Archinect - News

Designing for disaster in an increasingly fire-burdened California

2023-04-19T11:45:00-04:00

Each home was considered to be built to shelter-in-place standards, with ignition-resistant construction and materials—a cutting-edge approach for the time, though the standards have since been adopted into state and local codes. They are little fortresses of tile roofs, stucco walls, hardscape patios, and covered eaves. [The] heavy fortification gives the communities—both the structures and the people who shelter in them—an extra chance to survive.

The state is in a bind caused by its dire need to quickly enact affordable housing and the movement of populations into liminal wildland-urban interface zones, both of which are placing more people in the fight or flight predicament that’s leading to more innovations in residential design surrounding the concept of defensible space.

Experts point to homes in the Rancho Santa Fe neighborhood in San Diego as exemplars of fire safety that the rest of the state is still lagging to catch on to, hemmed in by costs that are making defensive evacuation plans harder to execute. “Shelter-in-place really was a theory,” local fire protection specialist Brandon Closs told the MIT Technology Review, “it’s still a work in progress.”

Considerations when architecting in the WUI

2021-12-20T18:40:00-05:00

If it were me and I was rebuilding in Paradise, which I would happily do, I would be thinking about creating the simplest structure I could, so I don’t have those places of accumulation...not having these weird intersections and roof planes. You know, this is really a complicated look, which is very popular in our modern culture right now, but it’s maybe not setting us up for the best success. I’d also be adding gutter guards of a non combustible material.

Zeke Lunder sat down with Eric Knapp and Yana Valachovic (both members of the California Fire Science Consortium) to talk about their recent paper, which reviews factors that drove structure loss during the 2018 Camp Fire. They also highlight three main priorities for designing or retrofitting buildings for life in the WUI.

Grenfell Report Blames Firefighters

2019-11-01T19:48:00-04:00

The London fire brigade’s readiness for the Grenfell Tower fire was “gravely inadequate” and fewer people would have died if it had been better prepared, a long-awaited public inquiry report into the disaster that killed 72 people has concluded ... [despite] “compelling evidence that the external walls of the building failed to comply with requirements” of building regulations governing fire safety.

The Fire Brigades Union published a damning report in September that accuses former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's deregulation — followed, and reportedly amplified, by Tony Blair — of having gutted building and fire safety regulations. At the same time, firefighters are blamed for a "lack of preparation" that cost 72 lives.

Meanwhile, families of the victims are suing the manufacturers of the buildings cladding and insulation.