Fire station with DRK and residential development Ettlingen. Modern neighborhood for a diverse society.
Our competition entry for the design of a fire station with DRK and adjacent residential development thinks the neighborhood in terms of its context, but in doing so creates a new quality of stay for life and social encounters.
Project dataBasic design ideas
The new fire station with DRK makes the special location and form of the site its own. The building is positioned self-confidently without overtaxing the contextual development. Together with the planned residential development, the result is a new quarter with a high quality of life, which thinks of living together in a modern way and offers space for a diverse society.
Urban settlement
The fire station is conceptualized as a simple building block. With a bend in the footprint, it takes up the arrangement of the streets and properties in the surrounding area and continues the history of the site. This also includes the setbacks on the upper floor, with which reference is made to the small-scale nature of the neighboring buildings.
Open space design
The residential quarter is crisscrossed by pedestrian and bicycle paths that provide access to the individual buildings. Common areas for rest, meeting and playing form the character of the neighborhood. An arcade at the largest building of the residential development becomes a transition zone, a sluice between private and semi-public space. The orientation of all apartments towards the inner courtyard creates the feeling of a "village within a village".
Materiality
The new buildings are designed as timber hybrid structures. All essential load-bearing elements are made of wood. In the façade structure, the insulated timber frame construction is covered by an outer skin of vertically structured timber battening. Individual upstream wooden columns provide a design accent. The vehicle hall is fitted with transparent folding glass doors that allow plenty of light into the hall. In this way, the adjacent nature reserve is brought into the building.