DOLMEN, A MAGISTRATES'COURT
La Louvière 1999
Belgium
“A place in suspension between law and moral like a human question mark over the validity justice”
A SPACE TO THINK PHILOSOPHICALLY ABOUT JUSTICE
Justice is an axiological horizon that makes our acts sensible. It also manages our life in society by prescribing to people respect for others. This horizon is a paradoxical interface between the spirit of law and moral conscience. So justice acting as society controller has to be distinguished from justice acting as yearning and ideal of the just man or who wants to become just : this latest quality restores harmony in man who controls himself and becomes free because self-possessed (Plato, The Republic). “Justice-institution” tries to apply at best a law but as the law is general and as cases to judge are always peculiar, it can’t make provision for all cases. To general laws corresponds an always singular reality. Law needs “rider”, namely equity (Aristotle, Ethic to Nicomaque). From that time on justice privileges spirit on the letter of the law.
This duality will conceptually show a physically contracted place between a frame in suspension and a flashing stretch of water put on the ground, like underlying the objectivity of the political institution on the one hand and the virtue of the conscience on the other. In this metaphysical space the just man wonders about the quality of justice and about the virtue of the one who establishes this order. He acts in accordance with a rule and adjusts it in order to contribute to his own happiness.
Finally the mirror of justice looking for herself will expand this “tension-matter” through a sensitive space enumerating within itself the three philosophical questions that seem fundamental to me : the executive will tackle the question whether justice really exists, the emptiness will suggest a reflection on nature and the pathway will wonder about the way we have to follow it.
A STRONG POLICY TO ESTABLISH THE PROJECT
Place as founder of civic life and State dignity, the future law court will be established in the centre of the block’s openings towards the city park which encloses it. From then on, the architect will shoulder the overwhelming responsibility to make democracy sensitive : the Rule of Law must be represented. We must give the citizens the chance to identify themselves with their justice through a place that is a stage, a temple and a forum at the same time. Although architecture is first of all the man’s vision, the city of La Louvière, a poor town, must allow its citizens and its judicial power’s actors to regain confidence and pride thanks to a moderner and closer of jusice architectural expression which once more finds the way to consideration and security. Our society which tries desperately to make its actions sensible has to find it in these buildings that house their daily debates, namely their permanent gestations.
On the other hand, as the Buildings Administration has decided to build the new magistrates’ court in the town park, a few yards away from the current building, the basic concept is to give the new building (future social actor) the possibility to do its first job : to provide a service to the citizens. Indeed with an area of 1000 square metres, i.e. one fifth of the total surface of the public park, it is obvious that the new magistrates’ court must be raised on a base : an hypostyle room will free the view and will be a welcoming room and a meeting place for the public and the representatives of Justice. Furthermore the park will be no longer enclosed in a way which at present ensures tranquillity for the judicial power and cuts it off from citizens.
Justice today needs unity. So this raising of the future building makes it possible to answer clearly and obviously the two questions asked by the Buildings Administration (to build a new magistrates’ court and to give a landscaped nature back to the park).
The face of Justice is changing and its sole power lies in adaptation…
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