Tunica-Biloxi Courthouse and Police Headquarters

TEAM: SO Studio, Lue Svendson Landscape Architect
CLIENT: Tunica-Biloxi Tribe of Louisiana
LOCATION: Marksville, Louisiana
COMPLETION: December 2024
BUILDING AREA: 7,572 SF

This project involved the complete renovation and expansion of a tribal police station and courthouse at the entrance to the Tunica-Biloxi Tribe's reservation in Marksville, the seat of Central Louisiana’s Avoyelles Parish. Two new wings were added to the existing structure: one expanding the police station’s daily operations, and the other introducing a new courtroom. The spatial separation of law enforcement and judiciary reinforces the integrity of each institution. The courtroom serves as an architectural expression of the tribe’s autonomy and the distinct governance systems of a sovereign nation.

Architecturally, the courtroom is conceived as a simple cubic volume with a continuous clerestory window at its crown. This band of glazing allows diffuse daylight to enter from above, creating a serene, pavilion-like interior that feels at once grounded and elevated. The absence of exterior views focuses attention inward and upward, where only treetops and the sky are visible, inviting contemplation and reinforcing the solemnity of the space.

Floating around the clerestory is a horizontal brise-soleil composed of terracotta baguettes. These elements cast dynamic shadows onto the building’s façade and interior surfaces. Their pattern was generated using a custom digital script that translated geometric motifs from tribal artifacts, connecting ancient visual language to contemporary form-making. As sunlight moves throughout the day and across seasons, the brise-soleil acts almost as a living instrument of time: projecting ever-changing shadows that register the passage of hours and the turning of the year. In this way, the building quietly echoes the calendrical sensibilities found in Indigenous architecture across the Americas.

This project was made possible with Federal and Tribal funds and was bid under Public Bid Law.

A long gathering lawn extends toward the building from the main access road. The lawn’s axis terminates at an existing ceremonial mound near the building’s main entrance. The mound is a representation in miniature of the mounds and earthworks made by the Tunica-Biloxi and other Native American peoples. Such earthen monuments can be encountered throughout the region. These elements define the approach to the justice center, framing a brick plaza that leads to the main entrance.

The courtroom’s brise-soleil is the focal architectural element of the project. It gains a compound significance from its pattern, derived from tribal motifs as described below, in addition to its function as a sundial.

The top images show artifacts from the Tunica Treasure, a significant hoard from the Tribe’s archaeological legacy.

At left is a woven textile, protected from deterioration over time by the copper in its fibers. An intricate geometric pattern reveals itself in the fabric. At right is a gourd-shaped ceramic vessel. The carvings on the surface of this piece echo the geometries in the textile, showing further evidence of a shared visual language across materials and generations.

The middle images shows line drawings of the motifs of the textile pattern, traced directly from the specimen, clarify their shape.

Below, a custom Grasshopper script developed by SO Studio translates the tribal patterns into a constructable system of building components.

An image sampler pixelated the original designs. Each “pixel” was assigned a position and orientation corresponding to the module used in the brise-soleil. Refinements were introduced into the script to strategically randomize the position of some of the pixels. This pays homage to the hand craft of Native artisans, while acknowledging the effects of nature on human artifice as time passes.

The resulting brise-soleil is a plane of terracotta elements known as baguettes (for their resemblance to the elongated loaves of bread). These extrusions are suspended from secondary aluminum struts, which are in turn mounted within the panels of a primary steel framework. Though the assemblage is designed to be as thin and diaphanous as possible, the depth and spacing of the baguettes and structural elements create a subtle sense of layering and hierarchy.

The axonometric projection at the bottom shows how this digitally scripted system transforms an ancestral pattern into a contemporary architectural feature which is responsive to light and time.

Throughout the day, the brise-soleil casts shifting shadows across the skin of the courtroom volume, as shown in this sequence of three photographs showing (clockwise from top left) late morning, noon, and early afternoon conditions. The filtered light animates the building by reflecting the sun’s path overhead, projecting the changing sky onto the building’s skin and deeply into its interior.

These constantly mobile patterns are central to the soul of the project. Referencing traditions found throughout Native architecture across the Americas, the screen operates like a contemporary calendar, registering time through light and shadow rather than mechanical means. For the Tunica-Biloxi, who refer to themselves as the “Sun People,” this ever-evolving façade becomes more than ornament. It is a quiet, living expression of cosmology, identity, and continuity, reified through architecture.

As visitors approach the building under the canopy of crape myrtles, dappled light filters down onto the plaza, complementing the shadows cast by the brise-soleil on the courtroom walls. This interplay between natural and architectural filtering creates a multi-layered sensory experience, linking the building with its landscape and reinforcing the idea of light as both guide and symbol.

