Palais de Justice de Lille, Lille, France

Lille’s new courthouse doesn’t look like a courthouse. OMA has completed the Palais de Justice de Lille, a six-sided law court wrapped in faceted coloured glass on the edge of Vieux-Lille, beside the star-shaped citadel that Vauban built in 1667. The building will house the city’s high and district courts.

The client is APIJ (Agence publique pour l’immobilier de la Justice), the state agency that builds and manages property for France’s Ministry of Justice. OMA won the design competition in 2018, working with French practice Saison Menu, and the courthouse was originally due in 2023. It’s arriving about three years late. WSP, the technical engineer, lists works running from 2022 and handover in 2026.

Project Scope

The building is three stacked volumes. A plinth, open to the public, holds the large courtrooms. A triangular tower rises out of it with the smaller hearing rooms, and a faceted ring of offices wraps the top of the tower and pulls daylight into the middle of the plan. There’s a public plaza at ground level and a roof garden above.

Floor area is 24,148 square meters over six levels, with a total height of 33.64 meters. WSP counts 13 public courtrooms, 53 chambers hearing rooms and about 550 workstations. Eiffage won the build in 2023 at roughly €85 million, part of a €168 million APIJ award that also covered a court complex in Montreuil. WSP’s scope covered structure, MEP, security, fire safety, vertical transport and BIM coordination.

Why It Matters

French courthouses tend to be either imposing or bleak. OMA says it wanted a building “free of the intimidation” courts usually project, and the glass skin and public base are meant to carry that idea.

The people who’ll work there weren’t convinced. In 2022 Lille’s magistrates and bar went public against the design. Judges objected to shared offices they described as close to open-plan. Lawyers saw their dedicated space cut from 395 square meters to a fraction of that before a partial reversal, and critics said a 30% reserve for caseload growth had disappeared. APIJ’s answer was that the new building gives about 16,000 square meters of usable space, some 2,000 more than the roughly 50-year-old courthouse it replaces.

Occupancy will settle that argument now, not renderings. A public building that photographs beautifully and works badly is an old story. Lille is a clean test of whether a design-led courthouse can win over the judges who have to use it every day.

Project Team & Details