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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.
— BBC
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... View full entry
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.
— The New York Times
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... View full entry
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... View full entry
According to a new report by the New York State Comptroller’s Office, 89% of the visited active construction sites across New York City had safety issues, highlighting the need for the improvement of the New York City Department of Buildings (DOB) oversight of construction sites. Between June... View full entry
The Miami Herald is partnering with 101 Studios and Grain Media on a documentary that will investigate the deadly 2021 collapse of Champlain Towers South in Surfside, Florida.
Surviving Surfside will interrogate the failure of the 12-story building in the early morning of June 24, 2021 that left 98 people dead and is still under official investigation, the companies announced on Tuesday.
— The Hollywood Reporter
The Herald's in-depth breaking news coverage of the disastrous Champlain Towers South collapse one year ago recently won the paper a Pulitzer Prize and will be a primary source of information for the upcoming Surviving Surfside documentary. Related feature article on Archinect: A House of Cards... View full entry
This site, where an old building is being transformed into a charter school, has just distinguished itself from the 40,000 other major construction projects in New York City by having its third worker fatality in less than three years.
No other construction site in New York City has had this many separate fatal incidents since at least 2003, when the Department of Buildings began keeping electronic records. But despite the pattern of deaths, the consequences have been negligible.
— The New York Times
In full view of the Major Deegan Expressway, 20 Bruckner Boulevard, known throughout the New York area as the site of the iconic former History Channel (and later iHeartRadio) billboard, was once the ice storehouse of a former Yankees owner and is now being transformed into a charter school by... View full entry
DAMAC Properties, a Dubai-based luxury real estate developer, has agreed to pay $120 million for the site where 98 people died in June when the Champlain Towers South residential tower collapsed in Surfside, Florida. — Construction Dive
DAMAC, owned by Emirati billionaire Hussain Sajwani, reportedly known as the “Donald Trump of Dubai,” set the minimum price of $120 million for the 2-acre property in 2021. No competing bids were submitted by last Friday’s deadline, resulting in the cancelation of an auction scheduled for... View full entry
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.” — Gothamist
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... View full entry
A collapsing floor injured two workers Monday at a midtown office building where falling exterior work killed a prominent architect in 2019. The accident at 729 Seventh Avenue happened just before 10 a.m. During active demolition work on the 18th floor, part of the floor collapsed, sending two workers dropping to the 17th floor. They were taken to area hospitals; their conditions were not immediately clear. — NBC New York
The address is well known as the site where, in December 2019, architect Erica Tishman was struck by a piece of falling debris that her family claims directly resulted from negligence on the part of the property developer and the Department of Buildings. Administrative code charges... View full entry
Florida’s state legislature has failed to pass a bill which would have strengthened requirements to inspect and repair the state’s aging condo stock. The new legislation was drafted in response to the collapse of the Champlain Towers South condo building in June 2021, which killed 98 people... View full entry
It’s doing it (again). San Francisco’s Millennium Tower is on the move once more, this time in an entirely different dimension as the 13-year-old building is sliding while it sinks and tilts. Now the tower is said to be moving to the east, specifically. The firm in charge of stabilizing the... View full entry
Ice believed to have fallen more than 1,400 feet from a Midtown condo crushed the roof and smashed the windshield of Deneice O’Connor’s car as she drove up Sixth Ave., the shaken motorist said Saturday. “It just crashed down on me. I immediately thought a body had fallen on my car,” O’Connor, 35, told the Daily News. — Daily News
The ice is believed to have fallen from the SHoP Architects-designed 111 W. 57th Street supertall, one of the world's thinnest skyscrapers and tallest residential buildings in the Western Hemisphere. It is a prominent fixture along “Billionaires’ Row”. Police have also reported that... View full entry
Construction work in New York — city and statewide — remains the most deadly profession in the country. A total of 41 laborers died on the job in New York state in 2020, a decrease from 2019. However, fewer workers climbed scaffolding and pounded nails during the pandemic, so the rate of deaths still rose. — Construction Dive
According to an analysis of data from the New York Department of Buildings, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) conducted by the labor group New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health (NYCOSH), workplace deaths in... View full entry
On the heels of [the] horrific Bronx fire that killed 17 people, including eight children, Senator Charles Schumer and Congressman Ritchie Torres on Tuesday unveiled a "4-point federal fire safety package" that includes addressing sprinklers, self-closing doors, heaters and federal investigation powers. — ABC 7
The pair of lawmakers had recently joined together to push the federal government to include the Cross Bronx Expressway into the infrastructure bill. Their new fire safety plan includes a mandate on automatic space heater shutoff features. The early-January fire that killed 17 at the Twin Parks... View full entry
[...] Millennium Tower – a luxury condominium where star athletes and retired Google employees bought multimillion-dollar apartments before they realized it was sinking – is continuing to sink and tilt to the side by about 3in (7.5 cm) a year, according to the engineer responsible for fixing the troubled building. — The Guardian
At that rate, the building’s elevators and sewage systems would cease to function within a few years according to engineer Ron Hamburger’s report to the city’s municipal Board of Supervisors last week. He also told the 11-member body that the movement was inevitable, adding that, based on... View full entry