PARIS | New Courthouse | 525 FT / 160 M | 31 FLOORS

[spartida]

Originally Posted by Minato ku

NEW COURTHOUSE

Construction to start: mid 2013
Surface area: 88 500m²
Developer: Bouygues
Delivery: late 2016
Opening: 2017
Cost: 575M€

Here are the very first pictures of the new Courthouse of Paris, designed by Renzo Piano, that should be completed in 2016.

[babybackribs2314]

Covering something in glass doesn't make it any less monstrous. Paris deserves much better, this proposal is heinous IMO.

[mousquet]

^ We saw that rendering yesterday for the 1st time which disgusted most of us I guess.
I'd be extremely surprised and angry if that thing ever gets built as it is on that render.
Be sure most would feel the same over here.

@spartida: actually good idea to open a thread for that mess, we need it to be seen all over the place to ruin it.
¡ No pasarán !
damnit

[Busy Bee]

Very... authoritative?

Doesn't quite say French liberal democracy to me. I'd be scared to death if I had a court date there... maybe that is the point?

[mousquet]

What I meant is whether regional or national, the public authorities don't have unlimited budgets, and they're in fact excessively indebted these days over here. Ain't you aware of France's situation at the moment? It's kind of worrying. So I'd rather see the taxpayer money mainly allocated to pressing needs and priorities. Now a new and large annex of the historic courthouse in Paris seems indeed necessary, that's what everybody says. But they could at least have tried something both cheaper and more subtle. Cause this is... How should I say...?

Originally Posted by Busy Bee

Very... authoritative?

Doesn't quite say French liberal democracy to me. I'd be scared to death if I had a court date there... maybe that is the point?

That's just about it. It looks like the damn Supreme Soviet. A neat mid-rise complex may have been both cheaper and more friendly looking, but whatever. This is what we'll have in couple of years from now.

[Dream'n]

Maybe if they covered it in gingerbread?

I actually kind of like it.

[spartida]

[Misty2k]

Looks like a stack of freight containers to my eye.

[mousquet]

It doesn't look exciting - that's the least to say - but some give a fair explanation for that:
1 - the function of the building itself and the many constraints that it involves. It seems that one needs to be least familiar with courthouses to really be aware.
2 - the government budget at a time when it's facing serious debt and deficit.










Pictures from Marine Babonneau's twitter account and posted by mushroom on pss-archi.eu

Here's a video promoting the project, in French but the pictures are pretty well done and give some kind of clue.
Hope people over here won't hate it too much.

[Zerton]

It's not a very attractive building form. The details look nice. I guess par the course with Renzo Piano.

[mousquet]

This will be built. The government approved, tax payers will pay. The French brought this to their site.

• Video Link

Even the best glass ever seen wouldn't save it from its bulky boxy looks. They say it's needed anyway, the current Courthouse's too small or something.
Judges and lawyers won't be happy to move there though, because their current place is at the heart of the historic core.
Bah, they'll end up enjoying their views I guess, the close surroundings are just not the same.

[Kurtz]

Originally Posted by mousquet

This will be built. The government approved, tax payers will pay. The French brought this to their site.

• Video Link

Even the best glass ever seen wouldn't save it from its bulky boxy looks. They say it's needed anyway, the current Courthouse's too small or something.
Judges and lawyers won't be happy to move there though, because their current place is at the heart of the historic core.
Bah, they'll end up enjoying their views I guess, the close surroundings are just not the same.

We may have the same problem in Rome.
For almost a decade there was claims to build something like in paris far out the center of the city.
Currently there are different buildings in Rome for justice admin. all in center(not historic center, but near) in Prati.
Once they put out of the center of the city this kind of buildings will create more porblems than not.
The traffic i think in Rome like in Paris it is even more problematic when you go out from or into the core of the city at certain hours.

[Minato Ku]

This building is not far out of the center of Paris.
It is at 2.5km of the Arc de Triomphe, 4.4 km of Les Halles.
At Paris scale, this area is still inside the dense core, the 17 arrondissement has 30,000 inh/km² and Clichy on the other side has 19,000 inh/km².
The area is served by the metro line 13, the RER C and the line 14 by 2019.

