For many architects the cladding crisis is personal
By Eleanor Jolliffe2021-07-20T06:00:00
Eleanor Jolliffe describes what it is like to design high-rises by day and navigate costly problems with your own home by night
The cladding crisis continues to make headlines. The architectural press has been reporting the professional changes and challenges – indemnity insurance, changes to building regulations and standards. I will not be the only architect who has listened to multiple CPDs on these changes over this year. This month, though, it is not the professional impact of cladding I wanted to highlight, but a more personal one.
I spend my days working on high-rise residential projects – and then step outside to see scaffolding slowly climbing up every second building in my neighbourhood as facades are ripped open and re-built.
I live in a tower block which found “workmanship problems” when it was opened up to survey for the EWS1 certificate. I don’t know what the exact problem is – because why would a developer release information like that to the people living in the building? Even if they ask?
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