A PILOT CASE STUDY OF A PERFORMANCE-BASED FIRE SAFETY DESIGN METHOD TO A MULTI-TENANT OFFICE BUILDING

Abstract

A pilot case study of a performance based fire safety design method was carried out. This method intends to give more flexibility in building design, without changing the level of safety that is implied in the current building standard law (BSL) of Japan. The comformance verification was made to each performance criteria using simple evaluation formula. In doing so, practical design would be feasible. The method was applied to a four storied multi tenant office building with atria. By applying this design method, rational and possibly economical design solutions were derived. One example is that the fire shutters around the atrium could be removed by accounting for the possibility of fire spread toward the upper floor through atrium.