A North Carolina courthouse pulls together the key elements of slate, granite and limestone to establish a sense of permanence for the exterior as well as the interior
Newly constructed in Durham, NC, the Durham County Justice Building features a green slate exterior that brings an essence of grandness to the building. The overall design goal for the 318,511-square-foot courthouse was to create a civic institution that would stand to be a safe, secure and lasting structure. This objective was achieved with Broughton Moor slate with a flame-textured finish — quarried and processed by Burlington Slate, Ltd. of Cumbria, Kirkby-in-Furness, England.
“We knew from the start that we needed to use a material that represented the civic nature of the project,” explained Tim Hillhouse, project architect for Tim Hillhouse, O’Brien/Atkins Associates, PA of Durham, NC. “At one time, for budget reasons, we considered using impact-resistant gypsum wall board for the public corridors, but we quickly moved away from that idea as it would not hold up to the abuse a courthouse takes.”