BOGDAN & VAN BROECK wins the design competition for a fire station and a neighbourhood sports center in Anderlecht.
Diverse socio-cultural and urban fabric translated into architecture
Brussels is a city with many faces. Anderlecht embraces this diversity. The socio-cultural backgrounds are mixed and the urban fabric welcomes both housing and industry.
BOGDAN & VAN BROECK translates this philosophy into the project. The team designs a fire station building with an inhabited ‘village’ on the roof of the ‘intervention temple’ and a sports hall shared with the neighbourhood. The shed roofs and the span of the sports hall echo the neighbourhood’s industrial structures.
Intervention temple, village and ‘sentinels’
In a fire station, time and movement are fundamental design parameters: the well-timed deployment of the fire brigade, fire drills, professional but also recreational movements. But a fire station is also an inhabited place, a building where men and women live, work, eat, learn, practice, or sleep. It is a place where they wait for the next alert…
The design team mediates and translates spatially these conditions with the help of three protagonists: the temple of intervention, the village and the sentinels. Its base – the intervention temple – welcomes the garages and the technical zones. It supports fast departure on missions and smooth arrival back to the station. Efficiency comes first. On top of the temple stands a village, which is home to the living quarter of the fire station. Here it is the human scale that prevails. These two universes, which are different but complementary, are connected via a series of cores – the sentinels. These ensure – at all times and from any place of the building – a fast route to the departure zone, which is of high importance in a fire station. This separation between the intervention temple and the village eases the peace of mind of all the ‘residents’.
A solid base for the intervention temple, a lighter habitat for the village
The project has a double structure. Corresponding to the nature of the activities that take place there, the intervention temple is made of the rougher materials: concrete and brick. The upper structure of the village is built entirely in timber frame construction.
The choice of this structure allows for larger spans in the intervention temple and generates a great deal of freedom for the room layout. The choice also allows great flexibility for the future.
A sports hall open to the neighbourhood
Directly accessible via a separate entrance for the neighbourhood, the sports complex is organised on the upper levels. It welcomes a relaxation area, two halls for softer sports and combat sports, and a large omnisports hall with zenith light. The omnisports hall will be used both by firefighters and the neighbourhood. The latter will thus benefit from the facilities of the fire station, but without having access to areas reserved exclusively for firefighters. The volume and characteristic roofs echo the industrial buildings of the area. Together with the sentinels, they give the sports centre its own identity along the canal.
Commissioned by the Urban Development Company (SAU-MSI), BOGDAN & VAN BROECK designs a fire station between the Brussels Canal and the Chaussée de Mons, with garages, living spaces for firefighters and a sports infrastructure that will also be accessible to the neighbourhood.
For this project, BOGDAN & VAN BROECK is working together with BAS, RCR studiebureau, iVec, Venac, studiov2 and BTV Control.
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LOCATION: Chaussée de Mons 409, 1070 Anderlecht, BE
CLIENT: Urban Development Company (SAU-MSI)
ARCHITECTURAL OFFICE: BOGDAN & VAN BROECK
TEAM: Felix Ballauf, Emilie Bechet, Andriy Bruyninckx, Laura Janssens, Lourenço Van Innis
STRUCTURE: BAS
TECHNIQUES: RCR studiebureau
ENERGY: iVec
ACOUSTICS: Venac
BIM: studiov2
HEALTH & SAFETY COORDINATION: BTV Control
