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Rory Bergin from HTA Design says that with timber under fire in the complex testing landscape post-Grenfell, specifiers are being wrongly deterred from choosing the material for taller buildings, while being asked for more sustainable designs
urrent amendments to Building Regulations place restrictions on the use of combustible materials in the external walls and balconies of multiple- occupancy residential buildings with a floor 18 metres or more in height above ground level. The ongoing review of the regulations by MHCLG has led to consideration of this residential building height threshold being lowered from 18 metres to 11 metres. Some authorities and clients, like the GLA, have already begun the proscription of combustible materials from use in external walls in buildings, regardless of their height, within their affordable housing programme. Just at a point in time when we need to be using more sustainable materials, there is fear and confusion across the sector about what is acceptable and what isn’t when it comes to timber and combustibility. This confusion is partly driven by a bizarre interpretation of
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combustibility in facades which separates windows from walls, and treats them differently to the point where you cannot have a plastic interlayer in a glazed balcony balustrade but you can have a full-height plastic window overlooking it.
The way forward seems to be fire testing for products and systems. As architects, we are not experts on fire performance, and we shouldn’t try to be, so we increasingly demand tested ‘systems’ from manufacturers to enable us to use them in buildings, particularly those considered to be riskier, but increasingly for all buildings. The problem with setting out fire guidance for buildings above a certain height is that residents and insurers of buildings which may be close to that height will look to those standards and say, why can’t we have them for our building? Are we less safe because we don’t meet that higher standard? This behaviour has led to the
GLA refusing to fund affordable dwellings of any height with combustible materials in the facades because they fear politically motivated headlines, and not because there is any reasonable risk attached to those buildings. We have had timber used safely in the structure of buildings for hundreds of years in the UK.
Meanwhile we are being pushed by planning policy and the imperative of mitigating climate change to reduce
the embodied CO2 in our designs. The RIBA 2030 Climate Challenge proposes that we should be reducing
the CO2 content of our buildings from an average of 1200 kg CO2E/m2 625 kg CO2E/m2
by 2030. Timber
construction is a major weapon in our battle to get there, and the Government has signalled that in the run up to the 2025 Future Homes Standard, that they will look at regulating this.
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WWW.ARCHITECTSDATAFILE.CO.UK
ADF DECEMBER 2021
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