Many residential and commercial buildings include atrias as a design feature

An atria can pose many design challenges. The fact that it is likely to lack vertical compartmentation against smoke travel means that it is easy for smoke to spread laterally into higher levels and to other parts of the building, unless there are suitable measures to control the smoke.

A well-designed smoke control system should be able to maintain smoke free escape conditions on all occupied levels to allow evacuation with the minimum risk of smoke inhalation, injury or death.

• Compartmentation: Smoke control is provided by making each space a separate, fully fire resisting compartment so that smoke does not escape into other areas. This option does not require smoke ventilation but requires expensive and restrictive construction.
• Compartment extract: If smoke ventilation is to be provided, maximum protection is achieved if smoke is not allowed to escape from the fire room but is directly extracted outside. However this requires either multiple individual systems or complex ducted systems so is rarely used unless essential.
• Balcony extract: The complexity of compartment extract may be reduced if smoke is allowed to flow into a balcony section from one of a number of rooms and extracted from under the balcony.
• Atria extract: The simplest and most common system, this allows smoke to spill into the atria and be extracted from under the roof. There are practical limitations on the clear height that can be achieved.
• Temperature control: For a fully glazed atria, a temperature control smoke ventilation system in the atrium can limit smoke temperatures to avoid glass failure, thus protecting occupants of other rooms.
• Smoke clearance: Used in some low-risk atria.