(2 of 3)
Across a bridge and a pond is Erickson's most controversial creation: the courthouse, an airy, elegant edifice that opens the murky moil of the law to the light and the public gaze. (It replaces a 67-year-old neoclassical structure that, on the architect's insistence, was left standing; it will eventually house the Vancouver Art Gallery.) While planning the structure, Erickson and his staff consulted judges, lawyers and police and studied new courthouse designs around the world. The result is a daring structure of steel, glass, and concrete that was mixed so that it turns a warm rose-buff color in Vancouver's frequent rains. Erickson calls concrete "the marble of our time." The building's major functional departure is a system of security "envelopes" that effectively separate the judiciary, administrative staff, prisoners and the public, in contrast to the standard courthouse hurlyburly. In addition to 35 highly visible courtrooms (some can even be seen from the street), the building has accommodations for 62 judges, with a 30,000-volume law library and a room in which student groups and the public will be instructed in the workings of the law by closed-circuit TV. Its most striking feature is its great hall, which rises seven stories to the glass roof. From floor to floor, a profusion of trailing vines and shrubs creates the illusion of a Babylonian hanging garden. The hall and many planted patios, with opulent purple sofas and rich carpeting, make a public attraction of what is usually among the most forbidding kinds of building on earth.
The new courthouse, explains Erickson, "takes the traditional courthouse and turns it inside out. It is a building completely open to the street. It embodies the concept that justice not only must be done but must be seen to be done. Anything that is part of the street becomes part of the culture, and—God knows—our culture needs more justice."
Doing justice to the taxpayers, the architect completed the complex for $139 million, $21 million less than the final estimate. The buildings moreover are fuel-thrifty, with a computerized climate control system and an energy storage tank that is cooled or heated in off-peak hours, when natural gas rates are lowest. Erickson's acres of greenery are watered by computer.
While Robson Square has already become the city's foremost meeting and strolling place, not all Vancouverites are entranced with the buildings. A letter to the Vancouver Sun protested that the complex "comprises an unembellished series of stark, cold (especially during Vancouver's somber rainy season), dank and lifeless concrete blockhouses that from a distance resemble giant caskets." The courthouse has been criticized by court stenographers, who complain that their basement quarters are like a medieval dungeon.