirety of the site, creating a public plaza and in doing so altering the proportion of the building. Floating above the plaza is the main structure carrying the central courtrooms, signifying that the law is above everyone. These subtle gestures ensure that the plaza act as a threshold between society at large and the justice system, making the Qatar Court House an open and welcoming building, rather than an ominous, insular one.