During the 1930s and 40s, Atkinson and Conrad (now Conrad Gargett) designed four timber fire stations for the Metropolitan Fire Brigade, all of a similar two-storey design, the largest and earliest at Coorparoo in 1935 and smaller versions at Nundah (1936), Wynnum (1938) and Hamilton (1941).
In 2004 the remarkably intact fire station at Wynnum was decommissioned, sold and used as a private residence before being purchased by the current owners.
The family of six initially lived in the upstairs three-bedroom residence.
The essential separation underpinning the fire station topology proved spectacularly unsuccessful for a family home.
Unsurprisingly, they found it cramped and disconnected from the lower floor and garden, with uncovered external rear stairs affording the only link.
Recognizing that they needed covered vertical circulation that wouldn’t compromise the character of the building, the family sought advice from Paul Owen of Owen Architecture.
Owen described his deftly simple strategy at the Bayside Fire Station as “deliberately singular,” executed with a handful of subtle and restrained details allowing recognition between heritage building and new work. Accumulated single-storey outbuildings at the rear were removed, leaving the pure rectangular two-storey structure under a hipped roof.
The laundry and officers’ room were demolished – leaving a civic-scaled opening the entire width of the engine garage to the garden, spatially and visibly linking the street-front and bay view with the vast lawn – and replaced with a single-volume, double-height “atrium” room running the entire fourteen-metre width of the building, enclosing both upper and lower levels while capturing the external timber stair.
From the street, the only alterations visible are three new red-framed pivot glass doors with sandblasted privacy panels.
Paul Owen produced an exemplary intervention of contemporary materiality within a culturally significant fabric.
Deftly handled in scale, the outcome adds a welcome wit to the continuing narrative of the bayside suburb.
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