Fire at Grenfell Tower in London

" a judicious use of space"!

similar story to the video upthread

If you want the truth about #GrenfellTower, listen to the residents and eyewitnesses. Not the authorities. pic.twitter.com/pALQ1E2Gds

— আবু মারিয়া (@Faysal_FreeGaza) June 18, 2017

Couldn't watch that fucking council member talk for long.

I wouldn't say it was shocking though, really grimly predictable. I've known too many people exactly like that in my life. From all over the world, so congratulations London, it's not you.

Mother of God.. read this from Trumpton inside #GrenfellTower https://t.co/eFDrXw1Kw9

— Inspector Gadget (@InspGadgetBlogs) June 18, 2017

That woman is extraordinary

"It would be a terrible shame if this tragedy became another way of attacking social housing at a time when the UK and London in particular is in desparate need of large social housing projects. "

It doesn't help when the Mayor is putting out a totally bullshit message about this tragedy that is just as wrong and muddled as the desperate apologist tones of other various Tory shitheels rn. It is very convenient to blame the housing planners of 50 years ago, but this has fuck all to do with them. FFS every major city in the world has towerblocks dotted all over the place that have had proper refurbs and are safe for human habitation. If anything the only way of dealing with the housing crisis in London would be more social housing and building upwards. Khan seems to be totally out of tune with his party's manifesto imo. Not being as big a cunt as Zac Goldsmith just isn't cutting it rn imo.

Assume he's calling for the Barbican to be pulled down too

Well I thought that Skepta vid for Shutdown was filmed on a London council tower-block estate, until someone pointed out it was the Barbican.

Which is a london council towerblock estate to a certain extent and still a model for how to build one.

That firefighters account - whatever we pay firefighters, it's not enough. Next time they try and cut there fire service, that account needs to be plastered everywhere.

i don't think the barbican is a useful model for building social housing unless you think putting a world class concert hall in every tower block is realistic. but there are excellent examples all over the uk of successful high rise and low rise housing.

can't find a diagram that makes it clear, but the concert hall is only quite a small part of the barbican estate complex -- as originally conceived, the bulk of it was conceived as social housing (with some privately owned blocks maybe), tho this was fvcked up when thatcher allowed ppl to start buying their council properties; certainly the overall layout was very much thought of as a solution to some of the problems earlier brutalist estates had with a sense of shared community space

http://www.barbicanliving.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/151201_-MAP_SOUTH_TO_NORTH.jpg

name-dropping note: i once waked round it with owen hatherley and mark fisher and nina power and chums, while owen explained why some of the elements were so excellent -- there was a booksale in the little church in the middle, and i bought a fontana modern masters on frantz fanon

yeah it's p spread out - feels more like an area rather than simply a concert hall.

The key point re the Barbican is building in diversity of uses within housing estates whether that's a boxing gym, shops, sports facilities or, yes, even an arts complex, why not?

So that people outside of the estates use those areas too and the residents are not "othered" in a sense. The Unité D'Habitation has a hotel in it, for example.

concert hall is i think not actually pictured in that^^^ diagram? it's the space in front of frobisher crescent and looks across the water at st giles cripplegate, which is the church (also the name of a v good lp by the v problematic jack nitzsche)

(all the non-residential buildings, like the guildhall school for music and drama and the city of london school for girls, are omitted)

I stayed at the Unite dHabitation in Marseille once and got the distinct impression from the residents that the main problem was feeling gawked at by modernism tourists....

I think a lot of incredulity is needed wrt to the claims of "good design" in relation to housing projects. What distinguishes the barbican first and foremost is wealth and prestige. The inhabitants are wealthy and the building is well maintained, the balconies are kept neat, there is good security.

Lots of estates are built with a pub, some shops, a community centre, sometimes even offices. This does not explain why in some cases the shops are all vacant and the pub is genuinely scary. Good design might help in preventing estates from developing blind spots, or in making spaces that feel less remote, weird culs-de-sac. But this is of limited use if the council is using the estate as a last resort for "problem" families, and making no attempt at other interventions, (sure start, youth work, etc.) There are much larger structural issues affecting social cohesion that estates can become barometers of. I think a healthy dose of skepticism regarding the social engineering claims of architects is always needed, particularly given the radically divergent results the same approach can have in two given instances as a result of other tangential factors.

The woman is incredible. Tbf I have been amazed by how well-informed, level-headed, emotional obv but completely otm and 'real' all the people from the area of the building have been. It made me regain some faith in humanity. Which is idiotic. Because they are humanity. If only we'd see them on the telly more often than just after a massive tragedy. This is doing my brain in. So many good people out there, but alas, they're not politicians...

Great post Plax, and I agree with you on all point except that I didn't get that impression re The Unité. It's perhaps something to take to a new thread at greater length. You're right to be sceptical of architectural spin but the original Architects can't bear the brunt of the responsibility here but neither can they just give up. Thats why Khan's response is so wrong and frustrating.

And the Barbican went through a good 20 years of being vilified in the uk before being embraced again iirc and yes, it was partly because of wealth.

But this is of limited use if the council is using the estate as a last resort for "problem" families, and making no attempt at other interventions, (sure start, youth work, etc.)

Council housing is always offered first to 'problem cases', isn't it? When did that start? I suppose when the housing stock started being depleted.

So many good people out there, but alas, they're not politicians...

good people rarely go into politics, coincidentally, for reasons that aren't too dissimilar from why most of us don't go into firefighting or combat

30,000 buildings in UK are covered in the same cladding as Grenfell Tower

87 more tower blocks use the same cladding

30,000 or 87? Because I find it unlikely that 29,900 odd non-tower blocks are clad in it.

