Archinect - News

East London blaze reignites cladding fears as Grenfell investigation grinds on

2024-08-26T18:34:00-04:00

More than 80 people had to be evacuated after a major fire broke out in east London early Monday, fire officials said. The blaze brought back painful memories of the Grenfell Tower fire that killed 72 people in the city in 2017. The Dagenham building had “a number of fire safety issues” officials said. Notably, the mixed-use building had “noncompliant cladding,” according to a 2023 application for construction work.

Responding to the Dagenham fire, the Times reported Grenfell United as saying, "This highlights the painfully slow progress of remediation across the country, and a lack of urgency for building safety as a whole." In a truly painful precursor, the yearslong criminal inquiry into the deadly 2017 fire is expected to release its final report in less than two weeks. The Times cited a separate government source in claiming there are currently 3,280 buildings over three stories in the UK thought to still have unsafe cladding.

Criminal charges stemming from the Grenfell incident won't be brought against defendants until at least late 2026, according to the most recent update. Another Monday fire was also widely covered in the nearby New Providence Wharf Estate, though no injuries were reported.

What’s holding up mass timber's ascent in Chicago?

2024-07-30T08:00:00-04:00

The Tribune recently asked why mass timber construction is so lagging in Chicago while nearby Milwaukee and other cities in the Pacific Northwest and Europe are making strides to embrace the movement by altering their building codes and fire safety regulations.

Even after an amenable update to its citywide code in 2020, forces such as the collective memory of the 1871 Great Chicago Fire are one such impediment to the development of new wooden designs. A two-year-old residential project from Hartshorne Plunkard Architecture — a rare approved proposal over five stories — appears to have stalled. The DOB says it considers additional exceptions to the limit "on a case-by-case basis," but there remains an impression it is too late to the table, leaving the city known for its architectural innovations disappointingly out of the vanguard while a new race to the top unfolds.

Burning down the house to make American homes disaster-proof

2024-07-21T11:00:00-04:00

Last year's devastating wildfires in California and Hawaii once again came into focus as part of a New York Times exposé on the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety (I.B.H.S.)-led movement towards the “biggest overhaul of building standards in more than 30 years.”

Burn demonstrations help visualize protective interventions that best resemble moats in unison with better building materials. The Times says: “The message to homebuilders is stark: Homes in certain parts of the United States must now be constructed with wildfires in mind, or they most likely will not be insured, which would mean they couldn’t be bought with a mortgage.”

Landscape designers as well as architects working on private residences will be equally affected. The MIT Technology Review wrote more extensively on the subject of design and the disaster-proof home in California last April.

Just under a quarter of all UK high-rises with 'dangerous' cladding have been remediated, new report finds

2024-06-21T14:10:00-04:00

Just under one in four high-rise UK residential structures in need of cladding remediation have had the necessary labor performed despite a previous increase in efforts in the wake of the ongoing inquiry into the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire, according to a new report from the government office Department of Levelling Up, Housing and Communities’ (DLUHC).

Construction News has the latest on the concerning lack of progress backtracking throughout the country's building and construction industry, where now just 1,088 of the 4,374 identified have completed their necessary remediations. (Another 2,066 buildings have begun the process overall). That includes just 40% of the 1,974 all social housing buildings in the country. The news comes a month following our last update into the investigation, which likely won't begin criminal proceedings against any of the defendants until 2027.

As was reported elsewhere, the inquiry’s final report is expected to be published on September 4th of this yea...

Arup publishes new guide to fire safety and mass timber design

2024-06-10T13:19:00-04:00

Arup has just released a new comprehensive guide to fire safety design and mass timber construction for architects in response to the nascent surge of projects utilizing the material nationwide. The guide (which is available for download here) coalesced research into the design and engineering of large-scale structures such as the firm’s two-year-old HAUT residential project in the Netherlands as a means of granting “risk-based” guidance for future building endeavors, providing strategies for construction in three typologies.

