Essay · · 1 min read
What the courthouse taught us
Five years in, Kleve Courthouse is used differently from how we drew it, and better.


We drew the colonnade as a place to wait. It has become a place to talk: lawyers and families meet there before hearings, in the open, in the shade.
We drew the courtyard as a view. The court staff planted it with vegetables in the second summer and nobody has asked them to stop.
Buildings that last are the ones that can be misused gracefully. That might be the only design rule we are sure about.