Graduation Plan Personal information Name Jonathan Telkamp Student number 1360787 Address Hugo de Grootstraat 142 Postal code 2613TZ Place of residence Delft Telephone number 0031 6 28 25 05 77 E-mail address j.g.f.telkamp@student.tudelft.nl / jonathantelkamp@gmail.com Studio Theme Explorelab 15 Teachers Robert Nottrot, Huib Plomp, John Heintz Argumentation of choice My fascination for a politically and economically driven design of a International of the studio Courthouse could not be placed in any other studio. Title Title of the graduation Project Location International Tribunal for Economic and Financial Crime (ITEFC) London, UK
PRODUCT PROBLEM STATEMENT THE PROBLEM The typology of the tribunal is a bit different than the overall topic of International Courts. Tribunals are generally from temporary character and have jurisdiction over a specific area of within a specific type of crime. The start of this typology came with the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, which was in function from 1945-1946. The second world war was a sudden event wherefore a special tribunal was needed. This labels most tribunal as ad-hoc, both former as recent examples. This is only also the reason that a lot of tribunals were constructed within existing buildings. Even recent examples as the International Criminal Court was placed in a vacant office building. This makes a point for a thorough analysis of the program of the courthouse, since there has not been a clear though on the way they should be housed. The housing is slowly shifting to more permanent locations, but the variation is still huge. When the security measures are adjusted over time, this accounts for a bunch of strange solutions, where some control posts are located just outside the building or where public access is controlled through an alley adjacent to the side. This therefore includes both security measures inside and outside the building. This again calls for a view on the program in combination with the security measures and how the different flows of people (Judges, Prosecution, Defence, Defendants, Clercks, Press, Public, Witnesses and other Staff) are guided towards the end of their journey ; the courtroom. Within the courtroom there are also different variations based on the different types of tribunals. To look at the essential parts of the analysis, the incidental must be disregarded. RESEARCH QUESTIONS To formulate one overall question for the complete problem statement, the following is formulated: Hoe are international courthouses/tribunals organized to accommodate and conduct the different flows of people regarding their levels of security? Sub questions would then follow-up to support an answer of the main research question: What are the different security issues outside the building? What are the different security issues within the building? What are the different flows of people? Which spaces within the building do they occupy? What is the total program of an international courthouse/tribunal? What are the spatial relations between the spaces? What are the differences in courtroom layout? How are these differences determined? Another topic that is not included in the main research question is about the element of play and ritual in the courtroom. Even though it s not included, I think it is worth researching about since it provides another way of looking at the typology in relation to typologies like theatre and such. These topics are meant as another way to get rid of the incidental shapes etc. of the spaces and look at the typology from a more functional point of view.
Questions that might arise will fall in the category of the process of the proceedings in the courtroom and the way the people inside the courtroom play their role within it. DESIGN ASSIGNMENT After discussing the research questions, the design assignment will show that elements and answers from the research will be taken into the design assignment. The most prominent assignment will be the one feeding on the tension between public openness and security issues. Security issues within the building will form the biggest challenge from a technical building design point of view. Apart from normal technical building design, it will form a very exciting challenge to integrate the numerous security issues into the building, while maintaining the preferred openness towards the public. This strive for public openness comes from two main concerns with modern courthouse architecture and political and social reasons. The first is that modern examples are designed as tall glass boxes, with the argument of transparency and openness. The problem here lies in the different of looking open versus actually being open. The second more social reason is the understandability for the passer-by. The reason for designing this tribunal is the complexity of the financial and banking world were we lost faith in. In order for the public to understand and see the process of prosecution of these criminals, a certain amount of openness is needed. The second prominent assignment is the tension between being deterring for bankers as a warning sign versus the same public openness. This will request a great visibility of the building from far away, together with the warning effect. From far away the building needs to look deterring and strong, almost like an allseeing object/entity, while at the ground level from close by, the building needs to be open. In this way, the building can force a sort of accountability from the bakers towards the rest of the world. GOAL A lot of my intentions for the graduation project are already mentioned in the description of the design assignment. So additional goals will consist more of effect of integration into the physical and psychological world of the people. The most important for the physical world is the east end of the Queen s walk on the south bank side of the Thames. This completely walkable route starts at the millennium eye on the west and end at the Potters Fields park at the Tower bridge, and thus at my location. Since the Queen s walk has four green pockets along its path, I want to keep the area around my proposal green and park-ish. This not only contributes to the walk itself, but makes sure enough tourists and passers-by can see and (partially) enter the building. The non-physical effect what I have in mind is to reinstate the believe in the courthouse. Since the courthouse is not embedded in everyday life, we only encounter with it when we are accused of driving over our neighbours dog, which off course was just an accident. On a bigger scale, the Occupy movement underlines this statement by their disbelieve in the prosecution of the white-collar criminal. Since the nature of the process is really complex, the building should be able to translate and communicate the process to the people so they see that people are being prosecuted.
