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HOK-Designed Projects Honored in AIA’s Justice Facilities Review Awards

The American Institute of Architects’ Academy of Architecture for Justice has honored the Will County Courthouse in Joliet, Illinois, and the Stanislaus County Public Safety Campus in Modesto, California, with Citation awards.

The annual awards recognize the 15 best projects in justice facility design. Just four projects earned the highest honor of a Citation award. Award-winning projects were chosen based on their functionality, security and safety, technology and accessibility, community impact, sustainability, longevity and aesthetic achievements that respond to the issues surrounding justice design.

The Will County Courthouse (above) celebrates transparency to create an iconic civic building for Joliet. The new facility provides 38 courtrooms serving criminal, civil, family, traffic and special proceedings caseloads. The 10-story tower is composed of four court floor plates complete with judges’ chambers and jury deliberation suites. Through daylighting, ample use of glass, respite areas, terraces and a green roof, jurors and staff are connected to nature to reduce stress. Currently under construction, the project is scheduled for completion in the fall of 2020. Wight & Company was the architect, with HOK serving as courts design architect and landscape architect.

Jury comment: “Contributes well to the future revitalization of the downtown district, setting up a good model for how to grow the downtown. Represents a good model of a user-friendly courthouse experience—orientation and wayfinding is simple and direct.”

The Stanislaus County Public Safety Campus (above) in Modesto rethinks incarceration and the built environment to reduce recidivism and incorporate healing environments through evidence based design. The project added four new buildings to the existing campus to prepare detainees for a productive and meaningful life. The project encompasses client space, housing, a re-entry building, a day reporting center and post-release programming to effectively impact re-entry. Prior to moving into the facility, county recidivism rates were 72 percent. Post-opening, detainees who participated in county programs had a significantly lower recidivism rate of 38 percent. HOK was the architect, landscape architect and structural engineer. LDA Partners was associate architect.

Jury comment: “This campus provides a full continuum of service, and this full continuum is represented nicely in the site planning of the facility. The gesture of calling it the ‘Day Reporting Center’ was gracious and generous, because when you check back in later, you’re symbolically not returning back to the jail.”

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