Making News Again in Jackson
The Southeast Sunbelt Region's new United States Courthouse in Jackson, Mississippi has won another award! The building, dedicated October 14, 2011, has just been named the Best Justice and Correctional Structure by the Precast/Prestressed Concrete Institute (PCI) in their 2012 Design Awards. With a need to meet a variety of federal security standards while providing an impressive aesthetic design, designers clad the exterior with two-story precast concrete architectural panels that also helped reduce costs. According to one judge, the articulation of the exterior surface was a key reason this project was chosen. Using architectural precast panels in non-traditional ways (such as the distinctive shiplap detail) is very attractive while being highly functional and efficient. (See PCI’s award site for more details)
The project team, ably led by Laura Shadix, is justifiably proud of all their accomplishments. In addition to the building winning the recent PCI award, the Courthouse also achieved the American Institute of Architects Academy of Architecture for Justice (AIA AAJ) Certificate of Merit in November 2011 for demonstrating quality of form, functionality and current architectural response to complex justice design issues. Combined with energy-efficient building systems, these and other features will help to earn the building an anticipated LEED-NC Silver Rating for environmentally sustainable building design, construction and operation. Moreover, the building is also positioned to attain an Energy Star Award, currently operating at 35,000 BTUs / square foot.
In 2004, the U.S. General Services Administration completed its acquisition of approximately 5 acres of property comprising two city blocks for the design and construction of a new federal courthouse to accommodate the growing space needs of the United States District Court in the Southern District of Mississippi. The resultant newly constructed building contains just under 400,000 gross square feet which includes two levels of secured parking below grade and provides space for the United States District Court, United States Court of Appeals, United States Bankruptcy Court, United States Probation Office, United States Marshals Service, United States Attorney, Senator Roger Wicker, United States Trustee and General Services Administration. The design of the Courthouse by H3 Hardy Collaboration Architecture (H3) invites the citizens of Jackson to a judicial "village" which expresses the internal workings of the American courthouse. Set on axis with the State Capitol's Beaux Arts profile seven blocks to the north, the courthouse's east and west towers surround an inverted, open-air rotunda plaza that becomes a monumental exterior room and draws the terminus of Congress Street into the heart of the building. The courthouse provides a modern counterpoint to the neo-classical architecture of the treasured and historic State Capitol.
The site design integrates landscape berms that hearken to Native American mounds indigenous to Mississippi. In addition to providing a secure perimeter for the courthouse, the landscape berms direct visitors under a dramatic aluminum trellis in to an integrated entry pavilion. On the interior, visitors follow a monumental ramp to the main lobby on the second level - an entry sequence reminiscent of the "piano nobile" which distinguished Italian Renaissance architecture. Two individual structures house multiple components of the facility within each tower. The east tower serves the District and Circuit Judges and the west tower serves the Magistrate and Bankruptcy Judges. The building's twelve stacked courtrooms are wrapped in curving walls, day-lit by clerestory windows, and revealed to the exterior through glass boxes that extend from the pre-cast exterior cladding.
Note: The building was also featured in an article entitled Judging BIM, in the March, 2011 issue of Civil Engineering Magazine.
