extension of the public space. From this
mineral thickness, the floor emerges
among the two new courtrooms, fully clad
in a metal “drape” consisting of perforated
stainless steel folded sheets. Between the
two, air, emptiness and transparency on the
Scarpe and the Pollinchove Palace, former
parliament of Flanders in 1714. The volume
of the new courtrooms is the privileged
place of judicial dramaturgy. We wanted to
bathe them with light, managing to surround
them with glazing on their perimeter.
The main idea is to highlight this sensation
of progressive discovery and earthly
anchorage of this mineral court of justice.
Placed in order to preserve the
confidentiality, the windows allow
nevertheless to make present the external
reality in order to prohibit the theatrical
simulation or the anxiety related to the
dark rooms where the litigant could feel
condemned before even being judged.
The floor of the Salle des pas perdus, a
metaphor for a natural landscape dug by the
water, reveals a wealth hidden in its base.
Two worlds coexist the one above and the
one below.
Two universes and two materialities, the
mineral and the metallic, the smooth and
the pleated, the matt and the brilliant. This
duality puts in tension voids, hollows and
offers great spatial quality. The staging of
the river and wants to make this Palace its
exceptional character by placing in its heart
its natural and built heritage that represents
the Scarpe and Pollinchove Palace.
Our project was finally built in response
to the surrounding landscape. It is the
revealer, the crossroads of the various
constituent elements of the site. This
staging of a rational and very precise
approach of the uses in all the dimensions
of the project generates a building born
from the hybridization of all the urban
and programmatic parameters. A point
of contact and exchange... a real public
building.
www.hamonic-masson.com
The section thus set up tells the main idea
of the project. A true horizontal break,
the new building lifts and visually links
the elements of the program with the
surrounding environment and sculpts the
void to revitalize the public space. The
mineral base, a real urban anchorage on
the ground of the city, comes to enclose
the buildings and installs coherence
between the extension and the existing
one. This “active stand”, which includes the
existing building, allows to accompany the
pedestrian and thus define a human scale.
The hall of lost steps is a direct visual
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