When it opened in 2008, the loftily named Bronx Hall of Justice was billed as the crown jewel of New York’s court system — the biggest courthouse in the state, sheathed in glass and housing enough courtrooms to handle dozens of criminal and civil cases each day.
All these years later, the verdict is that it’s more like a broken-down jalopy.
— The City
Numerous problems including flooding, failed fire alarms, shattered glass windows that appear out of nowhere, and floor collapses stemming from a built-over underground stream have befallen the Rafael Viñoly-designed Bronx Hall of Justice for more than a decade. The courthouse building has still not been granted its official certificate of occupancy by the city’s Department of Buildings, although an official with the agency did make it clear the building was safe and that the process will be completed as soon as five “mostly minor” code violations are addressed.
Until then, the DOB has to continue issuing 90-day temporary certificates, the most recent of which expired on New Year’s Eve. The only thing holding up this end of things is a dispute between the federal Office of Court Administration (OCA), which keeps an office in the building, and the city, on whom the OCA claims the sole responsibility for repairs falls.
“Our history with this building goes back to its opening. While it is architecturally striking, the shoddy construction and ongoing maintenance issues are problematic,” OCA spokesperson Lucian Chalfen told The City. “New York City is responsible for maintenance, and we hold them to account.”
8 Comments
Always amazed at how much prestigious work Vinoly continues to get despite the numerous problems his projects face, from the Kimmel Center to 432 and now this.
prestigious work tends to be expensive and delicate though. no one buys a lamborghini thinking they're paying for an unusually durable low maintenance car that rides smoothly on rough roads.
also the points made in the article seem like a mix of ordinary maintenance issues and things that aren't even construction problems (contractors disabled the fire alarms and forgot to turn them back on)
also... it was built ten years ago. it's not a new building. buildings don't perform better with age. we just expect less of them.
Not to mention the walkie-scorchie and Vdara!
Everyone likes to stomp on Viñoly, but in this case the liability seems far from clear. Sorry workmanship same maintenance issues are hardly an architect's responsibility.
Public work projects are a hit or miss with the GC. Since many RFP requirements for public works require the lowest Bid GC to be selected, they often times have a problematic (and sometimes controversial / corrupt) relationship both with the city and for the Architect. This particular project seems like poor workmanship from the GC and subs.
We once worked with a GC who NEVER had prior experience in PT Concrete buildings and our proposed design and structure was a PT concrete system. How they got the job, we did not know until the middle of the project we discovered that the GC basically had their hands in the Mayor's pockets.
The CA experience was a nightmare. Many change orders because they would miss the penetrations for HVAC ducts through the slab, meaning they needed to use GPR about 7 times on three sperate occasions, one of the times they had to cut one of the tendons and re-tension. It was horrible.
I do think however, it is the responsibility of the Architect to make the representation of your design intent on your CD as simple and as clear as possible. If you think you have dumbed it down, guaranteed you can dumb it down further for the GC and subs to understand. Obviously it's not like this in the rest of the world, but the US is so highly litigious that many GC's do not want to take the initiative of reading the drawings and architects don't want to dumb down the drawings because they don't want to face any liability of a faulty detail.
i get annoyed by these "fancy architects are so bad" writings. the linked article contains no news and provides no insight into anything. it's merely a list of complaints and ordinary maintenance issues, plus some random commentary on unrelated issues in other buildings... on a building opened a decade ago.
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