[Kurtz]

Thank you for the info

[The North One]

Originally Posted by Minato Ku

This building is not far out of the center of Paris.
It is at 2.5km of the Arc de Triomphe, 4.4 km of Les Halles.

Wow, I didn't realize it was so close to La Place de L'Étoile.

[babou95]

Very great !!!!

[LMich]

Mousquet,

Do you have any photos of the existing courthouse? Exactly which courts will be included, here (national, regional, departmental, communal)? I'm not familiar with the layout of the French judicial system.

The material could work, and the vegetation is a nice added touch, but it's almost entirely negated by the horrible massing, and this may be one of the few times you her me say that something is too tall. BTW, where is this in Paris?

[mousquet]

Hi,

Well, the Courthouse is currently on the Île de la Cité. It's a pretty large complex of historic structures, some from the medieval era (it includes the Sainte-Chapelle and the Conciergerie), covering a third of the Île de la Cité.
These from Wiki might remind you of the site.

Originally Posted by Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palais_de_Justice,_Paris

Although it's something large, everybody says it's no longer convenient the way it is. They need something different, modern, maybe even larger and easier to maintain. So the new thing will be located at les Batignolles that's in the 17th arrondissement on the edge of the city, neighboring the suburban town of Clichy. It's not a bad neighborhood, but people who've worked in the old Cité for long will have the blues for a while.

In fact, from looking at the renderings, people have been raising the question to know whether a high-rise building is proper to a Courthouse. That's no regular office building at all, there are some peculiar functional constraints that explain the awkward massing. However (and thankfully), the building won't sit there as a massive fence between Paris and its neighboring suburb. Its orientation will make it easier to look at from Clichy and from the city center, whereas people living on either side of it will have to deal with the huge bulk in their views. Quite strangely, no one would complain in the neighborhood, they're okay with it. Voilà.

EDIT: I forgot to say what's in the courthouse, which would have made the actual needs clearer to myself.

The courthouse of the Île de la Cité includes:

- The Court of Cassation that's the highest national jurisdiction, like a counterpart of the US Supreme Court to some extent.
- The Court of Appeal of Paris that's a regional jurisdiction, still quite busy, needs more room.
- The superior courts (Tribunal de Grande Instance) of Paris that's only communal and yet the busiest jurisdiction of the entire country, needs more room.
- The bar association headquarters.

A few other things, some related services. The police division assigned to the judicial services isn't within the courthouse complex proper, but in a neighboring building.

So only the superior courts and the police will move from the Cité to the Batignolles. They'll be joined there by the lower courts that have been scattered all over the city so far, that is to say each of 20 arrondissements has a lower court that will move to the Batignolles.

The Court of Cassation and the Court of Appeal will actually remain in the Cité's old courthouse. They'll be joined by the courts in charge of the employment law (Conseil de prud'hommes) and the regional annex of the National School for the Judiciary based in Bordeaux.

This is all about making more room to the various jurisdictions that have been cramped. We've heard of that situation for long in the media from time to time, it's nothing new.

[LMich]

I had a brain fart. Of course it is the Palais de Justice. I'd even visited the Ile de la Cite, specifically the Sainte-Chapelle and Notre Dame.

Thanks for the information. So, basically, this is a local courthouse for Paris, and not a national courts building. BTW, as I'm sure you know, a lot of municipal and county courts here in the States are housed in towers even less aesthetically pleasing, for instance, here is the courts building in my hometown of Detroit (to the left):


IMG_1822 A by markh0421, on Flickr

So this isn't horrible, but they could have done better with the massing.

[mousquet]

^ Right. Some people swear it was possible to spare us from those superimposed bars. It seems the designers focused on providing as much daylight as possible to the inside. That's been stressed in a French video promoting the project.

Since we're in high-rise courthouses, I like this a lot in New York:

Originally Posted by Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thurgoo...tes_Courthouse

That's not only some pretty neoclassical, the massing is fair too. But I'm not sure it would even be large enough for what's required in this case.