99% Invisible - 99% Invisible-39- Darth Vader Family Courthouse

Episode Date: October 29, 2011

It’s hard to imagine a place where more desperate and depressing drama unfolds on a daily basis than a family courthouse- custody battles, abuse, divorce- and if you were to design a place to reflect and amplify that misery, not … Continue reading →

We get support from UC Davis, a globally ranked university, working to solve the world's most pressing problems in food, energy, health, education, and the environment. UC Davis researchers collaborate and innovate in California and around the globe to find transformational solutions. It's all part of the university's mission to promote quality of life for all living things. Find out more at 21stCentry.ucdavis.edu. This is 99% Invisible. I'm Roman Mars. If you type the word courthouse into a Google image search, you get hundreds of results that look really similar to the US Supreme Court building. Big steps, a granite Corinthian colonnade, topped by a grand pediment. If the architecture could talk, it would say respect me.

Serious S happens here. That's Brett Myers. He's reporting this week's show. He went to the New York County Family Court in Lower Manhattan. It's a building that looks nothing like the classic Roman and Greek inspired architecture that most of us associate with courthouses. There's little to equate family with the building beyond dysfunction. If the family court could have talked before its 2006 renovation, it would have said, all who enter are doomed. Built in 1975, this polished black cubus hulk is about as welcoming as the death star.

That's Eugene Patron, reading from an article he wrote about his time as a paralegal in the building. He sums up the most common argument about the original design. The New York County Family Court at 60 Lafayette Street is infamous in architecture circles as an example of form giving not a damn about function. And that's an easy argument to make. Absolutely. It filled me with rage the first time I saw this building back in the late 90s. The design just seemed so wrong for a family courthouse.

It was like hiring Dick Cheney to be the nanny for your kids. It was brutalist, think repetitive angles and thick heavy forms and lots and lots of concrete. It's a pretty polarizing style, which I actually kind of like. And before the 2006 remodel, it was possible to appreciate this building, but from a far. Up close was a different story. The shiny black granite panels that covered the whole thing were falling off and threatening

to kill people on the ground. It was a looming and menacing building. Even the entrance was scary. There were these huge pylons offset at 45 degree angles, so that when you entered the building, you could actually see what it was you were walking into. It was like stepping into a black hole. Definitely very bleak and very, oh my god, what is this, a black building, you know, is this a courthouse? Miriam Hernandez works there as an interpreter translator. It didn't really have the feeling of humanity or humane, you know, it didn't really have that. What kind of stuff happens inside? Oh my God, the question should be what doesn't happen.

What doesn't happen? I mean, it's like you could write maybe a forever book about what takes place inside, you know? And that forever book wouldn't be a light read. You would have chapters about custody battles and divorces and abuse. Children going into family court and their fates of being decided behind those doors. If anything, you would hope that the architecture would inspire trust, not fear, and maybe even convey

a little bit of warmth. But instead, court employees referred to it as the Darth Vader building. Luke, your mother and I are getting the divorce. Pardon me, Lord. The question is, was the form of the New York County family courthouse completely antithetical to its function? I met a guy who's got a really interesting theory about this. This guy goes by the name Loftur I. My Clark Kent is a basic guy

to freelance research. By day he's a writer researcher for a real estate blog, but his secret identity is Loftar 1. It's the handle he uses when contributing to Wired New York, this hugely popular website about all things New York City. The community section is basically a forum for urban design geeks and laughter one is one of the biggest geeks on the site So how many posts have you posted since June? Wait too many for a sane person about A couple thousand. I'm not sure now. It's like 28,000 something like that. It's 28,131 posts. That's as of when

28,131 posts. I checked this morning, did you? You've had it a few today? In fact, he averages almost 13 posts per day, and most are related to architecture and urban planning. One of his first posts was about the remodel of the building we're talking about, the family courthouse, the building we're standing in front of. That old place, I felt like I was kneeling down and crawling through a teeny little hole in a cave. And I didn't know what the hell, there was a bear, there were bats, there was something on the other side.

What happened inside was not going to be good. They should have put a, you know, abandoned hope all you who enter here, because that's what the message was sending. In laughter, one argues that that message had a timestamp. That old, black, shiny, desktop of a building reflected the New York of the times, the New York back in the 70s when it was built. Watergate, financial distress, social divide, it all makes total sense. Total sense that this building looked the way it did, and this argument gains even more

weight when you consider a 1977 story by Fame New York Times reporter Lori Johnston. The article profiles users of the court and what is essentially a critique of the system. She interviews people who spend days shuffling from one waiting room to another. And their critiques of the bureaucracy go hand in hand with critiques of the architecture. Here's a quote from the 1977 article. It seems like a maze to this place, or worse.

It seems like it's run like a prison with uniforms all over. Maybe it's meant to discourage you from going ahead. It's like, oh, you want form to meet function. This is how this court functions. This is what this court does. It sucks people in and spits them out and there's no feeling. It doesn't solve the problems. Now of course, the courthouse has been remodeled and it's warmer and friendlier and it reflects a city that's friendlier and more functional.

The black facade is all gone, it's kind of a light gray now. The entrance is all opened up, it even has kind of an awning. That doesn't look imposing or unfriendly at all. And there's no more threat that those black granite panels are going to fall off the side of the building and kill people. You know, yeah, it's also kind of boring. The remodel is definitely a little boring, and it's not a building I want to talk to my friends about, but that original building angered me, and it was something I talked to my friends about.

It was dark and interesting. And now Brett kind of misses the old building. But I also know that I'm privileged because I don't have to interact with it, because I don't have to work there, and I'm not a kid who has to walk into family court. For them, this MilkyBland remodel is a definite improvement. And probably a sacrifice worth making. Come on, it's for kids, man. 99% invisible was produced this week by Brett Myers and me Roman Mars, with support from

Lunar, making a difference with creativity. It's a project of KALW local public radio 91.7 in San Francisco. The American Institute of Architects in San Francisco, in the center for architecture and design. You can find out more at the website. It's 99%izzable.org you