18th Region Labour Comple·

Held in 2007, the National Public Competition for the TRT Law Courts Complex 18th Region reaches its conclusion after a long process of almost fifteen years. It is important to highlight the fact that its realization – strategically carried out in phases – fully respects the original proposal, a rare event in our national context, especially considering its large scale. Considering its public and collective vocation, the consolidation of this institution is a fact that reaffirms the value of the efforts made by so many during this period: workers, civil servants, designers, architects, engineers, public authorities, among many others. Thus, what we witness is the consummation of the idealized primary character of offering a free, democratic and open public space to the city, today alive in the growing appropriations by the population of an increasingly denser context and still scarce of civic spaces of this nature.

An opportunity to invent a place, without borders or limits, open to the common being and society, where only with their presence will it become full of meaning: an institution, civic in its excellence. Beyond a departmental building within an originally closed block, the institution's public commitment is translated, through its architecture, into the responsibility of building the places of its citizens. Our choice for the square is thus reaffirmed in the voices of its inhabitants in many ways – from daily life to events – in a diversity to be increasingly encouraged. A square that germinates the beginning of a public life. Ordering the entire complex and easily accessible, its implantation accommodates itself in the existing topography to articulate with the surroundings and communicate all the buildings where the phases of the program were distributed.

Thus, an expressive force appears in the materiality and composition of volumes that integrate the existing building to the new architecture in a subtle dialogue: two volumes that face each other, reflect and interact in different ways in the verticality of the lines and in the strength of pure geometry. As meaning, colors speak autonomously: the neutrality of white and black that justice carries, united by the red of the institution of Law present in the sun protection elements of the facades. In addition, the main plenary is in the heart of the public square, revealing its importance to the citizen. On the roof, small openings poetically illuminate its interior, like a constellation, being arranged precisely like the States in the national flag. An architecture that communicates with human beings, that offers them at least a moment of emotion, of pause. The city reveals as unique in the local context. A new symbol of a noble institution that only architecture could create.

The versatile use of double glass facades preserves the buildings’ strength and formal sobriety. Seemingly the same, each of the facades is solved in a different way: the specifications of the glasses, colors, brises and serigraphy designed especially for the project create energy efficient and innovative systems, as well as responsible for the expression of its architecture.