Fire Safety in Facade Design

During the last century together with growing construction technology and modern architectural trends, the number of high rise buildings and dimensions of the vision spaces have been increased dramatically. Therefore, the design of the facades of modern structures has been getting more important and complicated. Facade is an important element of a modern building that struggle with hard outdoor weather conditions and act as a separator between the internal and external environment. Fire safety is another important design issue for facade structures, especially in high rise buildings. In case of fire on one floor flames can quickly spread to upper levels of building through the wind. At this point, the reaction of facade construction to fire is getting more important. In order to design a well fire-protected facade construction and prevent rapid spread of fire, material classifications and necessary fire precaution details shall be considered in the design phase. There are international sources provide instructions to the designers regarding this important issue. The main goal of this paper is to provide important key parameters in terms of fire safety for facade designers. Material classifications and limitations according to building parameters, fire-stopping between floors, fire barrier in cavities are the main subjects that are investigated later in the paper.