Grenfell Tower


Grenfell Tower is a derelict 24-storey residential tower block in North Kensington in London, England, the remains of which are still standing following a severe fire in June 2017. The tower was completed in 1974 as part of the first phase of the Lancaster West Estate. The tower was named after Grenfell Road, which ran to the south of the building; the road itself was named after Field Marshal Lord Grenfell, a senior British Army officer.
The building's top 20 storeys consisted of 120 flats, with six per floor – two flats with one bedroom each and four flats with two bedrooms each – with a total of 200 bedrooms. Its first four storeys were non-residential until its most recent refurbishment, from 2015 to 2016, when two of them were converted to residential use, bringing it up to 127 flats and 227 bedrooms; six of the new flats had four bedrooms each and one flat had three bedrooms. It also received new windows and new cladding with thermal insulation during this refurbishment.
Prior to a fire, which began in the early hours of 14 June 2017, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and central UK government bodies "knew, or ought to have known", that their management of the tower was breaching the rights to life, and to adequate housing, of the tower's residents, according to a later enquiry by the government's own equalities watchdog. The fire gutted the building and killed 72 people, including a stillbirth. In early 2018, it was announced that, following demolition of the tower, the site will likely become a memorial to those killed in the fire.

Description

The 24-storey tower block was designed in 1967 in the Brutalist style of the era by Clifford Wearden and Associates, with the Kensington and Chelsea London Borough Council approving its construction in 1970, as part of phase one of the Lancaster West redevelopment project.
The tall building contained 120 one- and two-bedroom flats. The floors were named ground, mezzanine, walkway and walkway+1, floor 1, floor 2 etc.
It housed up to 600 people.
The tower was built to the Parker Morris standards. Each floor was 22 m square, giving an approximate usable area of. The layout of each floor was designed to be flexible as none of the partition walls were structural. The residential floors contained a two bedroom flat at each corner, in between which on the east and the west face was a one bedroomed flat. The core contained a stair column and the lift and service shafts. One-bedroom flats were in area and two-bedroom flats were.
The building was innovative, as most LCC tower blocks used traditional brick work for infill whereas here precast insulated concrete blocks were used, giving the walls an unusual texture. The ten exterior concrete columns were also unusual. In addition, other tower blocks of this era had four flats per storey, rather than six.
The original lead architect for the building, Nigel Whitbread, said in 2016 in an interview with Constantine Gras, which was later partially repeated in The Guardian, that the tower had been designed with attention to strength, following the Ronan Point collapse of 1968, "and from what I can see could last another 100 years." He described it as a "very simple and straightforward concept. You have a central core containing the lift, staircase and the vertical risers for the services and then you have external perimeter columns. The services are connected to the central boiler and pump which powered the whole development and this is located in the basement of the tower block. This basement is approximately four metres deep and in addition has two metres of concrete at its base. This foundation holds up the tower block and in situ concrete columns and slabs and pre-cast beams all tie the building together".

History

Construction, by contractors A E Symes, of Leyton, London, commenced in 1972, with the building being completed in 1974. Before construction the plans at basement level were changed from the original brief to accommodate the need for extra car-parking. In the early 1990s, access to the building was restricted through the use of key fobs, and lift access to the first four storeys was discontinued. The building was renovated in 2015–16.
When the building opened in 1974, it was nicknamed the 'Moroccan Tower' because many renters came from the local Moroccan immigrant community. In recent years some residents had become leaseholders, mostly under the Right to Buy scheme; 14 flats in the tower, and three in Grenfell Walk, were leaseholder owned at the time of the 2017 fire.

Renovation

The renovation was part of a project to utilise the area around Lancaster Green. A new leisure centre had already been built to the east of the green, and the all-weather football pitches to the north of the tower were destined to become Kensington Academy. The renovation aimed to replace the substandard heating system, replace the windows, increase the thermal efficiency of the tower and improve appearance of the tower in the style of the academy.
It aimed to reconfigure the podium levels in order to use the space more efficiently. The nursery would move from on the mezzanine floor to on the ground floor with immediate access to outside play space. The mezzanine floor would be continued across the full width of the building making space for three four-bedroom, six person flats. The Dale Youth boxing club gained almost extra space by moving from the ground floor to the walkway level. Walkway + 1 level would be converted from offices, to four new four bedroom, 6 person flats.
Plans by Studio E Architects for renovation of the tower were publicised in 2012. The £8.7 million refurbishment, undertaken by Rydon Ltd, of Forest Row, East Sussex in conjunction with Artelia for contract administration and Max Fordham as specialist mechanical and electrical consultants, was completed in 2016. As part of the project, in 2015–2016, the concrete structure received new windows and new aluminium composite rainscreen cladding, in part to improve the appearance of the building.
Two types were used: Arconic's Reynobond PE, which consists of two coil-coated aluminium sheets that are fusion bonded to both sides of a polyethylene core; and Reynolux aluminium sheets. Beneath these, and fixed to the outside of the walls of the flats, was Celotex RS5000 polyisocyanurate thermal insulation. The work was carried out by Harley Facades of Crowborough, East Sussex, at a cost of £2.6 million.

Fire

A fire broke out on 14th June 2017 which killed 72 of Grenfell's residents. Emergency services received the first report of the fire at 00:54 local time. It burned for around 24 hours. Initially hundreds of firefighters and 45 fire engines were involved in efforts to control the fire, with many firefighters continuing to attempt to control pockets of fire on the higher floors after most of the rest of the building had been gutted. Residents of surrounding buildings were evacuated due to concerns that the tower could collapse, though the building was later determined to be structurally sound.

Fate

After the fire, the exterior was covered in a protective wrap to assist the outstanding forensic investigations. The Government, the Kensington and Chelsea Council, and the Grenfell United survivors' group, have agreed that at the conclusion of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry the demolished tower will be replaced by a memorial to the victims. The government has voiced its intention to allow the survivors to "...guide the way future decisions are made" about the tower site and memorial. Deconstruction is expected to be completed by 2022.

Architect

Nigel Whitbread was the lead architect for the Grenfell Tower. In an interview with Constantine Gras, quoted in The Guardian, he said that "he was born in Kenton, his parents had a grocers shop on St Helen's Gardens, North Kensington. He was educated at Sloane Grammar school and then got a position with the architects Douglas Stephen and Partners, who though small were applying the principles of Le Corbusier and the modernists." He worked alongside Kenneth Frampton who was the Technical Editor of the journal Architectural Design; and Elia Zenghelis and Bob Maxwell. He moved to work for Clifford Wearden after the basic plan for Lancaster West Estate had been established. He later worked for 30 years until his retirement at Aukett Associates. Around 2016 he became involved with local residents association drawing up the St Quintin and Woodlands Neighbourhood Plan.

Grenfell Action Group

A residents' organisation, Grenfell Action Group, published a blog in which it highlighted major safety problems. In the four years preceding the fire, they published 10 warnings criticising fire safety and maintenance practices at Grenfell Tower.