Location: Amer, Girona, Spain
Client: GISA, Generalitat de Catalunya (Regional Government)
Project Area: 935 sqm
Budget: 1,875,000 €
Project Year: 2011
Photographs: Courtesy of Mizien
The fire station occupies the old train sheds of the Girona-Olot carrilet narrow-gauge railway line. Before the project to remodel and extend the facilities, the station was operating but its installations were obsolete. The project consisted in adapting it to present-day needs and repairing the constructive pathologies and deficiencies of a building which, though not listed architectural heritage, is unique and forms part of a railway complex that has an important historic and cultural value.
The project reconciles the functional requirements of operative architecture with a brief clearly defined by questions of safety and service, and the desire to maintain and enhance the singularity of the building. It addresses the contextual issues of the building’s image and its relation with the landscape and setting, and its constructive specificity.
The original structure built of train rails is recovered, as are the openings in the façade that had been modified. A volume of Corten steel forms the extension, employing a familiar language to that of the railway landscape both in its size and in the choice of materials and the finish of details.