Firestone, Colorado, USA
Roth Sheppard Architects design the building of the Firestone Police Department and Municipal Court, creating various facilities, a police station, and a communal space transforming the area into a safe location for the community of Firestone, Colorado.
This facility resolves the tension of layering the operational needs of a municipal court, community gathering space, town boardroom, and operational police station with the aspirational identity of the Isle of Safety.
The project won a 2021 American Architecture Award from The Chicago Athenaeum and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies.
Moving east to west there is a moment when the Rocky Mountains grow on the horizon and the deep layers of the range become visible.
This moment is a sudden sigh, a breath that is deep, and you realize there is safety in this place.
The uplift of the Rocky Mountains is countered by the underground mining that took place here.
This tension in geology mirrors the dichotomy embedded in public safety facilities.
Firestone was founded as a coal town. The mines no longer operate; however, notions of grit, togetherness, and rebirth – coalification – in Firestone still endure.
The western elevation grounded at the southern edge uplifts out of the earth at a constant angle to the point of the canopy.
A compressed solid wall is carved away to define the main entrance to the building.
The solid building erodes, and the overhanging roof defines the courtyard. The cantilevered roof is supported by an arcade, following the rhythmic nature of civic colonnades.
The lifting roof is tethered to the earth with slender columns, surrounding the moment the oculus pierces the roof.
This is layered with meaning – a memorial, a reminder of restorative justice, a place
of community, a notion of rebirth and new growth rising from the earth.
This roof reaches out from the building, drawing the community in.
The consistency of expression in the roof unifies the community, memorial courtyard, courtroom, and public lobby, a reminder of the harmony between citizens and their government. The lobby is a buffer between judicial and police operations.
It houses the community functions of the building. Welcoming and transparent, with continuous glazing along the exterior wall, the lobby is open and safe for all.
The language between exterior and interior is consistent. The rising shed roof recalls the mining structures of the past.
On the interior, the roof floats above the spaces below, supported by a light monitor. The extreme verticality of the monitor bringing light into the building, is in tension with the circulation spine, the passageway between pods of Police Department functions.
The pod walls hover below the roof with space carved away defining the circulation and gathering zones, reminders of mining tunnels and chambers.
“It is typically a once in a career opportunity for a department to design and build an entirely new facility, and we would not hesitate to take this journey again with the architects,” says Chief David Montgomery & Lieutenant Alan Yoder, Firestone PD.
Project: Firestone Police Department and Municipal Court
Architects: Roth Sheppard Architects
Client: Firestone Police Department
Contractor: FCI Constructors, Inc.
Photographers: James Florio Photograp
