Temescal Firehouse

This design for a firehouse was developed in the Integrated Building Studio, taken in the fall semester of the final year of the M.Arch program at UC Berkeley. The building is sited in Oakland, on a site where two different street grids collide.

 

My proposal aligns alternately to each grid to separate the public-service functions of the building (emergency response, community outreach, apparatus support) from the more private programs (kitchen, sleeping quarters, lounge spaces). The interplay of grids creates a third order of spaces, used for daylighting, circulation, and the outdoor courtyard. The misaligned masses of the private programs, highlighted by their different color and materiality, allow this otherwise functionalist building to speak to the dual roles of the firehouse: the protection of the local community, and the housing of the community of firefighters within.

 

(Studio Project, M. Arch, U.C. Berkeley - FALL 2017, Danelle Guthrie-Buresh instructor)