including Shanghai Tower which, at 632
Wrightstyle looks at fire risk in
high rise buildings
Wrightstyle is one of Europe's leading
suppliers of advanced steel and aluminium
glazing systems, supplying fire and blast
resistant systems worldwide including
many completions across Asia and the
APAC region. Tim Kempster, Wrighstyle's
MD takes a look at fire safety in the
supertall buildings now being built.
The skyscraper is just about to get a whole
lot bigger, with a whole lot more of them
around.
One World Trade Centre, the tallest building
in the USA at 541 metres, is set to be
dwarfed by the tallest of them all, the
Kingdom Tower in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia –
the first habitable building to pass the one
kilometre mark.
Kingdom Tower will stand at just over 1,000
metres, nearly twice the height of One
World Trade Center, will take five years to
construct, have 200 storeys, and require
500,000 cubic metres of concrete and
80,000 tons of steel.
It will be 173 metres taller than Dubai's
Burj Khalifa, currently the world's tallest
building – with 160 storeys. Indeed, Dubai
has more than 70 skyscrapers over 200
metres tall – more than Hong Kong, which
has 61 buildings of the same height.
The tower, overlooking the Red Sea, will
comprise a luxury hotel, apartments,
offices and an observatory.
The challenges facing the builders of the
Kingdom Tower will be immense, not least
how to pump wet cement half a mile
upwards. To erect the Burj Khalifa, cement
pumping took place at night to reduce heat
and prevent it setting prematurely.
Saudi Arabia is also home to the Makkah
Royal Clock Tower at 601 metres – and 22
cities in 10 Middle Eastern countries have
at least one structure above 150 metres.
But it's Asia that is setting the pace, with a
number of ultra high-rise developments,
metres, is China's tallest building.
Another is Sky City in Changsha which will
be 838 metres tall, again higher than the
Burj Khalifa and the developers want to
complete construction in 10 months, using
prefabricated modules.
Indeed, nine of the world's tallest buildings
are now in Asia, with almost 600 other
skyscrapers under construction. According
to the latest Tall Trends Report Asia
dominates the market with 74% of world
skyscraper completions in 2013. Asia is
now home to 45% of the 100 tallest
buildings in the world.
Underlining how the skyscraper has been
adopted internationally, One World Trade
Center is the only US skyscraper in the Top
10 tallest buildings in the world, in a
country that has become almost
synonymous with tall buildings.
Design of the new ultra tall buildings are
being influenced by a report from the US
National Institute of Standards and
Technology (NIST) into the collapse of the
Twin Towers in September 2001, which
were just over 400 metres tall, which found
that “the towers withstood the impacts and
would have remained standing were it not
for the dislodged insulation (fireproofing)
and the subsequent multi-floor fires.”
A report published this year, Roadmap on
the Future Research Needs of Tall
Buildings, by the Council on Tall Buildings
and Urban Habitat, found that more
research needed to be done “to establish
the impact of new sustainable materials,
technologies and design strategies in tall
buildings on fire and life safety
performance.”
It also said that research was needed “to
develop better collaboration between
architects, fire-engineers and the fire-
fighting community.”
In Europe, by comparison, the need for
height is much less pronounced. In the UK,
for example, there are only 57 habitable
buildings of at least 100 metres tall – with
The Shard in London being the tallest
building in both the UK and Europe, topping
out at 310 metres with 87 storeys.
At Wrightstyle, we have worked on a
number of high-rise developments
internationally, building in fire safety and
high wind-loading attributes – particularly
in the Far East, a typhoon zone.
We have also publicly raised concerns
about how fire regulations were being
applied across parts of the Middle East,
and changed our certification processes ,
so that a fire certification on one of our
glazing systems could not be unilaterally
applied on another project.
But we remain concerned that in the
headlong rush to build faster and higher,
issues of fire safety may not be adequately
addressed in some parts of the world or,
just as bad, components in that building
may not have proper fire-safety
characteristics.
For example, a recent fire in Grozny, Russia
destroyed the tallest skyscraper in the
North Caucus region, a 145-metre tall
structure with 40 storeys. Within two
hours, fire had engulfed three sides of the
building, with fire spreading so quickly
because, it was reported, combustible
building materials were used in its
construction. (An apartment is a
neighbouring 27-storey residential block
belongs to the French actor Gerard
Depardieu).
Fire safety over the years has been about
“codifying by catastrophe” – the process by
which we learn lessons after the event.
The real tragedy is how often we have
failed to anticipate fire safety issues and
legislated sooner.