It's common in low-rise applications, especially shops/commercial apparently

as mentioned upthread, it's considered acceptable on storefronts and as you say "petrol stations" because if those go up it's what's inside that matters, not so much what's on the facade

can you really AFFORD to strip and re-refurb 87 high rise housing complexes, though, in these times, etc

I'm just sceptical about that particular figure.

http://imgur.com/hrzEUoT

http://imgur.com/wc2Yg7M

https://image.ibb.co/cVbsa5/image.jpg[
https://image.ibb.co/fRJihk/image.jpg[

Glasgow has a Tory MP? I truly understand nothing

MSP (member of the Scottish Parliament) which is apportioned through proportional representation. If they got @ 15% of the votes they would get an MSP.

oh wait lol that's the one that drinks and is a lesbian and should maybe get the PM job

yes

ThT was a stupidly simplistic way to describe how it's apportioned but yes, you don't have to win a seat to get representation because it's tallied by a larger area not a specific seat. Kind of.

Police say 79 dead or missing. I know I shouldn't be surprised by this but still comes as a shock.

I didn't get that impression re The Unité

this might also have been my own paranoia! however, these psychic dimensions of buildings are not irrelevant in terms of their safety. If estates are seen to be dodgy, this will have some effect on how safe people feel in them, how they behave when there, how they consider them from a decision-making point of view, etc.

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/alarming-grenfell-similarities-whistleblower-claims-10640564

Denial within the article, but the quoted council press release in the article strongly implies the Scottish government recategorised safety standards of building materials in 2013.

A council statement from November 2013 confirmed insulation work had been given the green light to resume after new Government guidance had ruled them safe. Housing issues are devolved to Holyrood but the Scottish Government often follows the same guidelines as the rest of the United Kingdom.

The press release said: “Insulation work is to begin again at council properties in the Dumbarton and Alexandria area after new guidance from the Government acknowledged the materials being used were ‘low risk’ in terms of flammability. The council’s contractor had halted work at a number of properties after concerns were raised over a technical issue relating to the external wall insulation systems being installed.”

Joe Delaney – a local resident who said he was acting on behalf of the community – told the Guardian: “I asked staff from the local job centre and DWP staff at Westway Sports Centre to correct this matter today. All they did was what everyone in authority has done so far: offer platitudes and ask traumatised people to do the running by calling to beg for this to happen.”

He claimed that the DWP only later moved to clarify the position when disquiet began to emerge on on social media. “Once it became clear that there was media attention focused on them, they have finally done the right thing. Why should it take shame for them to act? Where is their humanity?”

It sounds like the DWP dragged their feet on the temporary suspension of sanctions in Grenfell, very classy.

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/sixtyeight-flats-in-2bn-luxury-block-to-be-given-to-families-whose-lives-were-devastated-in-grenfell-a3569876.html

Andrew Lillico will be spluttering into his cocoa. I thought there was no such thing as 'permanent residency' for council house tenants? What if one of them gets a good job? As head of the RMT for instance?

some interesting details in there

The complex, a former HMRC office block, is owned by developer St Edward, a joint venture between the Berkeley Group and Prudential

Two bedroom flats are currently being advertised for up to £2.4 million, meaning the overall cost could be as much as £150 million.

A source at the development said many of the flats had been bought by foreign buyers, often knocking through walls to make bigger homes. The source said: “It is crazy money. The garage is full of Maseratis and Ferraris. But I think maybe the people here wouldn’t mind the empty flats being used - it would be a way of giving something back.

“There are a lot of empty flats here - it would be the right thing to do.”

the government sells property and it's snapped up by developers who sell flats for millions to people who don't have any intention of living there, great stuff

nationalise the construction and development industries tbh

lolico, call hi by his name

the comments on that article are, of course, largely horrific

feels bizarre and perverse and indicative of the state of things that the city fucks up housing people in places that meet a basic standard to the point that tens of people die as a result, then makes amends by giving those people a multi-million pound home with a swimming pool, around the corner.

i'd be really interested to know how much the building sold for when hmrc gave it up by my google powers are failing me

It's like those stories where billionaires are asked by their maids to sort out toilet roll supply and buy them a factory or something. Or the local poshos who donated sets of golf clubs. Can just see the City of London saying "need to get these fellows some flats, but nothing too dear of course, why, hello there".

Hopefully will depress the prices on the other intended empty units and start the great buy-to-invest exodus.

xp
From a bit of googling, it looks like lots of the HMRC estate (including Charles House, this building) was taken over by Mapeley under a PFI deal in 2001…
https://www.nao.org.uk/report/hm-revenue-customs-estate-private-finance-deal-eight-years-on/
I can't see what happened after that. Did Mapeley sell it on?

the standard story says it's currently owned by a developer st edward, so i guess so

i'd be really interested to know how much the building sold for when hmrc gave it up by my google powers are failing me

I'm struggling too but I'm trying the Council's Capital programme documents. Most interesting thing I've found in them so far is in the 2013-14 statement:

https://www.rbkc.gov.uk/pdf/capital_programme_2013-14.pdf

Grenfell Tower Refurbishment – the tower is a 23 storey
1970s tower block that is in need of refurbishment and updating.
The project includes window replacement, thermal cladding to
improve insulation, a new communal heating system and
conversion of unused office space into additional dwellings.

So confirmation from contemporaneous documents that the cladding work was primarily for insulation purposes and not the cosmetic story doing the rounds.