Tall building office space protected with innovative multi-sided fire curtain

WHAT TYPE OF FIRE PROTECTION WAS THE CLIENT LOOKING FOR?

Modus construction built the 18 floor, state-of-the-art 317,000 sq ft Aldgate Tower in the Aldgate commercial area of Central London. Aldgate Tower consists of office space for UK Commercial, UK Legal, Creative and Financial companies and the building’s location allows fantastic, 360 degree panoramic views of the London skyline. The building’s internal layout consists of office space around the outer edge with a central core of lifts, meeting rooms and service facilities.

Like all modern buildings being constructed, fire engineering is a high priority, especially when combined with the modern, open plan designs being created by architects. In the case of Aldgate Tower, the architect designed a focal point, open staircase leading from the 11th to 12th floor on the west side of the building. As the staircase design was to remain open with no lobby or door at the bottom and top and with no surrounding walls meant the fire engineers required some sort of fire compartmentation between the floors via the staircase.

HOW DID COOPERS HELP?

The Coopers FireMaster®, closed rectangular Concertina fire curtain is a perfect solution when requiring fire compartmentation around a staircase as it offers a virtual firewall creating a lobby once the curtain has been deployed with more than 2 hours integrity. The innovative Concertina fire curtain installed at Aldgate Tower fully encapsulates the staircase from the 11th to the 12th floor in the event of a fire. The curtain is triggered by either the fire alarm system or a local heat or smoke sensor and is automatically deployed from the ceiling to the floor.

Once activated and fully deployed the Concertina fire curtain replaces the requirement for a lobby or door at both ends of the stairs and protects the occupants from the spread of fire and smoke between the floors. The curtain’s headbox is completely exposed, which is unusual for a Concertina, but it sits well with the surrounding service pipes, vents and structural joists and the headbox and supporting unistruts have all been painted in the same grey finish as the surrounding steel work.


“The beauty of the FireMaster Concertina fire curtain is it requires no side guides so a perfect solution for the staircase design to work with the open plan office layout”

BENEFITS

The FireMaster® Concertina product offers architects the perfect solution to open plan designs with fire engineering in mind and the strict fire regulations put in place with modern tall building construction.
The Concertina fire curtain deploys from the ceiling without the requirement for any side guides or columns, which would disrupt the fantastic views and the open plan design to the office space. It also removes the requirement to have a lobby or door at the top and bottom of the stairs meaning architects, designers and fire engineers are turning to the FireMaster® Concertina to allow beautiful and profitable office spaces whilst protecting the occupants from the harmful effects of fire and smoke.

For more information call +44 (0)2392 454 405 or visit www.coopersfire.com