The biggest lesson came from the Triangle
Shirtwaist Factory in New York, when a
catastrophic fire killed 146 garment
workers in 1911, and led to new legislation,
adopted in many parts of the world, on fire
safety in tall buildings. The worst recorded
tall building fire was in Sao Paulo, Brazil in
a 1974 blaze that killed 179.
Our primary business at Wrightstyle is the
supply of integrated glass and framing
systems, whether in steel or aluminium,
with each system tested as one unit. In a
fire situation, if one of those components
fails, they both fail – with potentially
catastrophic consequences.
A recent influential report on fire safety
design in tall buildings concluded that “only
once we understand fires in modern
compartments can we truly assess the
critical components of the fire safety
strategy and begin to provide relevant,
refined, innovative fire safety that truly
reflects the nature of tall buildings.”
The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban
Habitat also addresses the issue.
In the new generation of super-buildings,
fire safety takes on a whole new dimension,
because – beyond sprinkler systems – how
do you tackle a fire a kilometre up in the
sky?
The answer is: with great difficulty, and
there have been several notable cases
where a sprinkler system has made things
worse, with cold water coming into contact
with non-fire rated glass and causing the
glass to break and allowing more oxygen to
reach the seat of the fire. The same is true
of tempered glass, with a limited fire-
rating.
The most effective way of dealing with fire
at high altitude is by fire
compartmentation: keeping the fire
contained in one protected area and
preventing it from spreading. A contained
fire can be dealt with; an uncontrolled fire
can't.
This was underlined in a report on the 1991
One Meridian Plaza fire in Philadelphia,
which claimed the lives of three fire
fighters, gutted eight floors of the 38-storey
building, and caused an estimated $100
million in direct property losses. The report
noted how fire safety was “built around
effective compartmentation…but their
effectiveness is often comprised by
inadequate design or installation.”
Compartmentation can be compromised by
inadequately-protected wiring on ducting
allowing fire or toxic gases to seep from
one compartment to another or by external
windows breaking in the heat, and allowing
oxygen into the building.
A rule of thumb for fire safety in supertall
buildings is that any fire should be able to
 burn itself out, without external 5. Al-Sharif L, Abu Alqumsan A M, Ghanem W,
intervention, and without building collapse. Tayeh I and Jarrar A. Modelling of Elevator Traffic
Systems Using Queuing Theory. 4th Symposium on
That allows for a limited evacuation of Lift and Escalator Technologies 2014. Vol 4, pp 9-18.
people on the affected floor and on floors University of Northampton, September 2014. doi:
immediately above and below the fire. 10.13140/RG.2.1.1392.0165.
Everyone else should be able to be
 
“defended in place” – a realistic strategy
when you might have elderly or disabled BIOGRAPHICAL DETAILS
occupants stranded 200 storeys up.
Lutfi Al-Sharif received his Ph.D. in lift traffic analysis in
Research demonstrates that a combination
1992 from the University of Manchester. He worked for 9
of a sprinkler system and non-fire rated years for London Underground, London, United Kingdom
glass is not a good safety solution. An in the area of lifts and escalators. In 2002, he formed Al-
“active” sprinkler system needs good Sharif VTC Ltd, a vertical transportation consultancy
maintenance and activation sequences to based in London, United Kingdom. He has 17 published
papers in peer reviewed journals the area of vertical
work properly, whereas “passive” fire-rated
transportation systems and is co-inventor of four patents.
glazing systems are guaranteed to work – if He is currently Associate Professor in the Department of
the right systems have been specified. Mechatronic Engineering at The University of Jordan,
(Sprinkler systems can also be Amman, Jordan.
compromised by low water pressure, a
© Peters Research Ltd 2016
particular consideration in very high
buildings, and PVC water supply pipes can
be damaged by fire and rendered
inoperable).
Over the years, we've seen the good, bad
and the ugly of fire safety design, and hope
that the new cities in the sky pay heed to
the absolute need for a whole new level of
fire safety and, if the worst does happen,
have fire containment strategies to ensure
everyone's safety.
Further information:
Jane Embury, Wrightstyle
+44 (0) 1380 722 239
jane.embury@wrightstyle.co.uk
Media enquiries to Charlie Laidlaw, David
Gray PR
+44 (0) 1620 844736
(m) +44 (0) 7890 396518
Charlie.laidlaw@yahoo.co.uk
www.wrightstyle.co.uk
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2. Powell B. Optimal Elevator Banking under
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3. Wit J. Sharing Elevator Capacity: Exploring the
Unused Potential of Stacked Mixed-Use High Rise
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4. Barney G. Towards agreed traffic design
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