Arts Faculty Building, Nottingham

The proposed building was a three storey development for the University ofNottingham Arts Faculty. It consisted of a library, a circulation space, laboratory areas, an IT hub room, open plan work areas, seminar rooms, showing areas and various other meeting rooms and offices.

Innovation Fire Engineering took a practical approach to the fire design of the building and optimised the design through the removal of both staircase lobbies maximising usable space on all three floors and decreasing the project cost of fire resistant materials. In addition, cost savings were provided by justifying the replacement of two of the fire fighting staircases with two protected staircases, which allowed the reduction of the duration of fire resistance for fire doors and compartmentation.  Innovation Fire Engineering also justified the removal of the smoke control system from both void spaces through the utilisation of strategic cross corridor door sets on hold open devices and a fire engineered fire alarm system. We further reduced costs for the client through the removal of the smoke control system from the two staircases and the production of a fire strategy that did not require a sprinkler system.

Innovation Fire Engineering designed an ‘L5’ fire engineered alarm system, providing greater flexibility for the placement of detection and related systems in the Arts Faculty Building, whilst still producing a safe building design.