Description

With his design for a fire station in Nishi-Hiroshima, Riken Yamamoto tried to mediate between the building and its urban context. The 38 m high steel skeleton construction is fully glazed and transparent like a shop window, so pedestrians walking through the large adjacent park can observe the firemen while training, climbing, and abseiling down. This way, the firemen’s occupation is supposed to transcend across the boundaries of the building and thus be integrated into the neighbourhood. The fire station also benefits from its location amid the urban environment as this shortens travel distances in case of fire.

The glass cube faces the “Heiwa Odori”, the city’s main axis; consequently, all activities within the building can also be seen from here. On the ground floor, the fire engines are parked and serviced. In the basement, judo and kendo rooms are located. The first and second floors accommodate offices, a library, and sleeping rooms. The four upper storeys contain meeting and music rooms as well as a lobby. They are connected by an atrium equipped with running tracks, ladders, and rope bridges for training. The top of the building is formed by a slab with a height of four storeys. It does not have any specific function but appears as a landmark in the urban skyline.

The degree of transparency of the façade changes depending on the light conditions. Sometimes the façade appears transparent, sometimes silvery, and at night it glows like a square paper lantern. The walls of the cubic volume seem to disappear, the architecture merely serves as a background for its function: to protect the city from potential emergencies, and to be perfectly integrated into the everyday life of its surroundings.

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Originally published in: Jürgen Adam, Katharina Hausmann, Frank Jüttner, Industrial Buildings: A Design Manual, Birkhäuser, 2004.