The Bobigny Judicial Court’s extension addresses the need for new spaces to deliver justice in a sensitive area. Integrating the criminal division’s services, the juvenile court and a new warehouse, three times the capacity of the existing one, the project demonstrates how particular care is given to the working conditions of the judicial staff and the desire to improve the public’s experience during hearings.

Connected by a walkway to the “historic” Judicial Court, inaugurated in 1987, which will be renovated, the new 20,000 m² building will double the surface area of the current saturated court, cramped in a building that has become obsolete. It will provide six public hearing rooms, forty-four chambers and nearly six hundred workstations. With its balanced monumentality, the extension will become the new entrance to France’s second-largest judicial city.

The PCA-STREAM project assumes a strong architectural symbolism, embodying the authority of the judicial institution through a reinterpretation of the classic codes of the courthouse (frontality, symmetry and colonnade) in a contemporary language. Its solemn urban integration takes place along a tree-lined square. The reception of the public and the access to the courtrooms, via the salle des pas perdus, are located in a large triple-height volume bathed in direct sunlight. Its wooden decor is welcoming and peaceful. The offices of the different departments of the court, finally grouped together on a single site, are organized in a ring above the glass roof illuminating the public spaces, which ensures a perfect separation of functions. This particularly easy-to-read and rational solution provides an ultra-functional response to the problem of separating flows within a court.

The building’s bioclimatic design, which incorporates passive thermal control strategies, reduces energy consumption and environmental impact. It combines an environmental approach with user comfort by giving prominence to glass transparency and planted spaces, particularly around the vast forecourt which is open on to the city.