It's a thought-provoking article. I have mixed feelings about the idea: on one hand, visiting a friend's Weimar-era home in the DDR side of Berlin really impressed me. It was slightly different from those depicted in the article (it was part of a longer row of connected buildings), but the green space afforded by the courtyard was wonderful and the opportunities for community building palpable.
Yet, on the other hand, the safety doctrine unnerves me:
> American approaches aim to make combustible light wood-frame buildings easier to escape by providing multiple paths of egress; European codes, by contrast, require fire-resistant materials and compartmentation to prevent fires from spreading in the first place.
Why can't we have both multiple staircases and fire-retardant construction? The Grenfell Tower disaster was horrific, and although the subsequent building regulations that limit height were clearly reactionary in nature, I can't see people being comfortable with the 'stay in your room' safety advice after this kind of event. People are going to follow their instincts and head for the stairs, and things are not going to be pleasant if there's A: only one and B: it's blocked.
One idea that comes to mind is building entirely fire-resistant steel and glass bridges between medium high-rise buildings. If you're too high up to use the emergency out-door stairs, but the (single) interior staircase is blocked, you could move sideways to your neighbours. Security and privacy concerns about having easy access to neighbouring properties could be mitigated by having safety-glass dividing doors with emergency hammers next to the lock. The lock could itself be opened by mutual agreement of both sides in non-emergencies.
> Why can't we have both multiple staircases and fire-retardant construction?
If your goal is to save lives, there are other things you can regulate that are orders of magnitude more cost-effective. Where the expected price of each saved life is just millions instead of billions.
When there was another discussion on this topic a while ago, I spent some time reading about fire deaths in Finland. Finland is a country with more fire deaths per capita than most Western countries. Partly due to attitudes, and partly because of the prevalence of saunas, which are almost as big fire hazards as kitchens.
What I found was that fire deaths that could have been prevented by a second staircase are extremely rare. When people die in a fire in an apartment building, it's almost always in the unit the fire started. Either the people didn't notice it quickly enough, or the fire blocked the front door.
"What I found was that fire deaths that could have been prevented by a second staircase are extremely rare."
I agree. At least in my limited experience, it seems a lot of the deaths in the US are related to either intoxication or sleeping. In these states, it's common for the person to have never even been aware of the danger.
Yup. When I last looked into it the overwhelming amount of fire deaths were squatters lighting fires in derelict homes, and were not in a state of mind to escape.
Better homeless shelter policies & mental health support would be wildly more effective at preventing fire deaths than code enforcement.
> At least in my limited experience, it seems a lot of the deaths in the US are related to either intoxication or sleeping. In these states, it's common for the person to have never even been aware of the danger.
That won't work as evidence that US fire policies aren't helping. You need data from somewhere where those policies aren't in place, like presumably Finland.
So you wan…. What? Data on the number of fires that resulted in people dying in their sleep and therefore would not have benefitted from multiple egresses?
The data you are looking for literally does not exist. That’s not something people closely monitor.
I'm just saying that the tend the other person saw in Finland has logical support here. It can be evidence of how effective a policy is for specific scenarios (models). If someone is is not alert to the danger, then the means of escape are logically moot in those situations.
Policies that would help save lives are sprinklers in all houses. This policy is controversial due to the cost and maintenance involved. But the very scenario that has brought this about was a Maryland politician's son burnt down his house and died while passed out drunk. Now that state has a law requiring sprinklers.
> I'm just saying that the tend the other person saw in Finland has logical support here. It can be evidence of how effective a policy is for specific scenarios (models). If someone is is not alert to the danger, then the means of escape are logically moot in those situations.
No, you didn't identify any logical support. If the American policy ensures that people who are aware of the danger always survive, then (a) that is what the policy is supposed to do, and (b) it will guarantee that American fire deaths all happen to people who were not aware of the danger.
Given that, if the policy worked as advertised, it would guarantee exactly the observation that you see, it cannot be the case that this observation is evidence against the effectiveness of the policy.
I didn't say anything explict about the US staircase policy. All I said is that the trends on fire deaths the other person identified in Finland apply here in my experience, and that additional stair cases won't help those deaths. The logical part is that if you're unaware of danger (asleep/passed out), you can't take action to avoid it. The policies that would help in those situations are sprinklers, but there's some controversy on them being mandated.
> The Grenfell Tower disaster was horrific, and although the subsequent building regulations that limit height were clearly reactionary in nature
Grenfell was a failure of regulations to be applied and bad retrofitting.
