Fire safety and sustainability should not be an'either... or'. We can have both, according to Elaine Toogood, director of architecture and sustainable design at The Concrete Centre. Toogood was speaking at the Rockwool-sponsored roundtable on fire safety and sustainability, chaired by AJ sustainability editor Hattie Hartman, held on 3 November during last month's AJ Fire Safety Design virtual conference. Toogood's point that fire safety and sustainability should not be mutually exclusive is an important one. But much of the roundtable discussion centred on how, in the complex post-Grenfell landscape, the two design considerations often found themselves in competition with each other. One of the biggest bones of contention arises with new materials. Last yearatCOP26 in Glasgow there was a clamourfor a sharp uptake in timber construction, which is low-carbon and renewable. Yetthe growth of building with timber in the UK has in fact been severely curtailed as a result of tighter fire safety regulations brought in after the Grenfell Tower tragedy in 2017.
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