FURCAS fire station Castrop-Rauxel
SSP AG, GOLDBECK
FURCAS stands for the Feuer- und Rettungswache Castrop-Rauxel, the new fire and rescue station for the city. The building rises on the site of the former Klöckner power plant, between Habinghorster Straße and Klöcknerstraße, on the boundary of the Habinghorst and Rauxel districts. The City of Castrop-Rauxel is the client and delivers the project as a public-private partnership with Goldbeck Public Partner GmbH as general contractor. SSP AG is responsible for the architecture, brandenfels for the landscape design.
The site brings together the fire brigade, the rescue service and the volunteer fire brigade's Löschzug 3 Habinghorst at one shared location. The planned station has a usable floor area of around 9,980 square metres. It will include vehicle halls, administrative rooms, training areas and a helicopter landing pad.
The aerial view shows two parallel, elongated volumes with green roofs and photovoltaic panels, linked by a connecting wing and framing the vehicle yard between them. Alongside sit a helicopter landing pad and a tree-lined car park, with the site bordered by woodland, housing and allotment gardens. The building is planned to KfW-40 standard with photovoltaics and a green roof, and certification at the Plus level of the Sustainable Building quality seal is being pursued.
On the ground floor of the head building, a drive-through on columns opens the view from the forecourt into the vehicle yard. It shortens the route to the vehicles and supports a quick response. Ribbon windows across several storeys bring daylight into the administrative and common rooms of the head building.
Our task was to produce four competition visualisations for SSP AG. The stills show the fire and rescue station as an aerial view, as a day and night view of the street façade, and from the perspective of the vehicle yard. The aim was to make the urban setting, the circulation and the station's operation understandable within a single image. An overview of our range of services and our work in visualisation is available on the respective pages.
The visualisations helped SSP AG communicate the design to the City of Castrop-Rauxel as client and to the public during the competition. They convey both the urban placement on the former power plant site and the day-to-day operation of the future station.