It follows a set of seismic safety tests that were performed last year by scientists at the University of California, San Diego, and will be useful going forward as now mass timber structures begin to substantially increase both their heights and overall footprint worldwide. Another guide to mass timber construction from LEVER Architecture and Atelier Ten can be found here.

A fatal apartment building fire in Valencia, Spain, raises questions on the safety of building materials

2024-02-27T13:11:00-05:00

Valencia is reeling from a fatal fire at an apartment complex in the Spanish city. The incident began on the night of Thursday, February 22nd, and though the cause has not been definitively established, early reporting has suggested that the building’s cladding may have played a part in the disaster.

Ten people have been confirmed to have been killed in the fire, whose identities match the list of ten people deemed missing by authorities. In an isolated moment of relief, four people who had been included on the preceding list of 14 missing people have been located alive.

As per Spanish outlet El Pais, the vice-president of the Valencia College of Industrial and Technical Engineers, Esther Puchades, suggested that the building’s cladding included polyurethane and when “heated it is like plastic and it ignites.” In response, IPUR, Spain’s polyurethane manufacturers’ association, issued a statement saying there was no evidence that polyurethane was used in the subject building.

Related...

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.”

42-story tower catches fire in Hong Kong

2023-03-04T08:00:00-05:00

A 42-story building under construction in Hong Kong caught fire late Thursday, showering a bustling shopping district with sparks and debris and lighting up the nighttime sky. Onlookers flocked to the waterfront neighborhood of Tsim Sha Tsui to take in the spectacle, as the flames made their way through the skyscraper and the scaffolding around it and explosions pierced the air.

The sight lasted for a period of 9 hours before emergency workers finally extinguished the blaze. Only two injuries were reported by Friday evening.

UK announces massive cladding remediation mandate in wake of Grenfell inquiry

2023-01-31T11:45:00-05:00

England's housing developers have been given an ultimatum - commit to repairing unsafe buildings or be banned from operating in the market. Developers now have six weeks to sign a government contract to fix their unsafe buildings from the past 30 years. According to the government's new plan, homeowners living in buildings whose construction poses a potential fire risk will be reimbursed, and building companies who installed the unsafe cladding must pay to replace it with a safer material.

Speaking to the press on Sunday, UK Housing Secretary Michael Gove admitted “faulty” guidance was to blame for the Grenfell Tower tragedy, stating his opinion that the building industry had gone underregulated for years. Cladding manufacturers like Celotex and Kingspan were not included in the mandate. Gove said the government will be committing a total of £5 billion ($6.15 billion) towards the effort.

FEMA is getting tough on property managers with the hopes of preventing another Bronx fire tragedy

2023-01-12T17:05:00-05:00

On the first anniversary of the Twin Parks fire in the Bronx that killed 17 people, the Federal Emergency Management Agency will announce a new national plan to combat “America’s fire problem” using investigatory muscle granted by federal legislation that President Biden signed last month. The legislation will give the United States Fire Administration the power to identify the causes of fires like the one at the Twin Parks North West housing complex.

A year removed from the tragic blaze that took the lives of 17 people in the Bronx apartment complex once lauded by Paul Goldberger for its trend-bucking design, lawmakers in Washington have finally heeded the desperate pleas of public housing advocates who appealed for stricter safety measures in response to the Twin Parks fire and another incident in Philadelphia just days prior.

Biden appointee Dr. Lori Moore-Merrell, the head of the U.S. Fire Administration, said the lack of adequate fire data will also be addressed for the first time. The results will hopefully benefit the estimated 1.3 million Americans who live in public housing. Last year alone, there were more than 1.2 million reported structure fires (of all types), resulting in the deaths of some 2,500 people nationwide.

Related Feature on Archinect: America’s Public Housing is Burning, Fueled by Cold Indifference

“It’s always in our neighborhood,” one former Twin Parks resident told the Times, referring to the deadly di...

