Orange County Courthouse

The Orange County Courthouse is a Postmodernist skyscraper designed by HLM Design, with Michel LeBoeuf and Jacki Hale as lead architect, and built in 1997, for a reported $100 million dollars, in Orlando, FL.

Its precise street address is 425 North Orange Avenue, Orlando, FL. You can also find it on the map here.

In 2023 the Orange County Courthouse was awarded with the The Test of Time Award .

The Orange County Courthouse containing courtrooms, judicial chambers, administrative offices, and areas open to the public. Adjacent to the courthouse are two other buildings: Building A, home to the Public Defender’s Office, and Building B, which houses the State Attorney’s Office.

HLM Design, with Michel LeBoeuf and Jacki Hale as the lead architect, was the architecture firm in charge of the architectural design.

That being said, architecture is a complex discipline involving many professionals from different fields, without whom this building would have not been possible. We will surely be leaving out a lot of names here, but at the very least we know that there was one other part involved, that was Morse Diesel International as the Main Contractor.

The Orange County Courthouse can be categorized as a Postmodernist building.

The Orange County Courthouse was completed in 1997. By 1997 the Postmodernism movement was experiencing a transition. Critics argued that Postmodernism, initially a rebellious and innovative style, had become formulaic and commercialized, and so the trend started moving away from blending historical styles, irony, and playful ornamentation, and begun to give way to emerging architectural trends concerned with more present matters such as technology, ecology or sustainability.

The Orange County Courthouse uses a frame structure made of concrete columns and concrete and steel slabs.

A frame structure uses a combination of beams and columns to sustain the building's weight. The walls in this case are non-load bearing, which allows for more flexibility when distributing the interior spaces.

The facade uses a non-load bearing modular, or panelized system. This type of facade can function as either a window wall or a curtain wall, depending on the design. Unlike traditional glass curtain walls or window walls though, the modular facade is not primarily composed of glass. Instead, it often features more opaque panels that mimic masonry or stone-clad finishes, with smaller windows cut into the panels.

This type of facade allows the building to benefit from the modern qualities of a curtain wall while giving the design team flexibility to achieve visual aesthetics beyond the all-glass modern skyscraper.

From an aesthetic point of view, the facade features a monumental and symmetrical design with classical elements such as columns reinterpreted in a postmodern style. The design creates vertical lines that emphasize the verticality of the building by alternating glass and concrete panels.

At ground level a grand entrance, framed by columns, adds to its civic grandeur. On the opposite end of the building, a cornice set a few floors before the roof, featuring a semi-round balcony, sets the stage for a series of setbacks that that lead towards the semi-rounded roof.