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APPLICATION EXAMPLES IN PRACTICE
(Note: Data has been changed to protect confidentiality)
Courts Design Guide
Department of Planning and Development, Victoria
Objectives
- To develop guidelines for the delivery of court buildings
with the participation of the judiciary, magistracy, courts
administration and architects.
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- To record information on court design, based on the experience
of the participants in recent court development projects.
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- To clarify expectations about the quality and quantity
of space to be constructed.
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Method
The Courts Design Guide is a major design document produced by the
then Ministry of Housing and Construction in 1989. SGO acted as consultant
to manage the information describing the physical characteristics of
all spaces required for court buildings. The work concerning custody
facilities, overlapped and was concurrent with, another SGO project
to develop a series of standard documents on police facilities. The
Ministry was responsible for descriptive material about the workings
of the courts and the overall design guidelines for all design disciplines.
Data Sheets were prepared for each type of space which might be required
for a court building. These included Court Rooms, facilities for Courts
Administration, Judiciary, Circuit Court, Jury, Custody, Ancillary and
Circulation Areas, Catering, Building Services and External Areas.
Data was recorded on organisational and operational functional relationships,
circulation and security requirements, engineering service s, descriptive
information about users and times of use, function of the space, equipment,
furniture, fittings, signage, area and dimensional requirements.
Spaces were described by the building elements required, rather than
the functions performed within them, which enabled the reduction of
court types from approximately 40 to 5, which can be sized by formulae
relating to the size of elements within them eg. juries, docks and public
seating.
Outcomes
The Courts Design Guide has been used for major projects including
the Geelong Law Courts, the Melbourne Magistrates' Court, the Frankston
Law Courts and the County Court Feasibility Study. It was referred to
in the paper by Tony Arnel and Hadley Sides at the 1991 IFMA Conference
in Melbourne.
Go the the next section (another example)
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