Sweetwater County Justice Center Wins BEST Award

Sweetwater County Justice Center Wins BEST Award

The Sweetwater County Justice Center has redefined the delivery of judicial services for Sweetwater County. The innovative facility unifies all agencies that provide essential legal functions in Sweetwater County including law enforcement, circuit courts, county attorney and public defenders.  

The success of the justice center has earned a BEST Award from the International Interior Design Association (IIDA) Intermountain Chapter in the “Serve” category. BEST stands for “Brilliantly Executed Spaces & Thinking.” The innovative justice center is flexible and expandable, and will serve the community for many years to come.

The design of the Justice Center takes its inspiration from the climate, culture and geography of the area. Locally-sourced beetle kill pine is utilized throughout the facility. Exterior brick cladding echoes the striations of the nearby buttes and mesas, and Wyoming snow fence-boards were reused as board formwork for the concrete site walls that protect the facility from a potential vehicular attack.  

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Designed to be energy efficient, easily maintained, and durable while reflecting the beauty of this remote location with extreme environmental conditions, the judges said that the Justice Center has a “sense of place and skilled handling of program that leverages the best of its siting and context [which] makes this a truly unusual project. Justice design should all be this spectacular and sensitive.”

The Justice Center was designed by EDA of Salt Lake City, Utah and built by Groathouse Construction of Cody, Wyoming. Several Sweetwater County sub-contractors contributed to the success of the project.

About the BEST Awards

The IIDA presents the Brilliantly Executed Spaces and Thinking (BEST) Awards as annual honor awards given to projects that exhibit beautiful design, creative problem solving, and high-quality solutions. The projects are evaluated based on how the design team creatively solved project challenges; integrated sustainable materials and methods into the project; and translated owner needs into beautiful spaces. The awards are given in different categories based on the building type and use, and there are two awards in each category: the BEST Award and the Merit Award. This year’s awards saw more nominations overall than recent years.