C2I 2017: Travelling fire methodology behind the design of The Scalpel

The travelling fire methodology has been devised to more closely represent the behaviour of fire in open-plan spaces, and enable structural engineers to design accordingly

Collaborate To Innovate 2017

Category: The built environment

Winner: Making the 38-story 52 Lime Street (Scalpel): Structural design of modern open plan buildings using the travelling fire methodology

Partners: Arup UK, Imperial College London

As the proportion of the world’s city dwellers continues to rise, so does the demand for workspace. Most people based in cities work in offices, and the most popular paradigm for office workspace is open-plan, particularly — and increasingly — in tall buildings. The new and growing mega-cities of the Middle East and Asia tend to be full of skyscrapers, their floors essentially constituting a tall stack of spaces that, apart from their supporting columns, are open throughout.

Over the past two decades it has become clear that there is a significant deficiency in the way such open-plan structures have been designed and built — namely, how they react to the most basic enemy of the built environment: fire.