Tukwila Fire Station 52

Tukwila, WA

Tukwila Fire Station 52 is the second of two new fire stations included in a 2016 bond measure to improve public safety infrastructure within the City of Tukwila. The new stations improve public safety by promoting the health, safety, and mental wellbeing of the City’s firefighters, as well as introducing a strong civic presence in the community that embodies a sense of permanence, safety, reliability, and protection.

The two stations have both been designed by Weinstein A+U using the same architectural language and are considered a “family” of buildings that have been fine-tuned to fit their respective sites and surroundings. Fire Station 52 is a two-story station with a double-height, drive-through apparatus garage, located between the existing City Hall campus and a single-family residential neighborhood. As the new headquarters station, it is used by both on-duty firefighters and fire department administrative staff. Administrative offices are located on the second floor, while the fire station operational spaces are primarily located on the ground level to facilitate easy access to the apparatus bay and efficient response times.

The building form consists of a two-story brick mass broken by slots that provide relief and variety across the façade, in addition to vision glazing in strategic locations. The public entry is further articulated by a two-story glazed slot with inset doors, while the apparatus garage is showcased with recessed, full-height storefront glazing and iconic red doors. A single-story utility bar with storage, decontamination, and shop spaces borders the apparatus bays on the north side. In order to maintain the two-story mass of the building, the utility bar is topped with a tall brick parapet that will perform double-duty by concealing all of the apparatus bay mechanical equipment from the view of adjacent residential properties.

While fire station sites inherently require wide areas of paving for fire apparatus maneuvering, the site design for this project – a collaboration with the Swift Company - breaks up the expanses of paving and parking with multi-purpose landscape features, including plants, seating walls, and wall-like elements that act as bollards and seating. The scale of the paving areas has also been further broken down with pattern and texture changes to identify pedestrian vs. apparatus realms. The public side of the site will be welcoming in character and clearly demarcate the areas open to the community, including a small plaza at the entry and a memorial garden. The entry plaza and memorial garden provide destinations of respite for neighbors and employees and the cross-site pedestrian path extends the existing neighborhood network of walking routes. The site will also accommodate drilling space for the firefighters at the rear apron.

Photography: Lara Swimmer

Client
City of Tukwila

Data
Tukwila Fire Department Headquarters
2 apparatus bays
1 Battalion Chief vehicle bay
8 bunk rooms

Completed
2021

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