EARLY INTEGRATION OF FIRE SAFETY OBJECTIVES BETWEEN ARCHITECTS IN ACADEMIA AND IN PRACTICE

The timing of integrating the objectives of building’s systems in the architectural design is governed by the decisions architects make. The architectural decisions regarding fire safety measures are, in some cases, hindered by cost. Such constraint keeps fire safety options to a minimum of code compliance considered at a late stage of the architectural design. Integrating and incorporating fire safety objectives at an early stage in the architectural design represents a quandary challenge for architects. This research focuses on assessing the perception of architects in academia and practice regarding their priorities for the early integration of natural smoke ventilation (NSV) in comparison to natural thermal ventilation (NTV) in buildings’ design. The architectural design decisions influencing air and smoke flow patterns have been identified. The assessment was carried out through surveying architects in academia and in practice using the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) technique to measure their priorities of the early integration of either NSV or NTV objectives. The results show that there is an obvious perception gap between both architects in academia and in practice. The results also identify some of the reasons that contribute to the perception gap.