Karri Fire House: BAL-40 Bushfire Design

This presentation complemented my role as panel convener on a Building Design 'Best Practice' symposium at the 2016 Bushfire Building Conference. It discusses the design process and technical details of the 'Karri Fire House', which was designed by QUT for a professional fire fighter. Utilizing a novel 'Integrated design' approach which incorporates design approaches from the disciplines of architecture, landscape architectue and industrial design, a number of bushfire features are integrated with site specific conditions and human behavioral responses to emergency conditions and daily living. Through this optimisation process the Karri Fire House presents an affordable model for building in high levels of bushfire hazard while retaining biologically significant vegetation. The presentation features quantitative data on costs as well as technical detals on the construciton. This is discussed in the context of the more qualitive characteristics of the unique site and how the patterns of living and emergency response are spatially programmed in an holistic and multi-scaled way: from the floor plan through to the roperability of sliding bushfire shutter and spinkler systems