The design for a Southern California fire station that doubles down on its civic duty blazed a trail to victory this week in the 2025 Concrete Masonry Student Competition. University of Maryland architecture graduate students Alvaro Nunez ‘26 and Wenjie Zhuang ‘26 scorched the competition with Underhill—Encitas Fire Station #01, to take honorable mention in the national contest, sponsored by the Concrete Masonry and Hardscapes Association and the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ASCA).
“Alvaro and Wenjie’s project was a skillful manipulation of a difficult site, and a very accomplished response to the program and how to use concrete masonry to achieve that so effectively,” said Professor of the Practice Peter Noonan, FAIA, ‘88, M.Arch ‘92, who served as the team’s faculty advisor.
This year’s competition challenged collegiate teams across the U.S. to design a state-of-the-art fire station that serves as a beacon for its surrounding community while accommodating everything from equipment storage to housing for its ladder team. Of over 400 students who competed, only 10 were recognized for their novel use of concrete masonry products, or CMUs, to convey form, function and expression.
The competition was kindling for Noonan’s Spring 2025 graduate topical studio, where student teams worked to devise a variety of site-specific fire stations that predominately employ the strong-yet-versatile material. Prior to the design stage, students conducted extensive research on the role of fire houses, and spent the afternoon with Ladder #32 in Montgomery County, Md. to get a better sense of typical activities, storage and volunteer needs, and the multi-faceted role a firehouse plays in a community.
“What the students learned was not just about how these stations serve as a public resource, but that they have a rich history within the social fabric,” said Noonan. “Most of the projects really emphasized that in different ways.”
While the competition rules stipulated the building type and material, students had free reign on location; coming on the heels of the devastating fires in Los Angeles, Nunez and Zhuang chose San Diego County, where Nunez was raised, to situate their project. Their design takes advantage of the odd-shaped site, carving into a large berm in one corner to ground the station and open its activities into an expansive public plaza. A green roof that slopes to the street beyond also creates ample space for community engagement.
“We wanted it to be different and change the way you think of a typical fire station,” said Nunez.
University of Maryland students have placed in multiple ASCA competitions over the years; last year, Sarah Jane Graven M.Arch ‘25 and Megan Bugbee M.Arch ‘25 took fourth place in the 2024 ASCA Timber in the City Competition.
“When I learned we won again this year, it literally sucked the oxygen out of the room,” said Noonan.
The jury praised the project for embracing the site’s geology, and for its use of CMU to create both a stunning public asset and civic space, calling it a “commanding presence” with “striking materiality.” Zhuang said that the process of balancing the toughness of concrete with elements of landscape solidified the station’s place in the community, while sharing it too.
“While we had a lot of different opinions on some of the smaller details, we never let go of that as a big idea,” she said.