PROCESS METHOD DESCRIPTION Since the project is coming from a recent problem, the methods and techniques used for research and design will differ from more traditional functions, like a library or a school. Apart from literature to get a grasp on the general theme, a lot of visits and interviews will be needed. For this reason I am having contact on a regular basis with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). First of all, I visited the courtrooms multiple times to help get an understanding of the process that is taking place in the courtroom and foremost, what kind of thing I can expect as a visitor. The first time gave me a strong direction towards my entire project. This was because of reasons like the immense security layers and identity checks. I was assigned with a visitors pass and could go to another layer of security. Apart from the pass I could get information about the accused and the trial as if it was a programme booklet. Armed with this, I was ready for the show to begin when the curtains were raised. It was a very intense experience since the accused was looking directly at me. This empirical research is valuable, since this is also what I expect for the visitors of my tribunal when they enter the first time. This led to an interview at the ICTY, with more to follow. This first experience set the example for the rest of the research including visiting other courthouses in the Netherlands and the UK. Also in London, I talked to security personnel and court management to get the understanding of the workings of a courthouse. These court visits are important for another reason, and that is the public openness. After emailing a lot of courthouses, only the ICTY was willing to help me on further research regarding the program and plans of the building. Since it is almost impossible to get the plans of the building, let alone the courtroom. I decided to take matters in my own hands and I started to remodel courtrooms from international courts around the world, based on photo s that were published. Only via this route, it is possible to get a good overview of the different layouts. After rebuilding these courtrooms, I am planning to send these back to the courthouses along with an analysed plan of the ICTY. When analysing a plan through the use of graphing, which only displays spatial relations, I hope to convince other courthouses to collaborate as well. Finally this will lead to a large matrix showing the plans of the courtroom in order to analyse the differences and distil the essence. For the design, contact with D66 and Godfrey Bloom could be interesting for input from others who see the same urgency. Next to that, a lot will be found through the use of sketches, model making and the extensive amount of diagrams from the research. All of this will again be fed by my own experiences visiting the different courthouses. LITERATURE AND GENERAL PRACTICAL PREFERENCE Because of the recent nature of the typology, there is not a lot of research and book written about the tribunal. Literature can provide a general background on the typology of a courthouse, even though these are generally designed around national laws. The typology is also most of the time viewed in the more classic perspective of the plan, where shaped are more dominant than I would prefer. For the topic of security, there is an abundance of documents from safety agencies, governments and architectural institutions. Safety measures are taken worldwide and are well figured out, so this topic will be fully explored reading these documents.
The last element which is also more connected to the Financial crisis and the bankers will be explored through more digital resources like scientific articles and newspaper articles. This subject is written about every day and will continue for the duration of my project. This will provide with a constant flow of input on current developments. REFLECTION RELEVANCE When we look at the typology of the tribunal, it has been a typology that really started to come alive after the second world war, with the International Military Tribunal and the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. These two tribunals were court for a specific type of crime and a specific group of people. The body of knowledge about this typology is therefor quite small, also regarding the fact there are not a lot of publications about the architectural point of view, because of security issues. Recent developments in the Financial crisis made an urgency for the type of building I propose. This relevance has been stimulated by both the Dutch political party D66 and Godfrey Bloom, a minister of the European Parliament from the United Kingdom. Both made a public statement and a call for an Economic Tribunal or Fiscal Crimes Tribunal. Regarding the fact that the Financial crisis will probably take another couple of years, the amount of cases related to financial and economic crime is ever-growing. This goes hand in hand with the growing amount of arrests being made every month of bankers and businessmen who took unexplainable risks.
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