A shopping mall on a busy weekend in Pakistan — LuckyOne Mall in Karachi, Dolmen Mall in Lahore, or any of the Imtiaz superstore locations across the country — can hold tens of thousands of visitors simultaneously. These buildings are designed to maximise open, column-free retail space, which creates a fire containment challenge that is fundamentally different from an office or residential building. The open atrium designs that make malls visually impressive are the same features that allow fire and smoke to spread rapidly across large areas without physical barriers.
Karachi Steel Services has supplied certified fire door assemblies to major retail developments across Pakistan. Our completed projects include LuckyOne Mall in Karachi, Dolmen Mall in Lahore, and multiple Imtiaz superstore locations. Each of these projects required fire doors across service corridors, food court boundaries, stairwell entries, car park connections, and plant rooms — all coordinated with the project’s fire safety consultant and main contractor.
The Specific Fire Risks in a Retail Environment (UL 10C | BS 476 | EN 1634-1)
Food courts are the highest-risk area in any shopping mall. Multiple commercial kitchens operating simultaneously, high heat output, cooking oil, and gas lines create a concentrated ignition risk in a zone directly adjacent to a large number of people. At LuckyOne Mall, the food court-to-retail-mall boundary required fire door assemblies with smoke seals and auto-closing mechanisms linked to the central fire alarm system — ensuring automatic compartmentation in the event of a kitchen fire.
Cinema multiplexes within mall complexes present a different challenge — large numbers of people in a dark, unfamiliar space with limited visibility of exits. Fire doors at cinema hall entries must be openable from the inside with a single push action, must be self-closing, and must be rated to maintain the compartmentation between the cinema zone and the main mall concourse.
Stairwell Fire Doors in Multi-Storey Retail (UL 10C | BS 476 | EN 1634-1)
A multi-storey mall like LuckyOne or Dolmen Mall Lahore with basement car parking, ground and upper retail floors, and rooftop facilities requires fire-rated stairwells connecting every level. Each stairwell entry on each floor requires a fire door. In a building with eight stairwells across five levels, that is 40 fire doors for stairwell entries alone — before service areas, tenancy boundaries, and plant rooms are counted.
The basement car park connection is particularly important. Fires in car parks — driven by vehicle fuel loads and increasingly by lithium-ion vehicle batteries — can be intense. Fire doors at every entry point from the car park to the main building structure must be rated to at least 90 minutes with smoke seals and automatic closing.
What Retail Developers and Anchor Tenants Require (UL 10C | BS 476 | EN 1634-1)
International anchor tenants — hypermarket operators, international fashion brands, electronics retailers — typically have their own store design standards that specify fire door ratings for their tenancy boundaries. The Imtiaz superstore locations that KSS has supplied required fire doors at all boundary connections between the retail floor, storage areas, and staff zones — with certification documentation submitted for each location as part of the store opening process.
Karachi Steel Services works with fire safety consultants and main contractors during the design and construction phase to align our door specifications with the project’s fire strategy. We provide the technical data that consultants need to verify compliance, and we supply doors in coordination with the construction programme.
For retail developments across Pakistan — new construction or existing mall renovation — contact Karachi Steel Services at 187 Nishter Road, Garden West, Karachi.