Bombera

Spanish for “fire woman”, Bombera is a Mexican restaurant located in the heart of Oakland’s Dimond District. Working with architecture firm Studio Terpeluk, chef/owner Dominica Rice-Cisneros transformed what was an abandoned firehouse into a rustic restaurant space that celebrates Oakland’s Chicano cooking heritage and brings new life to the building.

Structurally speaking, the existing single-story, wood-framed building was seismically upgraded, which consisted of new plywood shear walls throughout, an exposed steel moment frame at the storefront and retrofitting of the existing concrete foundations. New mechanical equipment is housed on a new wood-framed platform above the existing pitched roof at the front half of the building, which required upgrades of the affected roof purlins as well as strategic retrofitting of the exposed timber roof trusses below so as to minimize the visual impact from inside the restaurant. The flat portion of the roof at the rear of the building was reframed, which required careful detailing of the attachment to the existing balloon framed wall in order to preserve the stepped finishes of the parapet.