The Old Court House is in need of new rooms for people to gather and to accommodate the existing cafeteria. Our suggestion is part of an urban transition with a relationship to the volumes and facades as part of the square’s various spaces. The square Stortorget is the site for gathering in Ystad, an opening in the old grid of the city. The most important and imposing buildings on the square are the Old Court House and the Santa Maria church, two buildings that seem like solitaires in this great urban space.
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The volume of the vaulted cellar is carved out and defined in the concrete of the new building. Towards the Santa Maria church the inner rooms opens, both outward and upward. Here the concrete is carved to a large skylight that brings
down light in the room. In contrast to the heavy concrete a light wooden frame expresses the veranda. Wood adds a layer of materiality to the building that belongs to the human body, while the concrete meets the city and its mass.
The outside of the lightweight construction is clad in copper, a material that finds its context in both the Santa Maria church and Old Town Hall. Copper is like a skin that can handle the technical details and adds a material that responds to the historical layers that the extension both subordinates itself to but also takes brace against to define its own identity.
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THE OLD COURT HOUSE
Stortorget, Ystad
Project team: Petra Gipp, Jonas Hesse, Karel Sucaet, Silvia Molinari, Emil Bäckström
2016
