Vancouver Fire and Rescue Training Facility

Location

Vancouver, BC

The training facility consists of three classrooms “docked” against this wall which serves as an acoustic shield. A breezeway corridor east of the classrooms is seen as an open spine serving both the building and the exterior yard and parking area where the crews arrive in the morning aboard their stations’ fire trucks. The corridor connects the more formal north end of the building, where visitors arrive, to the less formal south end, marked by the tower crane, where the vital wash-up and service components are housed.

The upper floor office component is expressed as an efficient double-loaded bar independent of the training operations downstairs. This block, drawing on the language of boxcars and shipping containers, is perched overhanging the street wall and sheltering the entrance.