Finger-pointing closes Phase II of the Grenfell Tower fire inquiry as possible criminal charges loom

2022-11-09T15:09:00-05:00

The close of the 300-day-long inquiry into the devastating 2017 Grenfell Tower fire in London saw attorneys for the victims pinning the “primary responsibility” on the building's designer, Studio E Architects, adding that a “rogue's gallery” comprised of Arconic Architectural Products and the engineering concern Exova were also to blame, along with the “rolled-back state” and a coterie of Grenfell subcontractors.

“The full extent of the disaster was caused by a complex combination of corporate greed with complete disregard for safety, professional incompetence, oversight and organisational failings, and facilitated by an insufficiently robust regime,” Barrister Stephanie Barwise said during her final statement.

A representative for Kingspan, makers of the faulty K15 insulation used in 5% of the facade, added their view that “responsibility also rests with those responsible for the design, construction, and approval of the refurbishment.”

Previously on Archinect: New findings state ...

Fire erupts in a 42-story skyscraper in Changsha, China

2022-09-16T17:14:00-04:00

A skyscraper in the central Chinese city of Changsha was seriously damaged after a fire engulfed the 42-storey building. The fire in the China Telecom building was reported at 3.48pm. Thirty-six fire engines and 280 firefighters from 17 stations were sent to the blaze, according to the Hunan Fire Department. By 5pm the fire had been extinguished but firefighters continued rescue efforts.

Frightening videos are circulating on social media and appear to show the 22-year-old building almost completely burnt through its facade, although the extent of internal structural damage is not clear. It is also unknown what caused the fire, but the incident should highlight the safety concerns inherent in China’s recent decision to ban all construction of any structure totaling more than 500 meters (1,640 feet) in height following decades of unfettered tall building.

Although it opened as the city's record-holder, the 160-meter (525-foot) tall structure is now only the 46th tallest in Changsha, according to the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat.

China-Telecom building in Changsha burns to the ground in 20 mins. pic.twitter.com/Xbrn73WAFw
— Dave (@davecoughlan80) September 16, 2022

No fatalities have been reported, although some initial sources indicated concern that deaths from the incident could have numbered in the hundreds.

The rise of tall mass timber development could herald a wooden renaissance in Chicago

2022-08-12T13:33:00-04:00

Chicago’s steel-framed architectural identity may be about to change thanks to the reintroduction of mass timber as the primary building material in a new 9-story tower designed by local studio Hartshorne Plunkard Architecture for developer Sterling Bay. Noted in a report from Chicago YIMBY, the new project "will be the tallest proposal of its kind in the region."

Sterling Bay is the same developer behind the controversial $6 billion Lincoln Yards plan, which is set to be completed in three years. Their new proposal, sited several blocks to the north of 2100 N. Southport Avenue, is worth a reported $50 million and would provide the Lincoln Park neighborhood with a total of 130 apartment units once it is completed the same year. In a press release, Sterling Bay's CEO Andy Gloor said it will "set a new standard for future-forward development in [Chicago]."

This news comes at a pivotal time in the use of m...

NYC Mayor Eric Adams signs executive order strengthening fire safety enforcement in response to deadly January Bronx fire

2022-03-21T17:09:00-04:00

Mayor Eric Adams said the city will crack down on buildings with a high number of fire safety violations, two months after a blaze killed 17 tenants of a Bronx high-rise with a history of complaints. As part of a new executive order signed on Sunday, the city will increase information sharing between the FDNY and the city’s housing inspectors “to identify safety violations earlier and increase fire safety compliance.”

As part of what’s called Executive Order 12, the Fire Department of New York (FDNY) and the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) will launch a broad campaign to educate New Yorlers on fire safety. The order will also require the FDNY to conduct more frequent inspections of buildings found in violation of the city’s fire code. The HPD will work to ensure that fire safety notices are posted on the front doors of apartment buildings and will alert the FDNY and building owners if not.

Previously on Archinect: New York's deadliest fire in years was the product of a space heater and mechanical issues

The severity of the January 9th fire was due to an apartment door not closing automatically, which allowed smoke to rapidly spread through the building. The city will work with the City Council to enact additional fire safety legislation, which includes legislation that increases fines for landlords who falsely report curing a self-closing door violation. There is currentl...