OMA dresses faceted French courthouse in coloured glass

Dutch studio OMA has completed the Palais de Justice de Lille, a six-sided law court in northern France with a faceted facade lined with coloured glass.

Located in Lille, the project was commissioned by the Ministry of Justice to host the city’s high and district courts.

Palais de Justice de Lille occupies a verdant landscape adjacent to a star-shaped fortification, built in 1667 by the French military engineer Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban.

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OMA’s design has a pointy, hexagonal form, with each elevation finished in coloured glass, intended to mimic this fortress.

The Palais de Justice de Lille is arranged in three volumes, accessed via a publicly accessible base.

Its first volume is a plinth that holds the major courtrooms, from which a triangular central tower containing minor courtrooms extends. Above, a faceted ring of offices surrounds the tower, which helps draw light into the building.

According to OMA, each volume has “its own material expression and spatial character, reinforcing clarity and orientation throughout the complex”.

However, they are unified by light finishes and furnishings, and an ambition to feel welcoming and “free of the intimidation”, it added.

Completing the Palais de Justice de Lille is a series of outdoor spaces, distributed across its three volumes.

This includes a public plaza at ground level and a roof garden overlooking the city.

OMA, officially known as Office for Metropolitan Architecture, was founded in 1975 in Rotterdam. It won a competition to design the courthouse in 2018 and was originally due to complete the project in 2023.

The studio’s other recent projects include an affordable housing development in San Francisco and a pyramidal building in Hangzhou designed as a “three-dimensional village”.

Other law courts featured on Dezeen include one in Toronto by Renzo Piano Building Workshop that aims to display “the identity and values of a modern justice institution” and a 10-storey federal courthouse by SOM currently under development in Florida.