The Phoenix Fire Department’s newest station, Fire Station No. 59, is a four-bay, 15,500-square-foot facility that currently is on track to earn LEED- Platinum certification. The new green station is co-located with a 6,000-square-foot apparatus storage building on a 3-acre site.
Station No. 59’s was built to replace old the Station No. 34, which was located on a very large fuel farm. Site circulation and visitor and staff parking for the two separate buildings posed a sustainability challenge, but this was solved using pervious paver techniques.
Father and son architects Larry Enyart, FAIA, LEED AP, and Lance Enyart, AIA, LEED AP, of LEA Architects worked with Deputy Chief Ken Leake to design Fire Station No. 59, which was toured during last month’s Station Style Conference.
Click here for a virtual tour.
The visionary project has received significant praise from the city’s engineering and fire departments for its high value, low cost and sustainability. Included among the green initiatives are solar collectors, which are used for photovoltaics and water-heating in the parking structures and the living quarters. Double-sided photovoltaic modules are located outside the kitchen over the patio, which serves as a shade canopy.
The architecture responds to the desert environment and surrounding industrial complex by using natural materials like ground concrete floors, locally manufactured ground-face high R value Integra insulated masonry units, and steel and perforated metal to provide screeing from the sun. Recyclable materials also are used throughout the station.
Rapid-opening bi-fold doors ensure optimum response times. The cylindrical form of the physical fitness room metaphorically speaks of the station’s primary mission requirement to protect the surrounding fuel-farm tank structures. The exterior is clad with insulated metal wall paneling with translucent glass fin fenestration representing tank ladders. Colored ground-concrete floors complete with PFD logo cast in the floor work together with the High R Value post-tensioned masonry wall systems to provide attractive-yet-functional floors at a minimum cost. The inherent value of locally manufactured masonry used in the interiors helps with thermal mass, durability, energy conservation, and acoustical attenuation for the significant noise challenges.
