Inchcape, the automotive retail and services company, instructed the Clegg Group as main contractors for the BMW and Mini Cooper build for the joint site in Reading, UK. The new dealership is a showroom, garage and customer services point for both BMW and Mini Cooper.
Inchcape, the automotive retail and services company, instructed the Clegg Group as main contractors for the BMW and Mini Cooper build for the joint site in Reading, UK. The new dealership is a showroom, garage and customer services point for both BMW and Mini Cooper.
The site is very clearly divided up into the bright and fun branded Mini Cooper site and the more sleek and sophisticated BMW side. Customers are able to freely move from one side to the other due to the open plan designs and the two sides are joined by a first floor connecting wide walkway.
The three open plan floors are connected by escalators on the BMW side and stairs on the Mini Cooper side. Due to this layout means fire compartmentation is required between the two sides to prevent the spread of fire and smoke throughout the building in the event of a fire.
There are a total of five, automatic deployable fire curtains installed that are completely hidden from view until required. Coopers were also requested to develop and install a showroom curtain that didn’t require or offer any fire protection but used architectural fabric that was specially created to retract automatically combined with dry ice and music to reveal the customer’s new Mini Cooper to them on the day they pick it up.
The Coopers Fire team worked closely with the contractors to ensure the fire curtains supplied satisfied the fire regulations stipulated by the building’s fire engineering scheme. It is also essential that the fire curtains were subtly designed into the makeup of the building so the clean lines and open plan designs were not spoilt.
The main BMW used car showroom is 35 metres wide and required a dividing fire curtain across the middle to offer fire compartmentation between the main part of the building and the car park, ramp and garage. Two FireMaster® vertically deployable fire curtains were installed to the divide up this large showroom area, offering more than 2 hours integrity. One fire curtain was just under 20 metres wide with the other fire curtain being 15 metres wide. Both fire curtains had a drop of 3.3 metres and were designed into the fabric of the building thus being invisible from view by the browsing customers.
The three other fire curtains installed divide the BMW and Mini Cooper sides and were 4 metres, 4.2 metres and and 6.7 metres and all had a drop of 3.3 metres.
Coopers Fire are able to offer a huge range of fire and smoke curtain sizes to suit all applications within a building and being able to offer a suitable product to large global brands like Mini Cooper BMW is hugely important. Not only were Coopers able to offer the level of fire protection required, we were also able to develop an innovative non fire protective showroom curtain for the Mini Cooper site.
The day to day occupants of the Mini Cooper and BMW building in Reading not only benefit from a beautiful, open plan and modern work place but are also able to enjoy this space knowing they are safely protected from the spread of fire by Coopers fire curtains.