The cladding was supposed to conform to a specific rating that means it doesn't cause fire spread. Ie, it can burn, but as soon as a heat source is taken away it stopped burning (its more complex than that, but you get the idea that its not supposed to just burn like crazy)
What actually happened is that the fire rating that was given to it was suspect, and it wasn't applied correctly. I had assumed that the type of insolation (either EPS or Polyisocyanurate) was fire proof, as in I doesn't burn like a plastic bag when exposed to flame. Because thats what the fire rating implies. However there are two standards and its a bit hazy. You can have something like rockwool, that doesn't burn as well as industrial packing polystyrene(EPS) which does.
In the 70s when these buildings were built, they had the right idea[1]: concrete boxes with a brick skin. Minimal holes between the flats, and any hole was liberally blocked with asbestos.
THe problem came when asbestos was removed, or the external walls were covered in a flammable non-encased/fire compartmentalised cladding.
In Grenfel, the building itself won't have been particularly combustible in the first instance, but the cladding - being plastic most certainly was.
Add to that the lack sprinklers, and a council that is not sympathetic to the residents there and we got a disaster.
It was a confluence of indifference by the council to residents calls to sort out sprinklers and firedoors, pandering to richer residents of Kensington: the cladding only went on to make richer residents view better.
Add on faming of results about how fire worthy the cladding was by the people selling it, and it being badly fitted so fire could travel up the building underneath it.
And then after this tragedy, how little was done in its wake.
> the cladding only went on to make richer residents view better.
The cladding should have reduced the residents' heating bills substantially, reducing fuel poverty and helping the environment. In fact one of the reasons the building was clad in turns-out-its-highly-flammable Celotex instead of a truly non-flammable insulation like Rockwool was because of its higher U-value.
I live in a former yugoslav socialist building, and our external walls are made from reinforced concrete. Our internal walls are reinforced concrete. Our bathroom walls are reinforced concrete. Drilling a hole to pull a network cable from one room to another is a pain.
Culture shock was big for us when we moved from 'bad socialist block of flats' like that to a new, modern and expensive London block of flats made out of cardboard. I know that my flat in old country will still be there for my wife and I to retire if we move back, while this one will probably seriously deteriorate.
I agree, cabling is a pain but oh my are they taking us for a ride with these newbuilds with easy cabling. Houses are no better here. They say these newbuilds are all fireproof and engineers come once a week to test everything. Of course, I hope we never have to find out if the certificate is worth anything.
All in all, those Yugoslav socialist buildings put these newbuilds to shame. Even those 40 year old locally made lifts are better than whatever Otis is installing into newbuilds these days. Our lift is loud, shaking. Never experienced that kind of shaking in any of socialist buildings. I suspect though that newbuilds in Slovenia these days are pretty similar cardboard boxes...
> Why can't we have both multiple staircases and fire-retardant construction?
Because that
1) that costs more money (if you object, "How dare we value money more than human lives?", replace "costs money" with "requires a greater amount of the limited quantity of human labor"), which means fewer homes are built, which means it costs more to purchase/rent a home.
2) Means buildings have to deal with the inherent topological constraints of double-loaded corridors (ie, apartments can't "cross-cut" the building, allowing cross-ventilation/greater number of windows.
I liked this youtube video that covers the same topic[1]. The US focusing entirely on this strategy to increase fire safety seems obviously stupid to me. As people say in other comments here - Europe and other countries require better fire suppression measures and materials instead of particular egress options. An obvious improvement would be to allow builders to use any combination of these approaches to achieve a minimal level of safety.
The decorative cyan colored cladding had quite a bit to do with what caused that fire to go our of control with a bonus of cyanide gas when combusted. The cladding left a space between the building that carried the fire up the side of the building like a chimney.
Right, but as you can see in the resulting buck passing, everybody says it wasn't their fault that this obviously unsuitable material was used. The people who made it said they hadn't intended it to be for these high rise buildings (if you clad my building in this stuff it would look ugly but the fire danger isn't significant because the building isn't very tall). The people who chose it said it passed fire regulations and so as far as they knew it was OK. The people who installed it say that some third party told them this was OK. The regulators say they thought they'd banned it. Nobody wants to admit "We didn't care that probably poor people will die, we were focused on $$$"
Whis is only reinforcing the argument that a second stair might have never been built anyway, and even if yes the folks would have been just as stuck there so just as dead.
No, they're saying people intentionally misinterpreted what they'd done.
