This complex of law courts embraces its role as a hinge between the historical heart of the city and the neighborhood of San Cristobal, a prototype of modern urban planning in the 1960s.
The architects wanted the organization of the structure to respect and enhance the skyline of this part of the city rather than create an excessively strong or imposed image.
A skin envelops the building in a zig-zag rhythm, variable shoots and outgrowths reducing the scale, adapting to a residential setting of varying heights. Seen from a distance, the building´s exterior reflects the flow of people. The interior street and panoramic lifts render the continual coming and going of visitors visible from nearby Avenida Maritima.
Looking toward the old town, a large cantilever makes a welcoming gesture to the people entering inside. On the interior, a wide glazed street acts as a continuation of the urban space, its rhythm marked by landscaped patios that provide natural light and ventilation to the ground floor. The functioning structure is more like that of a city than of a single building, its interior street providing access to the vertical communications system serving each of the judicial buildings.
The end goal was to achieve a balanced, austere image, a white crystalline building that symbolizes truth and justice, without renouncing its representative character — close to the citizens, but maintaining a respectful distance from the institution. It is the pursuit of a forthright but fragmented image, transparent and opaque, and horizontal and vertical, hence the proposed motto: “one is many.” It is a communal building that contains others, intimately linked, but also a concept: the acceptance of diversity and multiplicity, understanding that “one is indeed one and many at the same time” (from the Metapolis Dictionary).
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