Billed as a new residential and cultural ‘village’, Creekside is part of the regeneration of Greenwich and comprises 801 apartments within four towers which are connected by a network of landscaped waterside parks, paths and public piazzas.  The prestigious scheme sits just across the River Thames from Canary Wharf and offers a range of apartments, from studios through to penthouses, all of which provide residents with an open plan layout and and basement car parking. The combination of an architectural design that emphasised light and open atrium spaces, a waterside location, mixed use occupancy and a tall tower structure presented numerous challenges for the fire design and FDS Consult was brought on board to utilise the company’s experience and creative approach to devise a solutions-driven fire strategy.  The result was a development that stayed true to the architect’s vision whilst delivering the required levels of safety and achieving substantial cost savings for the developer.

FDS Consult’s experience of tall buildings, mixed use schemes and residential apartments enabled the team to devise a value-engineered strategy that deviated from building regulations requirements.  The team then used CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) modelling to prove that this innovative approach would be effective in providing sufficient levels of safety.

FDS Consult addressed the challenges of the scheme by:

• Removing unnecessary sprinklers from the basement car park

• Removing sprinklers from communal areas

• Removing venting to car park lobbies

• Justified extended travel distances in car park and residential corridors

• Justified open plan layout to penthouses

• Rationalised staircase provisions to the retail unit

Following completion of the fire design and justification of the strategy, FDS Consult liaised with the regulatory authorities to achieve all mandatory approvals.