Schmidt Hammer Lassen complete the International Criminal Court
![Schmidt Hammer Lassen’s design for the International Criminal Court. Different sized block shaped buildings with trees in front of them.](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/TpS9FVdqH9KhNJPYq7JKHd-415-80.jpg)
Five years after Schmidt Hammer Lassen (SHL) beat 170 other applications to win a global design competition in 2010, the International Criminal Court (ICC) is set to move into their newly completed permanent premises in The Hague. The Danish firm's design was selected for its response to a somewhat contradictory set of goals and values: to be grand and formal enough to instill a sense of respect in the court and faith in the justice process as a whole, yet also able to communicate trust, transparency and hope; and to create an 'open' building that was physically welcoming while meeting some of the world's most stringent security measures.
Providing 54,000 sq m of floor space across six buildings, the site is connected by a first floor that spans the entire length of all six buildings, tying them together from the inside and out. Five office towers provide work areas for up to 1,200 staff, while the distinctive green wall façade of the central tower is home to three court rooms, media briefing room, holding cells and various meeting rooms for judges, defendants, victims, witnesses and their families. Through a warren of hallways and doors, each party in a case has separate and secured access to each courtroom.
Each office tower is clad in angled and offset glass panels that reflect light in different ways, creating a patchwork effect or 'gridded tapestry' in SHL's parlance. A moat-style water feature provides required setback from street-level for security measures, while the striking, mirror-perfect reflection formed on the water's surface creates an approach to the building that's simultaneously striking and calming. Given the grave subject matter of many ICC hearings and the trauma that witnesses will often have been through, facilitating a positive psychology for its users was a fundamental design consideration, asserts SHL Project Director, Denis Olette.
Public areas include a viewing gallery area of courtrooms, along with café, exhibition space and two outdoor courtyard areas. Both SHL and the ICC are very eager to promote the court's new permanent home as a space that's open to all.
The project needed to feel grand but also ’open’, as it is meant to symbolise trust, transparency and hope
The complex provides 54,000 sqm of floor space across six buildings
Five office towers provide work areas for up to 1200 staff...
...while the scheme also allows ample space for three court rooms, a media briefing room, holding cells and various meeting rooms for judges, defendants, victims, witnesses and their families
Public areas include a viewing gallery area of courtrooms, along with café, exhibition space and two outdoor courtyard areas
INFORMATION
For more information on the architects visit the website.
Photography: Hufton + Crow.
Wallpaper* Newsletter + Free Download
For a free digital copy of August Wallpaper*, celebrating Creative America, sign up today to receive our daily digest of inspiration, escapism and design stories
-
Take off: Mathieu Lehanneur's Olympic Cauldron rises into the Parisian night sky
The Paris 2024 Olympics’ opening ceremony was closed with a soaring cauldron spectacle that will go down in history
By Hugo Macdonald Published
-
Phaidon’s new Graphic Classics is a lavish greatest hits of graphic design
Graphic Classics is a compendium of seven centuries of visual culture, from the everyday and ephemeral to visionary works that reshaped our world
By Jonathan Bell Published
-
Birley Chocolate hits the sweet ’n’ chic spot in London’s Chelsea
The new Birley Chocolate shop, a sibling to Birley Bakery, is a confection of colour as delicious as its finely crafted goods
By Melina Keays Published
-
A redesigned Aarhus showroom reinterprets Danish history through modern context
Danish architecture studio Djernes & Bell transforms the Aarhus showroom for Dinesen and Garde Hvalsøe by blending old and new
By Tianna Williams Published
-
Minimalist Heatherhill Beach house was conceived with an 'essentialist mindset'
Heatherhill Beach house by Norm Architects in Denmark's Vejby is designed as a minimalist retreat conceived with an 'essentialist mindset'
By Ellie Stathaki Published
-
3XN exhibition in Copenhagen discusses architecture through our senses
3XN exhibition 'Aware: Architecture and Senses' opens its doors at the Danish Architecture Center in Copenhagen
By Ellie Stathaki Published
-
The Opera Park in Copenhagen is an urban green island where ‘nature comes first’
The Opera Park creates a new urban green lung near Copenhagen's fast-developing Paper Island district, courtesy of Danish architecture studio Cobe
By Ellie Stathaki Published
-
Cave Bureau uses geology to refocus and understand the relationship between architecture and nature
Cave Bureau’s exhibition at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art opens in Denmark, marking the latest – and last – entry in the gallery's The Architecture Studio series
By Marwa El Mubark Published
-
Nordic architecture explored in Share, a book about contemporary building
Discussions about Nordic architecture and contemporary practice meet in a new book by Artifice, Share: Conversations about Contemporary Architecture – The Nordic Countries
By Ellie Stathaki Published
-
BIG’s Refugee Museum of Denmark addresses ‘one of the world’s greatest challenges’
BIG has converted and extended buildings at a Second World War Danish refugee camp to create the new Refugee Museum of Denmark
By Hannah Silver Last updated
-
Aalborg’s Utzon Center exhibition celebrates the Danish holiday home
A new exhibition at the Utzon Center in Aalborg, Denmark, titled ‘Holiday Home’, focuses on the iconic Danish sommerhus
By Jonathan Bell Last updated