‘The Juice’ Architectural Contest Verdict Is In : Design: Winning entry would lop top off City Hall and make it a monument to victims of violence. Simpson case was among the themes used in the competition.

The Simpson verdict isn’t the only controversial one swirling around the Criminal Courts Building this week.

Another group of jurors--this one judging an unusual architecture contest--has proposed taking off the top of Los Angeles City Hall and using it to create a monument to victims of violence in a “garden of justice” that would replace a nondescript parking lot outside the courthouse.

Their verdict has ended a conceptual design competition called “The Juice,” which attracted entries from 350 architects from around the world--and almost took as long as the O.J. Simpson trial.

Top winner of the $10,000 contest is Philip Overbaugh, a 32-year-old Oakland architect. He said lopping off the top of City Hall and lowering it to the ground behind the courthouse across Spring Street would create “a repository for the city’s broken dreams” in the Downtown area.

“It could be a place to mourn both private loss and collective failure,” Overbaugh said Wednesday. He will receive $2,500.

Contest organizer Wesley van Kirk Robbins, a Mid-Wilshire architect, had planned to announce the results of the competition on July 4. But he decided to wait until the end of the murder trial because the “Juice” theme required competitors to incorporate issues of power and Southern California’s idyllic orange blossom image as well as the O.J. Simpson case.

“I can tell you one thing: Our jury deliberated longer than Simpson’s did,” Robbins said Wednesday. Judges spent more than 12 hours weighing the options.

Competing architects who paid $50 entry fees to cover contest costs and prize money took the rules seriously. Tiny scale-model entries included a garden of trees planted in the outline of DNA molecules and a grassy promenade in the shape of a giant glove.

Other top winners included Anurag Nema of Shahdol, India, Yuji Fukui of Tokyo and the team of Richard Williams and Jim Tharp of Fort Worth. Nema’s design called for thousands of tiny loudspeakers relaying 911 emergency calls coming from across the country; Williams and Tharp proposed a “surveillance garden” composed of TV screens connected to cameras scattered around town.

Robbins said the contest was designed to stimulate discussion of courthouse beautification. Ironically, the competition was almost scrubbed when he was summoned to jury duty last fall--and placed in the 304-person Simpson jury pool in the Criminal Courts Building.

He said he is glad he wasn’t picked for that jury. “I think they ended up judging the man and not the evidence,” Robbins said.