As an example of this sort stuff, maybe you carefully define "Must not be used" in your legislation for banning materials and then you later actually write that a material "Should not be used". If a bunch of people die you can say "Actually we said very clearly that it shouldn't be used!" but if instead a bunch of companies are annoyed by how expensive it is to find an alternative you say "Actually we didn't ban it - we only used the word 'should'".
The tower itself is concrete, so the building itself wasn't the problem.
Lack of maintenance or fitting of sprinklers and firedoors was: the residents had been asking for a while, but Kensington council cares more for its richer residents, so instead what happened was plastic cladding was fitted to make the richer residents not have to have an old tower block spoil their view.
It depends on if your definition of "Europe" is purely geographic or it has a political dimension (EU vs not). In the context of building safety regulation and the UK's laxness at that, the political interpretation is definitely valid.
"Geography" would be more valid if this was about rock formations or trade routes.
If someone says "when it comes to building codes, the UK is no longer in Europe", then everyone knows exactly what is meant. Performative misunderstanding isn't helpful.
Respectfully, I disagree that the definition of "Europe" depends.
The UK is in Europe.
The fact that we know what they mean by saying the UK is no longer in Europe does not make that statement any more correct.
I often see comments from people outside of Europe who think that the UK "left Europe" (not realising the distinction between Europe and the EU). I don't blame them, but I think it's worth pointing out.
> not realising the distinction between Europe and the EU
Respectfully, I disagree that they are not realising that. They are just using language differently, i.e. "Europe" in a political / legislative context can mean "the EU", i.e. a political / legislative boundary not a geographic one.
You can say" they're wrong" if you like, but use of language is more commonly viewed as descriptive not prescriptive: "how language is actually being written and spoken rather than trying to identify a correct way"
tl;DR People know what they're saying and you understand it, so what's the issue? what I said in the 1st comment.
> If someone says "when it comes to building codes, the UK is no longer in Europe", then everyone knows exactly what is meant. Performative misunderstanding isn't helpful.
People can work around a lot of mistakes, it doesn't mean it's correct. If I tell you my brother speaks Mexican, you know very well I mean Spanish. Does that mean I shouldn't be corrected?
It depends. if the phrase "he/she speaks Mexican" to refer to the Mexican dialect of Spanish is in common use, then the descriptivist position is that no, there is nothing to correct.
I caught a YouTube about this recently that I really enjoyed. "Why North America Can't Build Nice Apartments (Because of One Rule)" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRdwXQb7CfM
These ('scissor stairs') are an important part of the discussion here. They are allowed (or counted as two separate means of exit) in New York, Australia, Vancouver, etc. but not permitted (or counted as one means of exit) in most of the rest of the USA, the UK, etc.
For a high rise building they don't take up much more space than a single stair and can play an important role in the structure of the building also.
Also you can feasibly climb over the rail at certain places to reach the other stair, which could be useful in the event of multiple blockages, and adds interest to action movies.
They are called scissor stairs and it's very common here in newer buildings in NYC as well. Though I believe it's only permitted in buildings 12 stories are less? It always seemed very space efficient -- separated by concrete fireproof walls and taking up the same vertical space.
Is this one purely for demonstration purposes? In practice I think I'd want it to be flush with the floor. As shown in the video it looks like a massive tripping hazard.
Concrete stairwells are supposed to double as refuges, if you can't climb.
Also devices that allow easier access to an apartment are more acceptable in Japan. In the US there is a much greater need for security oriented design.
If you believe what you see on television shows set in New York, fire escapes - ladders from balconies down to the ground - are common in New York. Which would make it unnecessary to explain why they aren't used.
I suspect the 6 story and shorter buildings will end up having an alternative design where the stairwell and possibly certain walls are concrete, poured around the same time as the foundation, but the remaining structure is engineered timber.
The challenge is going to be convincing fire departments and insurance agencies that theyre safe enough to not prevent.
I was just thinking of bolts. I mean we're talking about the staircase right, not the part of the building that actually holds up the entire structure. But I might be vastly overestimating this.
My previous appartment was in a 3-story building, and my impression was that the entire staircase was bolted together (and it was on the outside of the building).
It's less that stairwells need to support the structure than that stairwells need to survive the destruction of the structure, something concrete does remarkably well.
Not turning into an oven is another feature. Heat conductivity of concrete is far lower than that of steel.
That’s a cool looking building, but I have to imagine that amount of glass must mean very high heating and cooling bills. Hope they at least installed efficient heat pumps.
My personal feeling on this is that the risk calculus for wealthy people is different to the risk calculus for the poor, and as a result we get decisions that don't really make a lot of sense for anyone.
