For the purpose of enabling emergency services within urgent timeframes, the city of Erfurt decided to set up a second fire station. In addition to the first firestation in the North of the city, constructed in the mid 1990s, the new location in the South of Erfurt brings together several functional components in one center to respond quickly to dangers: a fire station, a fire station, a rescue service and a storage area for disaster response and control equipment.
The project proposal describes a U-shaped structure, that envelopes an inner courtyard and consists of the three functional components: the fire station in the East, the rescue service in the North and the disaster response/control storage area in the West.
The building body rises in tiers from high halls for the emergency vehicles up to three full storeys. The main entrance is where fire station and rescue service come together. The foyer, the main staircase, and seminar rooms are used in common whereas function-specific rooms like workshops, offices, recreation rooms, locker rooms, and bedrooms are distributed within the respective building section. The fitting appearance of the new fire station is characterized by its dark brick facade, with distinctive horizontal ribbon windows, framed by exposed concrete, and „fire-engine red“ highlights. The folding gates for the emergency ve- hicles are red-coloured, inclined, and lend structure to the main facade on the ground floor level. The in-teriors of the shared areas (foyer, corridors and stair cases) as well as of the private rooms offer a lot of white, details in red, wooden elements and exposed concrete walls. The artist Katharina Hohmann was responsible for the art-in-architecture project called„moon and ladder“ - the ladder makes reference to rescue persons while the moon is to shine brightly in case of an alarm.
