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Over seven years after fire engulfed London’s Grenfell Tower killing 72 people, a public inquiry into the disaster has released its final report. The Grenfell Inquiry’s report has uncovered a chain of failures across government and the private sector, including an architecture firm, beginning... View full entry
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.
— The New York Times
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... View full entry
Post-Champlain Towers South tragedy condo building crackdowns are coming and now Florida could be facing its biggest real estate “crisis” in decades, NBC reports. Prices have dipped nearly 40% in some areas after a rash of new laws offloaded proactive maintenance costs onto the HOAs... View full entry
Regulations passed in Florida after the 2021 collapse of the Champlain Towers condominium have helped fuel the drive by developers to buy out and replace older residential buildings. The new rules have increased costs for residents in many older buildings, sometimes requiring sizeable special assessments that may be unaffordable. — NPR
The rush to improve building safety in the wake of the 2021 Surfside condo collapse has since produced some unintended and expensive consequences for residents of Florida condominiums, three-quarters of whom live in structures that are now more than 30 years old. While the laws’ intent is... View full entry
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... View full entry
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... View full entry
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... View full entry
No criminal charges will be filed against defendants in the ongoing Grenfell Tower fire investigation until at least late 2026, according to the latest from the BBC and other UK outlets. London's Metropolitan Police and Crown Prosecution Service, which is responsible for administering criminal... View full entry
A group of researchers from the Polytechnic University of Valencia say they have discovered a means for protecting buildings from structural collapse. In a new set of building science experiments conducted in June 2023, they carefully studied animal neurobiology. El País tells us: “The team of... View full entry
The New York Times has picked a side in the fight between Miami Beach historic preservation advocates and developers supporting the recently signed Resiliency and Safe Structures Act, a law those in the former category claim will augment a devastating erasure of the local architecture character... View full entry
A new dramatization of the deadly 2017 Grenfell Tower tragedy is being staged next month at the St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn, New York, after traveling from the National Theatre in London, where it premiered last summer. Playwright Gillian Slovo’s interviews with survivors are the basis for... View full entry
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced it will be banning the use of chrysotile asbestos, the last commercial asbestos derivative available in the United States. The ban will primarily impact the automotive industry and puts an end to the 40-plus years of reforms against its use, which... View full entry
Preliminary details from the ongoing National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) investigation into the deadly 2021 collapse of the Champlain Towers South condominium building in Florida were shared recently, revealing evidence that supports theories about the precise source of its... View full entry
A new 3D printed ADU prototype made of concrete and other fire-resistant materials is under construction as part of a demonstration taking place this month in Walnut, California. The first-of-its-kind project was born of a collaboration between the fire departments of both Walnut and Los... View full entry
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... View full entry
