It would appear a rather normal day, however when you look at it at the end of it, you discover that actually a lot happened and all for a better. As such I decided to once write a real blog – just something about me and myself.
Greenfell towers brought me back into reality as to what we as architects are supposed to be doing: Designing buildings for people to safely life and work in them. So I made a conscious decision to delete all plywood and combustible materials in the cladding system of my high-rise reclad project. Weathertightness is one thing, fire safety another. Before doing so I checked out the various fires that happened over the last year and a half or so in Dubai and only realised that we seem not to hear from them a lot – but they happened and still continue to happen – complete buildings with 80 odd floors light up – one was titled “the torch”. Scary.
Many fires break out of windows and go up the facade, burst windows above and enter the next storey that way. Fireproof glass and windows might be one option (with one not being able to open a window) or simply installing sprinklers.
After the series of fires in Dubai in the last 1.5 years, the West has been pretty loud about the deficiencies, forgotten that those towers were predominantly designed by western engineers and after London we should probably rather shut up and get our own legacy sorted.
Try google images for some thought provoking pictures.
Secondly I got my confirmation that I have successfully re-registered as GreenStar accredited professional (GSNZAP) with 97.5%. Not too bad and okay at the end to have a refresher, although I went through the whole thing already 6 years ago. But somehow my registration expired, nobody told me or send me an invoice or similar. Well, at least now I know.
And last but not least Babbage got their 5 year of carboNZero certification results confirmed. Good results and although we could be tracking better, in relative terms we doing well, compared to our KPI's.
