by Russell Boniface
Associate Editor

How do you . . . design a bomb squad/hazardous materials facility to serve a metropolitan area?

Summary: California-based WWCOT designed the new Metro Bomb Squad facility in downtown Los Angeles, certified LEED® Silver. The two-story, 23,000-square-foot building incorporates an industrial persona to integrate with its surroundings. The facility serves the Metro Bomb Squad and hazardous materials components of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), as well as the LAX bomb squads. The client for the project was the City of Los Angeles, Department of Public Works, Bureau of Engineering.

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Reinventing Los Angeles: Nature and Community in the Global City, by Robert Gottlieb (The MIT Press, 2007).

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The aqua-blue Metro Bomb Squad, situated on 1.3 acres in downtown Los Angeles, was funded with a $600 million bond, Proposition Q, which was approved by voters in 2002 to renovate, expand, and construct public safety facilities. The facility includes the main two-story building, a one-story research and development building, and surface parking for bomb squad vehicles.

The façade of the main two-story building incorporates dark and light green with black to match the colors of the bomb squad’s duty gear. A jagged pattern of small, projected windows symbolizes detonated bomb shrapnel and offers protection from the internal force of bomb detonations. The larger windows sport louvers to shade incoming natural light and also give officers protected views to the outside. Canopies also provide shade and protection. There is no front door; rather, a gate leads into a secure zone. Above, a second-floor setback affords the opportunity for a courtyard.

Inside on the ground level are the evidence processing rooms, laboratories, offices, a bullpen work area, and support facilities. The processing rooms are adjacent to a sloping metal apparatus bay that houses equipment and bomb squad response vehicles. The second floor houses training rooms, sleeping quarters, lockers, a briefing room, break room, and exercise room. All rooms open to the courtyard, which affords them natural light and ventilation. A series of wires above the courtyard, strung across beams, allows ivy to grow. Behind the building are kennels for bomb-sniffing dogs. And, at the one-story research and development building, is a disruptor pit where officers detonate devices and train by using robotics.

Behind-the-scenes building
Andrea Cohen Gehring, FAIA, LEED-AP, WWCOT design partner, points out that the Metro Bomb Squad is not a police station. “It is a behind-the-scenes building,” she says. “The prototypical bomb squad is a garage. We realized it should be more than a garage. This is a place of great pride for officers putting their lives on the line. That group was the least respected architecturally. We felt it was a responsibility to set the tone for comfortable offices with amenities and finishes, rather than an exposed concrete block building. It’s a new breed of bomb squad.”

Both Gehring and WWCOT project manager Dean Vlahos, AIA, LEED-AP, call it an urban building. “We positioned the building in an urban setting,” Vlahos notes. “Behind it is a series of residences of responsible and not-so-responsible citizens, while nearby is a school, businesses, and two churches. So we placed the facility in a melting pot.”

Sustainable design elements that contributed to the building’s LEED® Silver rating include a reflective roof, fly-ash concrete, recycled building materials procured nearby, and louvers around the stairwell windows. “The intent is to create a green environment,” says Vlahos. “The louvers also provide visual screening of the officers. There’s a gang element in the neighborhood, so we don’t want to put the officers at risk.”

Gehring and Vlahos say the design of the parking areas includes large canopies that eventually will hold photovoltaics and take the facility off the grid. The canopies also protect X-ray equipment and make it cooler for those clad in bomb suits.

There’s also a noteworthy find inside, Vlahos mentions. “There’s a tremendous collection of weaponry inside that the officers have confiscated during the course of normal operations.”