OMA Completes Palais de Justice de Lille on Vauban's Old Fortifications

The Palais de Justice de Lille, designed by OMA under partners Chris van Duijn, Rem Koolhaas and Ellen van Loon, has landed on one of the city's most contested strips of ground: the footprint of Vauban's former fortifications. The project, published on ArchDaily on 20 October 2026, was carried out with local architect Saison Menu & Associés Architectes Urbanistes.

The site carries weight. In Lille, the architects argue, the old fortification belt has long functioned as a buffer — a zone where the city could organize its modernity without damaging its historic fabric.

"Any new architectural addition to the city of Lille has to address the past, the present and the future," OMA writes in its project description. "That is even more true on the site of Vauban's former fortifications – used in Lille as a zone where modernity can be organized without damaging the city."

That's a tight brief for a courthouse. Justice buildings tend toward the monumental, and here the monument sits directly on the seam between old Lille and the newer city that grew outward from it. OMA's statement frames the design as a negotiation across that seam rather than a single gesture.

Who built it?

The partner team spans three of OMA's most senior figures. Chris van Duijn, Rem Koolhaas and Ellen van Loon led the project, with project architects Alice Grégoire, Edouard Perves and Saskia Simon carrying the day-to-day design.

The credited design team runs more than 35 names deep, drawn from across OMA's Rotterdam-based roster — from Adrianne Fisher and Anna Speakman to Vitor Oliveira and Zhaohang Zhang.

Saison Menu & Associés Architectes Urbanistes served as local architect, the firm responsible for anchoring the international design in French permitting and construction practice.

What does this change for Lille?

In practical terms, the courthouse consolidates a major civic institution onto ground the city had deliberately kept available for contemporary architecture. Lille has spent decades using the former fortification zone exactly this way — as a testing ground where bold additions don't touch the protected core.

The Palais de Justice continues that pattern. For OMA, it adds another French civic commission to a portfolio that already leans heavily on public buildings, and it does so on a site where the margin for error, by the city's own logic, is unusually low.

The building's real test will come in use: whether a courthouse by a Dutch-global firm can hold its own on French ground that demands, in the architects' own words, an answer to "the past, the present and the future" at once.