Fitted into a triangular site at the east edge of the government district where Anson Mills’s two street grids converge, the two masses of the courthouse are separated by a “pass,” literally and figuratively evoking the Pass of the North. Albuquerque architect Antoine Predock routinely shapes his buildings as constructed landscapes. The angled and battered wall planes, deep-set openings, and dramatic shifts in scale evoke the rugged setting of the Rio Grande Rift, where the river valley burrows between the Franklin Mountains and the Sierra de Juárez. The eight-story block, clad in precast concrete panels, appears as a set of towers, with stone bridges and copper screens connecting across deep voids. A copper-clad core rises from amid the towers. A smaller block to the west along Myrtle Avenue, containing the Special Proceedings Court, is largely clad in copper, with fragmented forms set against a precast core. A low, dark glass entrance connects the blocks, but the lack of transparency confuses the architectural suggestion that the gap between the buildings is the “pass.”