This Fire Station In Italy Looks Like A Supervillain’s Secret Base

Jürgen Eheim, Ullrich Egger, and Günter Richard Wett

Recently, this fire station in the northern part of Italy went viral. Despite having been built a decade ago, it started gaining more and more attention after one person on Reddit compared it to a villain hideout. We must admit, though, it does look sort of villainy. But it wasn’t built inside a cave just for the sake of Bond movie aesthetics. As the farmable land in the Alps is scarce and the restrictions on non-traditional architecture are rigid, the architects have come up with an ingenious solution.

More: Bergmeisterwolf Architekten h/t: boredpanda

Jürgen Eheim, Ullrich Egger, and Günter Richard Wett

In fact, this aesthetically-pleasing fire station in a small Italian town was built to save the land. In this alpine area, the land is especially scarce, so the local community decided that it would be best for the station to be built in a mountain, or a 300-foot cliff of sheer rock, to be more precise.

Jürgen Eheim, Ullrich Egger, and Günter Richard Wett

To carry out the project, the people of the small town of Margreid hired Bergmeisterwolf, a Northern Italian architecture firm with offices in Italy and Austria.

Jürgen Eheim, Ullrich Egger, and Günter Richard Wett

The architects began by blasting three caverns into the cliff and connected them with crisscrossing tunnels. Two of the former became the garages, while the third one acts as the administrative part of the fire station.

Jürgen Eheim, Ullrich Egger, and Günter Richard Wett

Not only does the design of the building look striking, but it is also very ergonomic as the mountain provides natural insulation for the building. The temperature in the groundmass averages around 55 degrees when the outside temperature is about 14F. Only one of the three caverns had to be insulated manually.

Jürgen Eheim, Ullrich Egger, and Günter Richard Wett

Inside the building, the architects built a curving concrete wall connecting the three caves, to protect the firefighters from falling rocks. The black color of the concrete was chosen to evoke the impression of burnt wood and was achieved by mixing beech coal dust into the aggregate.

Jürgen Eheim, Ullrich Egger, and Günter Richard Wett

Jürgen Eheim, Ullrich Egger, and Günter Richard Wett

Jürgen Eheim, Ullrich Egger, and Günter Richard Wett

Jürgen Eheim, Ullrich Egger, and Günter Richard Wett