Overview
Walter P Moore is providing structural engineering and secure design/blast engineering services for this new U.S. Courthouse, a GSA Design Excellence Project.
The design for the new U.S. Courthouse in Greenville, Mississippi is founded in the spatial and sequence traditions established by Thomas Jefferson in early American court and institutional architecture and responds to the mandate of the “Guiding Principles for Federal Architecture,” written by Daniel Patrick Moynihan in 1962. Moynihan instructs federal architecture to look forward and lead with the “finest contemporary American architectural thought…” and to ”…provide efficient and economical facilities…” that “…provide visual testimony to the dignity, enterprise, vigor, and stability of the American Government.”
The project composition has two parts: a long, three-story office building to the south and the courtroom structure, pulled out of the center of the building and set in a civic garden to the north. The office building is characterized by repetitive natural light lenses that invite reflected and indirect light into the interior while limiting the heat and glare of the hot southern sun. The courtroom structure is an inviting figure. Its stacked, shapely, wood-clad courtrooms are visible and veiled by a faceted glass outer skin that is alive in the ever-changing light and weather of each day. The courts become part of the community and open to an ongoing public conversation on the nature and workings of justice.
Mississippi Business Journal Article
“The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) has approved the design concept for the new U.S. Courthouse in Greenville. The building will provide a much-needed new court facility for the Northern District of Mississippi and will stimulate economic development in the community.
Located at the northern edge of Greenville’s historic district on Washington Avenue, the new functional, secure, and modern building will house the United States Fifth Circuit District and Magistrate Courts, the United States Marshals Service, the United States Probation Office, the GSA Public Buildings Service, the United States Attorney’s Office, and trial preparation space for the federal public defender. The new building is designed to be energy efficient and to achieve LEED Gold and SITES Silver sustainability certifications. Construction is planned to start in mid-2020 with completion in 2022.”
Project Team
The project is led by Jackson, Mississippi-based architectural firm, Duvall Decker Architects. The co-lead designers are Roy T. Decker, FAIA of Duvall Decker and Steve Dumez, FAIA of Eskew Dumez Ripple. Duvall Decker is assisted by a team of consultants including Eskew Dumez Ripple, Dewberry Architects with Michael LeBoeuf, FAIA, Engineering Resource Group, Inc., Walter P Moore, Newcomb & Boyd, W.L. Burle Engineers, Andropogon, M.A.+ Associates, and Michael Fazio, Ph.D.
