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Cake day: June 26th, 2023

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  • …that’d take a deep dive into obsolete building codes to identify exactly when the concept was first introduced: BOCA, southern/standard, and uniform building codes all merged into IBC about twenty-five years ago so we’re talking about old paper code books from twentieth century…

    …areas of refuge are closely tied to modern accessibility standards which arose from the ADA in 1990; i’m guessing they were widely introduced sometime in that decade, possibly earlier for high-rises or hazardous occupancies, but they were definitely part of 1997 UBC (which most of california enforced) and 2000 IBC…

    (i started working professionally in 1993 and every project i worked on was fully accessible, but adoption varied across different jurisdictions and when i worked in california a decade later they were waaaay less accessible than texas)




  • …architect here: we design protected areas of refuge where mobilty-impared occupants can shelter in place until emergency services arrive to evacuate them from the facility…

    …you’ll often see areas of refuge identified near elevator lobbies and equipped with hardened callboxes for emergency communication, or marked on the evacuation plan if they’re in a remote location…sometimes areas of refuge are pretty subtle if you don’t know to look for them: we design protected firewalls, structure, and building systems integrated into the facility so the biggest tells are usually callboxes, magnetic door hold-opens, or tracks for automatic fire curtains…

    …when renovating older facilities, we do the best we can to modernise life safety within the limitations of existing infrastructure, but the general rule of thumb is that as long as you’ve improved upon what originally previously existed, you’ve satisfied your obligation even if it’s not at parity with new construction…

    (it’s not uncommon for old facilities to have gone through a dozen or more life-safety modernisations since the advent of modern building codes, just palimpsested one-over-the-other as standards progressed)