Description

The Civil Justice Centre is a flamboyant building and has been compared to ‘a huge filing cabinet’ with a series of glass drawers randomly pulled out at either end of the steel clad core. 

Interior layout

The building houses 47 courtrooms in 34,000m2 of floor space over 10 storeys (some of which are double height) .  Facilities are split into three main elements:

• public gathering and circulation spaces
• courtrooms
• private offices and judges chambers.

The elements are arranged linearly, moving from the public spaces through the courtrooms to the private chambers, and the plan avoids complicated circulation routes.

Urban context

The centre has a prominent position in Spinningfields, a large mixed use development.  It has a narrow rectangular plan occupying one edge of a triangular site.  The remainder of the plot has a public garden establishing the centre’s civic identity.  The main entrance is accessed from a small public square accessed from Bridge Street, a major thoroughfare connecting the twin cities of Manchester and Salford.

Public atrium

A small foyer is used for security checks which leads to a large atrium space, the main public hub of the building.  The atrium extends along the full height of the building and across the whole of the western façade.  The longest double skin glass wall in Europe allows natural light to permeate the space and provides a visual connection to the city beyond.

Access to the courts and offices is through a series of lifts, opening onto internal balconies that run the length of the building and overlook the atrium. A series of pods protrude into the atrium space randomly, housing most of the meeting and conference rooms required by the brief.  The pods break up the overall height of the space, allowing light to filter through but masking the scale of the atrium. 

A range of courtrooms

The eastern half of the linear plan houses the courtrooms and administrative offices.  The courts provide four different sizes and a range of layouts for different types of hearings, occupying the  central portion of the façade and forming the steel core of the elevation.  A glazed curtain wall is screened internally by powder-coated mesh panels and perforated by small openings.  The grey steel extends the full height of the building and provides an anchor to cantilever the glass ‘drawers’.

Contemporary colour scheme

The white walls and grey steel of the internal fittings contrast with the natural timber in the courtrooms and offices.  The neutral colour scheme is highlighted by yellows, ranging from pale creams to acidic lemon shades in the cantilevered drawers and atrium pods.

Sustainable design

The centre has a number of sustainable features:

• maximises the use of natural lighting and ventilation
• open circulation benefits from daylight from the glazed atrium
• light from the atrium is channelled into the courtrooms
• ‘wind scoops’ circulate air through the building, discharging it to the east
• a system of boreholes supply water
• steel mesh shields the naturally ventilated offices on the eastern side of the building.