In judo, virtuosity is achieved by profiting from the power of the contrary in our benefit. The plot is located beside a highway. In this position is usual to generate some type of protective parameter which separates us from it. Here, instead of rejecting this particular situation, we collect it in our profit, as in judo.
The orientation of the fire stations and its forecourt parallel to Laupenstrasse underscores the importance of this public institution. The fire station becomes a part of the rural character and shows him his typical and necessary presence. By the position of the building behind the residential development being put off by the noise of Laupenstrasse and disengaging the fire.
Image Courtesy beat bühler, ch-zürich
Architect: Christoph Schneider, Roman Giuliani, Roger Moos, Alexandra Braun
The fire station occupies the old train sheds of the Girona-Olot carrilet narrow-gauge railway line. Before the project to remodel and extend the facilities, the station was operating but its installations were obsolete. The project consisted in adapting it to present-day needs and repairing the constructive pathologies and deficiencies of a building which, though not listed architectural heritage, is unique and forms part of a railway complex that has an important historic and cultural value.
The parcel to the project which puts the new fire station, is immersed in the “New Green Ensanche Gava” characterized by a growth model that Will be Respectful of the existing landscape setting and its environmental value. Located in the lower part of Central Park and almost Cacagats contact with the New Calamot Park, this lot is part of the “line” connection between the biological and landscape agroforestry.
The civic scale of Fire Station 30 marks the transition between the commercial activity of Rainier Avenue and the residential Mt. Baker neighborhood. The scale and material presence of the two‐story building make it an anchor along historic Mt. Baker Boulevard. The highly transparent street façade allows passers‐by to view activity within. At night, the illuminated building becomes a beacon of the Seattle Fire Department’s presence within and commitment to its community.
The project is organized around a central hall where the fire trucks are parked. The rest of the program, that is, the sitting and dining room, kitchen and bedrooms in the second floor, are complementary to this main working room. This concept is carried out to the spatial volume of the fire station, where the roof of this central room is extended to the whole building and to its façades. The four doors for the cars, as big squared mouths opening at different directions, reinforce the movement of the building. The alignments of the building and its three dimensional volume refer to the dented line of the Montsant hills in the background.
English writer Thomas Quincy talked in his classic (Confessions of an English opium-eater) of the pleasure that, after making sure all possible victims and risk were absent, a burning building can provide, one century after, Austrian pyromaniacs of Coop-himelblau used fire as a material in their firsts architectural interventions and Swiss French Bernard Tschumi theorized, radical, an architecture that produced a pyrotechnical pleasure so useful, he stated, as lighting matches.
Image Courtesy Fito Pardo
Architects: AT 103 – Julio Amezcua, Francisco Pardo
Project: Ave Fenix Fire Station
Location: Colonia Juarez, Mexico City, Mexico
Team: Tiberio Wallentin, Jorge Vázquez, Margarita Flores, Daniel Ramírez
The dynamic new 30,000 sq ft Brandon Fire and Emergency Services Building validates the idea that a primarily utilitarian program, which often times results in a prefabricated solution, can become a sophisticated architectural project that contributes to its surrounding community and landscape while still fulfilling its demanding functional requirements and modest budget.
Brandon Fire Hall's geometry creates a dramatic entry point
We initiated our design with a study of the overall factory site. Our intention was to place the elements of our commission in such a way that they would not be lost between the enormous factory sheds. We also used these elements to structure the whole site, giving identity and rhythm to the main street running through the complex. This street – which stretches from the chair museum to the other end of the factory site, where the fire station is now located, was envisaged as a linear landscaped zone, almost as if it were the artificial extension of the linear patterns of the adjacent agricultural fields and vineyards. Thus, rather than designing the building as an isolated object, it was developed as the outer edge of the landscaped zone: defining space rather than occupying space. This was achieved by stretching the programme into a long, narrow building alongside the street which marks the edge of the factory site, and which also functions as a screening device against the bordering buildings.
Design Team: Simon Koumjian, Edgar Gonzalez, Kar Wha Ho, Voon Yee-Wong, Craig Kiner, Cristina Verissimo, Maria Rossi, Daniel R. Oakley, Nicola Cousins, David Gomersall, Olaf Weishaupt
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