A new paradigm has exposed the fact that theaters are unfit to support themselves as businesses. Co-opting programs to draw secondary use to the Theater asks us to question what it means to merge programs.

After a deep investigation, the program of Courthouse draws many similarities to Theater when thinking about hierarchical relationships and structured spaces. With many parallels, the focus was no longer on the differences they exhibited but rather how they could be the same.

The site chosen for investigation was a site on the edge of Michigan’s Ann Arbor Downtown district. The Speculum sits as a civic gathering space teetering on the edge of recreation and responsibility.

Using kit-bashing as a method of combination, there was an intense focus on re-employing existing objects to develop a new architecture. The glamorous materials of Theaters are reflected in the luxurious materials that order Courtrooms.

The Speculum is a thought experiment in human activity, formal analogies, scalar shifts and programmatic congruences.