The annual award is organized by the publishing house Le Moniteur. In previous years, its laureates were Rem Koolhaas with a house in Bordeaux, Herzog & de Meuron with social housing on the Rue de Suisse in Paris, SANAA with the Louvre branch in Lens, Lacaton & Vassal with the reconstruction of the Tour Bois Le Pretre high-rise building. This time, the jury noted the 160-meter Palais de Justice on the outskirts of Paris, designed by the workshop of Renzo Piano, the first high-rise building within the city boundaries in more than 25 years: dumbfounded, in their own words, the experts saw in it a "powerful urban composition" and a real architectural feat given the complexity of the functional program.
The building, which houses a court of higher jurisdiction and twenty courts of first instance, is located on the outskirts of Paris, by the ring road, and is part of the new development of Clichy-Batignolles. The old Palace of Justice on the island of Site has long since become small for its function, and its departments have spread throughout the city. Now it has been possible to reassemble them in one place, while only the most important processes and ceremonies will be held in the historical building. The remoteness of the new complex from the center became a problem in the early 2010s, when Parisian lawyers
tried to judicially prevent the movement of the justice authorities there and even managed to temporarily stop the construction - but still did not achieve their goal.
The customers, a public-private partnership, wanted to get an ensemble of two buildings, with meeting rooms and offices, but the architects RPBW proposed to combine all functions in the construction of an L-shaped "basement" and a three-part tower on it: on an area of about 100,000 m2 each day, starting from the opening in April 2018, there will be about 8,800 people.
On the ground floor, behind the entrance from the main plaza, there is a spacious “reception hall” consisting of the main and two side atriums; they fill the interior with light through the glass façade and roof openings. From there you can reach conference rooms, a café for the public and other public areas, as well as 90 courtrooms. Wood of different species is widely used in the design of the premises: like the sun's rays, it should make the premises "warm", "friendly" so that visitors do not feel psychological pressure.
On the seventh floor, on the roof of the "basement", there is a terrace with trees (5650 m2); the same ones are arranged at other levels of the narrowing of the building (these points are called "wasp waist") - on the 18th and 28th tiers (2000 m2). Maples, birches, oaks of various types, hornbeams are planted there, more than 300 specimens in total. In addition to these open areas (the most of them are compared by the architects to a “palace park”), there are winter gardens in the building. On the eastern façade, the vertical axis that intersects it is made up of solar panels and a panoramic elevator shaft, and on the western façade, of batteries and observation balconies.
The program includes about 600 offices, meeting rooms, a library, recreation, cells for detainees, storage rooms, a dining room for employees on the seventh floor terrace (over 700 seats) and a cafeteria for them on the second terrace, level 18 (80 seats).
Among the "green" components of the project - a two-layer ventilated facade of increased efficiency, with vertical profiles and windows opening into the interior (light reflection - 34%), thermal inertia, 2000 m2 of solar panels on the eastern facade (with a capacity of 175 MWh / year), collection rainwater. Energy consumption is 75 kWh / m2 / year, and even 50 kWh / m2 / year in the high-rise section.
