Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) has completed the $350-million new Federal Courthouse building Los Angeles, California. The new federal courthouse proposes a strong civic presence rooted in classic principles. The design features an innovative structural engineering concept that allows the cubic volume to “float” over a stone base while being one of the nation’s safest buildings.

The 633,000-square-foot facility contains 24 courtrooms and 32 judges’ chambers. The building is designed to achieve LEED® Platinum certification, with sustainable features such as a serrated facade that maximizes views yet also reduces solar heat gain by nearly 50 percent. SOM’s design for the courthouse optimizes workflow and promotes efficient operations and maintenance.

The architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne from Los Angeles Times, now reviewed the building by taking a closer look inside of the L.A. Federal Courthouse and Hawthorne mentions that ''now that the building is finally complete, with judges moving in this month, the delay is somewhat easier to overlook. The $350-million, 633,000-square-foot courthouse, designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, is an unusually polished work of civic architecture — especially by the standards of Los Angeles, where well-wrought public buildings have been comparatively rare in recent decades.'' 

''This is a building that wants to look respectable and rational but not staid, one that is fairly conventional on the horizontal plane and takes a significant if measured chance on the vertical one. Still, it’s a chance that pays off. The other gesture of clever accommodation in SOM’s design is a response to geography instead of topography, the map instead of the slope. It comes in the triangular glass forms that make up the building’s unusual serrated skin.''........Continue Reading

All images courtesy of SOM

> via LA Times