A ceremonial mound anchors the center of the brick-paved plaza, positioned along the approach between the two wings of the building. The brick pavers are laid in a basketweave pattern at a 45-degree angle to the wings in order to align with the lobby’s diagonal orientation in plan. These ‘woven’ brick pavers pay homage to traditional Native craft while marking the transition from landscape to civic space.

The courtroom façade is clad in Norman brick. As the Norman brick module is longer than that of standard brick, the masonry unit proportions correspond more closely to the linear baguettes above. The bricks’ creamy, earthen tones create a warm yet neutral backdrop, allowing the brise-soleil to project its dynamic shadows with clarity. The masonry’s subtle texture further enhances the depth and complexity of the shadows cast by the screen.

The deep red hues in the brise-soleil’s terracotta baguettes are reflected in the plaza’s light red brick pavers, linking the ground plane and the sun-filtering screen above with a consonant material palette. The baguettes are mounted between extruded anodized aluminum tracks, which are in turn suspended from the primary structure, a turquoise-painted steel frame. The color selection for the steel references turquoise beads encountered among the tribe’s archaeological record. Turquoise beads have cultural significance not only for this tribe but also for Native communities across the Americas.

To streamline installation and ensure precision, the baguette grid was divided into prefabricated panels. Each panel was assembled in the fabrication shop, allowing for faster on-site installation and tighter quality control. This modular approach also reduced the complexity of aligning the pattern across the entire brise-soleil. From certain angles, the clerestory glazing acts as a mirror for the baguette pattern, as shown in the photo at left. This mirrored image creates the illusion that the screen continues into the building, merging physical elements with their reflections.

Looking upward through the brise-soleil, the viewer experiences the inverse of the shadow pattern: the solid structure silhouetted against the brightness of the sky. The result is a dynamic interplay between light, structure, and perception.

Interior finishes cohere with the exterior palette through material and tone. Porcelain floor tiles extend the warmth of the tan brick on the building’s skin through interior spaces. Acoustical wall panels with a light maple veneer finish, used both on the reception desk (shown in the photo at right) and throughout the courtroom, combine this warmth with sonic performance.

Carpet tiles and upholstery on courtroom furniture incorporate blues that correspond with the turquoise-painted steel, while reddish accents, such as the vertical pulls on the main entry door (shown in the photo at left), connect to the terracotta baguettes and brick pavers outside. The red tones of the tribe’s cultural center, located across the access road, are reflected in the storefront glazing shown in the photo at left.

A shifting trail of light moves across the courtroom floor throughout the day, casting shadows of the brise-soleil’s lacy profile throughout the space, making the passage of time and sun visible during court proceedings. Light wood panels provide acoustical treatment along the rear wall behind the audience and behind the judge’s bench, complementing the golden cypress tone used at the ceiling. The jury box and attorney area are carpeted, while the public seating area is finished with porcelain tile, establishing a subtle threshold between the two zones. The tribal seal is prominently displayed above the judge’s bench. The bench’s casework features a light wood tone in keeping with the ceiling and acoustical panels, reinforcing a cohesive and balanced material palette.

From any seat in the room, the continuous band of clerestory glazing offers a consistent upward view: the terracotta screen silhouetted against the bright sky. This pairing of shadow and light, earth and sky, reinforces the presence of the screen as both structure and symbol.

The courtroom follows a traditional court layout, with defined zones for the judge, jury, attorneys, and public. The brise-soleil’s intricate pattern reappears in the courtroom rails, which separate the public seating area from the courtroom floor. Economically assembled from common lumber and then tinted to a deep espresso, these rails feature the same pattern generated through the scripting process used for the brise-soleil, linking symbolic language across material and function.

The courtroom ceiling exposes the underside of the roof deck, revealing the turquoise-painted steel structure supporting the terracotta screen, along with a continuous square-shaped light fixture centered on the courtroom. These elements overlap as the strata of a multi-layered composition.

The clerestory glazing wraps all four sides, offering a view of the screen with the open sky beyond, thereby extending natural weather and daylight cycles into the interior. The resulting space is pavilion-like, imbued with a softened, ambient quality by the filtered light from above.

Proper to its role as a place of justice, the courtroom is designed to avoid feelings of intimidation or imposition upon any of its occupants, especially the most vulnerable. The space is designed to feel open, grounded, and welcoming, offering dignity and accommodation for all who enter.

The courtroom’s brise-soleil acts as both shade and sculpture, an ever-changing register of time.

The project as a whole is minimal yet complex, a layered interplay of light, pattern, material, and time. It honors the deep memory of the tribe it was built for through symbolic elements which compound upon each other, presenting themselves in multiple ways which are always in motion.

The new Tunica-Biloxi Courthouse and Police Headquarters looks firmly toward both the future of tribal governance and of the people it is intended to serve.