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Los Angeles Tribunal Glass Building

publisherAoHong Glass

time2018/09/12

SOM Architects designed and built a pleated glass building for the federal court in downtown Los Angeles.


Los Angeles Tribunal Glass Building


The Los Angeles court is located on a slope with a height difference of nearly 27 feet (8 meters) between the high point and the bottom point. For such terrain, SOM Architects proposed to establish a concept of “modern architecture based on the classic principles of federal architecture”.

The overall appearance of the building is a floating cube, and the glass building is built on a recessed stone bench. The ground floor of the building is furnished with a spacious staircase and a path through the garden.



The architects of SOM Architects face many challenges in this project. First, they want to use glass as the facade of the building, but they must control the amount of sunlight injected. In addition, they hope to integrate the building with the city's master plan. The building has a 38 degree deviation from the city's north-south axis, which also makes building heat control more difficult.


To meet these challenges, SOM Architects designed a glass curtain wall with vertical pleats. These pleats help to reduce the exposure of the building to sunlight and minimize the amount of sun rays injected. The transparency of the glass panels that make up the pleated glass curtain wall will also vary depending on the orientation. A glass panel with low transparency will be placed in the east and west areas of the building because there is a lot of sunlight in it. The transparency of the glass panels in the north and south areas will be higher.


Compared to traditional glass walls, the Los Angeles court's design ideas can reduce the amount of solar radiation by nearly half. The building not only has a pleated glass curtain wall, but also an advanced internal structural engineering system that can effectively cope with various safety issues such as earthquakes.The Los Angeles courthouse building has received LEED (Green Building Certification System) Platinum certification, a high-level certification awarded by the US Green Building Council.