Four years of construction work on the new courthouse in pictures

The new courthouse at Parnassusweg 280 is an inviting building, yet at the same time it is distinguished – and that is exactly what KAAN Architecten and their client the Rijksvastgoedbedrijf intended. The building is the result of four years of careful work and planning. That work started with demolition, clearing away the rubble from the site and preparing it for construction.

For a full year, there was nothing to see above ground level at all. But very slowly, the contours of the building have emerged.

The forms that now lend the building its elegance have risen up from the ground. Then the focus of the work shifted to the interior: the central hall with its escalators, the staircase with its echoes of Escher, and the enormous windows that allow the light to stream into the building.

And then, through the installation of the artwork ‘Love or Generosity’ by Nicole Eisenman, the building connected itself with Zuidas and with the city. Now the work is complete. The new Amsterdam Courthouse has 50 courtrooms, in which 200 judges will make 140,000 judgments every year. This makes it the largest courthouse in the Netherlands by far.