Yet the courthouse reveals the limits of what architecture can do. Its spatial clarity and sedulous details don’t resolve some issues with where it is placed. This is a spectacular execution of a flawed recipe. [...]
Then there is a larger question: Is a centralized courthouse a good idea in the first place?
— The Globe and Mail
The Globe and Mail architecture critic Alex Bozikovic reviews the massive new RPBW and NORR-designed Ontario Court of Justice project, calling it characteristically calm, natural, and “friendlier” than other contemporary North American courthouse designs owing to a well-articulated “European attitude to justice.”
Its site opposite Toronto’s spectacular City Hall from 1965 is the largest foil to Piano’s first Canadian design, he argues. The project was completed in March and offers a consolidation of six smaller facilities that expands access to court services, proponents maintain over the protests of attorney associations like the Society of United Professionals. Here it becomes obvious, Bozicovic reminds us, that "design can’t fix everything."
4 Comments
RPBW does not decide what gets built - not for any client, be it a government or developer. That decision had already been made way before the architects are hired.
In rare cases, architects do have the ear of the powers in charge - Heatherwick seducing Diller with Little Island for instance, or a starchitect impressing a starry-eyed client with a swoosh of his or her napkin sketch - but even then, architects simply do not wield the levers of power or finance to will buildings into existence. They don't even get to decide on programming. Choosing panel colors and glazing amounts - now that's in the wheelhouse of the designer.
Architects who do want to will buildings into existance tend to become developers or policymakers, which entail skillsets totally different from a designer's. John Portman had a specific vision of a new kind of downtown. When he couldn't find anyone to finance this vision, he took it upon himself to learn the trade of a developer and build those visions himself.
As for a courthouse ... maybe the architect is better off working for the Ontario government's public works department.
True monosierra, However as the article says this is a design/build/maintain contract. The architect has an apparently important role in this project. The client (Ontario gov) set some incorrect requirements that were not resolved, as the article points out. But in this case I dont think it is correct to say that the architect is passively translating the ideas of a disconnected client. One of Alex's points seems to be that even when the architect is as involved as they are in this case they still dont have the power to do important things correctly. We are always purveyors of compromise of one kind or another. That's pretty interesting comment on human behavior and the things we build...
73 courtrooms—I'm trying to imagine the traffic in that friendly atrium. At any rate, it will take a beating. Justice should be durable.
I'm also trying to imagine the impression the citizens of Toronto will have of law and order as they pass by the windows and look in and see the continual rising procession of lawyers and the accused, then look up some 20 stories.
I'm assuming they have solved the problem of parking for the jurors, etc.
it's a strange quiet street. tbh. Considering the weight of its purpose, and of all the buildings in the district, most of them are oddly disquiet with a strange relationship to the street and neighborhood. Almost like a drive through restaurant, wilfully disconnected from location. My opinion as a recent resident/visitor to Toronto is that the 1960s city hall is a big part of the problem, with its solid concrete exterior (all glazing is on the interior face of arched slabs only) and ungainly podium. It is a monumental building with some charm from the right angle - and in the winter the skating rink is brilliant. But as a whole it sets a poor table for itself and others around it.
Piano's building does the opposite and has a reasonable and nice street presence, and thankfully a little bit of color, though that is unfortunately suppressed from any distance.
Alex's conclusion that architecture cannot solve everything seems to be about the political and practical. I would add to the list the building's inability to make a streetscape of this needed social monument. It moves in the right direction, but awaits a future where more of the environment is transformed. It could fit in quite well to that future, and in the meantime it is perhaps handsome enough.
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