Are Courthouses Male or Female? Designing for Inclusion: How Courthouse Design Affects Community Confidence in the Delivery of Justice

January 28
12:00 PM PT
75 minutes
Virtual event
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U.S. Magistrate Judge Celeste F. Bremer (IASD, Recall) and California architect Susan Oldroyd FAIA, will show how types of Courthouse interior and exterior designs and their art influence our understanding of the Court’s role in the community. They will identify features that you may no longer notice, but that represent barriers to the delivery of Equal Justice For All.

Do Courthouses read as Male or Female? How do implicit biases affect our impressions of whether a Courthouse provides safety, transparency, accessibility, reconciliation, or retribution? What messages about inclusion does your Courthouse design send to public and staff? The style, material, and layout of Courthouses signal that are they fortresses or welcoming spaces. Courthouses have been targets of recent social unrest. Can Courthouses provide communities with space for understanding how Justice is done, while engaging in civil discourse about change?

Courthouses represent community values such as stability and consistency; they are places of retribution and rehabilitation. Courthouse design should show society’s values of fairness and transparency, and allow for participation by all.  How we design, construct, and operate Courthouses sends a message to our communities about our values. Through Courthouse design and operation, can we be more intentional about the importance of the Rule of Law, and how the justice system operates?

Materials:

• Architecture of Gender by Jennifer Krichels