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This clip shows Paul Katsieris, a principal architect at the architectural firm Hassell, describing design features of the Commonwealth Law Courts in Melbourne. The camera follows him through the building as he explains the reasons behind elements such as the pivoting front door and the entry pavilion. The clip ends with images of people working in the building, accompanied by contemporary jazz music.

Educational value points

• The Commonwealth Law Courts building was completed in 1998 at a cost of $100 million. It was designed by the Melbourne branch of the architectural firm Hassell, with Paul Katsieris as the design architect on the project. It has won a number of awards, including the Marion Mahony Award and a Commendation Award from the Royal Australian Institute of Architects. Other Melbourne buildings designed by Hassell include BHP Petroleum Plaza (1989–91), the Herald Living Apartments (2006) and the Macquarie Bank (2006).

• The building was completed after a decade of planning. Members of the courts, particularly Chief Justice Michael Black of the Federal Court of Australia, had extensive input into the design. The architects were asked to create a dignified but not intimidating building that reflected the importance, transparency and accessibility of the justice system. Chief Justice Black has suggested that our institutions should reflect, in their appearance, the contemporary society they service.

• The L-shaped Commonwealth Law Courts building, which is 17 storeys high and covers more than 35,000 sq m, is on the corner of William and LaTrobe streets within Melbourne’s legal precinct. It was conceived to resemble two buildings, with a courts section and a 'tower’ section for offices. These are divided by a north–south gallery that serves as a light well, and are linked by footbridges. The building houses the federal bodies of the High Court, the Federal Court and the Family Court, which had previously been in four different city locations.

• The building design, with its focus on geometric forms and the choice of materials used in its construction, was influenced by modernism. The exterior is composed of layers of differently sized windows and projections that produce a stacked effect. Historically many public administrative buildings have been designed as structures symbolising authority and the power of the law, but this building design departs from that convention. As architect Hamish Lyon pointed out in a 1999 issue of Architecture Australia, the building renews the debate about 'appropriate’ designs for court buildings, a debate that was ignited by Christopher Kringas’s 1973 design for the High Court in Canberra.

• In an attempt to mitigate anxiety or a sense of intimidation in members of the public entering the courts, Katsieris produced a design in which access to the body of the building is through a series of smaller spaces that open out to 'reveal’ the interior. Katsieris describes these smaller spaces as 'almost intimate and domestic’. Lyon refers to the entry pavilion as being more like an 'information kiosk’ than the formal entry to a national institution, but feels the grandeur of the main gallery 'affirms the status of the Federal Court’.

• The main gallery rises six floors, covers an entire city block, and is flooded with light from above and from a glass curtain at the northern end of the space. While this space is grand, the architects tried to make users feel at ease through features such as warm timber veneers, random colour blocks placed at eye level, and elements that invite touch and interaction, for example drinking fountains, desks and meeting places. The white spiral staircase is intended as a kind of structural anchor for the building.