If you were to tell 20 year old me that I could save say £100-£200 on rent by taking a bit of a gamble on the fire escape then I'd be ordering climbing gear and practicing climbing out of the window with my harness.
The probability of any apartment building that I'm in catching fire and going full Grenfell is basically zero, as far as I remember it's happened one time in approx ten years in London.
I'm probably more likely to die in a crash whilst sitting on the bus.
It makes far more sense IMO to focus on reducing the flammability of objects, having fire doors, etc.
On its own? Sure. But they are rarely found in a vacuum.
Per the article:
> American approaches aim to make combustible light wood-frame buildings easier to escape by providing multiple paths of egress; European codes, by contrast, require fire-resistant materials and compartmentation to prevent fires from spreading in the first place. Statistically, the evidence is clear: fire-death rates are consistently lower in Europe than in the U.S. and Canada.
It's almost as if disproving this statement is the whole point of the article or something.
Sure, Europe's requirements save more lives than the US's overall. But we should take the best of both rather than abandoning the good parts of US standards. Saying we should stop having multiple paths of egress because more fire-resistant buildings save more lives is like saying we should stop having air bags because seat belts save more lives.
> Saying we should stop having multiple paths of egress because more fire-resistant buildings save more lives is like saying we should stop having air bags because seat belts save more lives.
And completely ignores the housing shortage that's troubling almost everywhere in America.
> The argument, in short, is to re-legalize single-stair apartment buildings, also known as “point-access blocks”—a typology that was once commonplace and remains so in much of the world, including the European Union, where fireproof single-stair designs are allowed. If combined with zoning reform, such code reform would enable attractive, light-filled multifamily housing to be built cost-effectively on countless urban sites that would otherwise be developed as single-family homes.
For most people, housing costing more means spending years more of your life working. Is a tiny risk reduction worth that? It wouldn’t be for me. The risk of additional years of commuting is probably higher.
Regardless of whether the building is concrete or wood, it will have plastic: interior decorations, exterior cladding or siding, fittings, insulation, polymerized paint on the walls and ceilings, synthetic carpeting on the floor, furniture and personal property... You won't die from spreading flames, flames spread slowly; instead, you will very quickly die from toxic smoke from burning plastic. The toxic smoke which will spread equally well in a concrete or wooden apartment building.
You can separate stairwell and elevator hall/apartment hallway with an open balcony like they do in some countries. This way smoke from the rest of the building can't get to the stairwell. This is called smokeproof enclosure.
That is most likely part of the reason why US multi-story buildings are less safe than European ones. I know that Europeans find the idea of wood frame buildings to be a little scary. Like wny do you do that?
If you look at the data, I don't think structural and framing material has much if anything to do with fire deaths. Japan also has a high proportion of wooden framing, for single family homes about the same as the U.S. This is less so for multi-story, but if you look at the numbers the fire death rate in Japan is nearly identical between single-family and multi-story dwellings. Fire death rates in Europe, even Western Europe, vary significantly across countries even with similar building practices. In the US fire death rates have dropped precipitously in the past quarter century despite continued reliance on wooden construction.
What seems to matter are other factors, such as fire warning, fire suppression, and general fire safety knowledge. But also things like electrical systems, kitchen design, cooking methods, etc.
At least in Canada, there were multiple researches on the topic and the only benefit of a timber frame is a speed and simplicity of construction. Given that they normally end up with a very similar price tag for new constructions, I don't see why consumer would prefer timber...
because the amount of firms who can build timber frame buildings is far far greater than the amount of firms who can build concrete buildings, which leads to more competition and also more housing being constructed.
Yet, on the other hand, the safety doctrine unnerves me:
> American approaches aim to make combustible light wood-frame buildings easier to escape by providing multiple paths of egress; European codes, by contrast, require fire-resistant materials and compartmentation to prevent fires from spreading in the first place.
Why can't we have both multiple staircases and fire-retardant construction? The Grenfell Tower disaster was horrific, and although the subsequent building regulations that limit height were clearly reactionary in nature, I can't see people being comfortable with the 'stay in your room' safety advice after this kind of event. People are going to follow their instincts and head for the stairs, and things are not going to be pleasant if there's A: only one and B: it's blocked.
One idea that comes to mind is building entirely fire-resistant steel and glass bridges between medium high-rise buildings. If you're too high up to use the emergency out-door stairs, but the (single) interior staircase is blocked, you could move sideways to your neighbours. Security and privacy concerns about having easy access to neighbouring properties could be mitigated by having safety-glass dividing doors with emergency hammers next to the lock. The lock could itself be opened by mutual agreement of both sides in non-emergencies.