Fire safety reform: Australian state government to audit, replace and ban flammable cladding

2017-08-02T13:46:00-04:00

The state government will audit the use and ban the supply of the potentially flammable building cladding that led to London's deadly Grenfell Tower inferno, in what it styles as Australia's toughest fire safety reforms. [...] Better Regulation Minister Matt Kean said the government had undertaken an audit sample of about 180,000 residential and commercial towers constructed in NSW since the 1980s. About 1000 of those buildings "may have [unsafe] cladding", the Minister said.

"The [New South Wales] state government said it would introduce reform that would identify buildings encased in unsafe cladding," the Sydney Morning Herald reports, "require them to be inspected and force building owners to foot the bill for replacements and ban the sale and supply of unsafe material."

"Flammable" towers make a fiery statement on the modern skyscraper frenzy

2014-01-20T14:13:00-05:00

Architects always have the future in mind when they design. That's particularly evident in today's cityscapes as they continuously try to one-up each other in who can raise the world's next tallest, more-modern-than-thou skyscraper for all to gaze in awe -- or not. For Jingjing Naihan Li, a long-time resident and practicing architect in Beijing, modern skyscrapers can be invasive and gradually make the city's public spaces feel less familiar.

As a clever response to the skyscraper frenzy she saw at home and abroad, Naihan created a collection of the most recognizable towers scaled down to meticulously replicated wax candles titled "Flammable."

"Together, it looks like a party of all the alpha males of the world," Naihan responded in an email. "In places like New York or Hong Kong where land is limited, it was somewhat justifiable to build high and dense. But as the cities with the skyscraper were viewed by other developed countries as the representative of modern success, the sk...

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Fire safety reform: Australian state government to audit, replace and ban flammable cladding

"Flammable" towers make a fiery statement on the modern skyscraper frenzy