Fire Station #5 is a two-story structure of 10,597 S.F. built to a minimum budget. It will contain 9 dorm rooms, a kitchen/dining room, dayroom, watch room, exercise room, lounge and three bays for apparatus.

Like all good fire stations, the design is purpose driven, delivering the firefighters to their apparatus in as few seconds as possible.

Unlike most fire stations, the facility has three other goals:

• Minimize energy use with an extensive and complete daylighting strategy. Rooms are arranged around a central light court. Light tubes and skylights naturally illuminate the hallways, stair and equipment bay making it unnecessary to turn on fixtures during day.

• Increase the facility’s “neighborliness” with an extroverted street side balcony above the more private BBQ courtyard below and make the watch room as transparent to the street as possible.

• Manipulate the scale of the modest two story stucco building to punctuate the strip commercial quality of University Ave. with a subtle civic presence.