SOM's Design for Fort Lauderdale Federal Courthouse Unveiled

The announcement of the approval reminds us that the contract for the new federal courthouse in Fort Lauderdale, posted on the GSA's website in the middle of 2020, was a controversial one, because it embedded language from former President Trump's then-proposed executive order, "Making Federal Buildings Beautiful Again," that would have mandated classical architectural styles for federal buildings, new courthouses included. Even before the executive order was signed by Trump at the end of 2020 (President Biden revoked it in February 2021), the contract for the Florida courthouse said that "Classical architectural style shall be the preferred and default style absent special extenuating factors necessitating another style." SOM's design, as revealed in the trio of renderings here, appears to express that the contemporary has trumped the classical, pun intended.

Yet even with a contemporary skin of metal and glass covering the ten-story, 252,000-square-foot cubic building that will be sited on the southern bank of the Tarpon River, the architects describe their design in a statement as "[combining] principles of classical architecture with state-of-the-art technology and sustainable design." The latter is found in targets for "both LEED Gold and SITES Silver certification" and "a 30% reduction in energy use over baseline levels," while the former is subtly expressed in the exterior's "fluted panels of metal and glass that are a contemporary interpretation of Corinthian columns." Reading the building as classically inspired may very well be tenuous once it's complete, especially since the building is square in plan rather than circular (thankfully) and has openings that allow the exterior panels to "modulate the bright tropical sunlight." Whatever the case, the combination of classical and contemporary in the design does indicate that SOM had to contend with the language inserted by the former administration two years ago.

The announcement of the approval also reminds us that the existing federal courthouse in Fort Lauderdale, designed by architect William Morgan in the late 1970s, faces a perilous future. Local news reports indicate the "1979 brutalist building at 299 East Broward Boulevard [...] has been plagued by leaks and mold, and is currently undergoing renovations to remain usable until the new courthouse is complete" in 2026. The Florida Trust for Historic Preservation put the courthouse on its "Florida's 11 to Save" list in 2018, shortly after federal funding was allocated to demolish the building as part of a larger plans for downtown. Efforts are mounting to save the 42-year-old courthouse, according to a headline at the Miami Herald, but current signs point to the razing of the building and the unfortunate erasure of another 20th-century brutalist building.