Australia tightens laws in wake of 'cracked' tower

Yahoo – AFP, February 10, 2019

Some 300 people in the 38-storey Opal Tower were evacuated on Christmas Eve
after the cracking reports (AFP Photo/SAEED KHAN)

Sydney (AFP) - Australia's most populous state said Sunday it would embark on the "biggest overhaul of building laws" in its history, months after residents were evacuated from a recently completed Sydney high-rise apartment that made "cracking noises".

There have been question marks hanging over New South Wales' building and construction industry after some 300 people in the 38-storey Opal Tower in the Sydney Olympic Park were evacuated on Christmas Eve after the cracking reports.

Some residents have yet to return to their homes, while an initial investigation found there were a number of "design and construction issues" that could have led to the damage.

The building moved "one to two millimetres" during the incident and authorities had said they found a crack on the 10th floor.

The new regulations will require that designers, engineers and architects are registered, qualified, and held responsible for their work, in contrast to the earlier building code which only held builders accountable for any lapses.

A building commissioner will be appointed to audit their work, and changes to property plans in the construction stage will not be allowed unless further approval is given.

The new rules were drawn from recommendations from an independent report commissioned last year before the cracking crisis, but are seen as an effort to restore confidence in the sector after the public outcry.

"They (the report's authors) found that there are national problems in the construction industry," NSW Minister for Better Regulation Matt Kean said in a statement.

"We're making tough new laws to ensure buildings meet Australian standards, and to guarantee that people who build and design buildings have the proper qualifications to do so."

Master Builders Association NSW's executive director Brian Seidler told The Sydney Morning Herald the changes were "very important" and a "very good set of reforms".

The 392-unit Opal Tower opened last year and is near the site of the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

US firm stops sales of Grenfell Tower cladding for high-rises

Yahoo – AFP, June 26, 2017

The June 14 inferno at Grenfell Tower, a residential block in west London, left
79 people presumed dead after the fire spread rapidly up its 24 storeys (AFP
Photo/Niklas HALLE'N)

London (AFP) - The US supplier of the cladding which encased London's Grenfell Tower before it was destroyed by a devastating fire announced Monday it was stopping sales of the material for high-rise buildings.

"Arconic is discontinuing global sales of Reynobond PE for use in high-rise applications," a company spokesman told AFP.

The firm put the decision down to "issues that have arisen in the wake of the Grenfell Tower tragedy" and differences in building regulations around the world.

The June 14 inferno left 79 people presumed dead after the fire spread rapidly up the 24-storey residential block in west London.

As emergency services continue to search through the ashes of the gutted building, suspicion has fallen on the recently installed cladding with allegations it may have contributed to the ferocity of the blaze.

The Arconic spokesman said the company "will continue to fully support the authorities as they investigate this tragedy".

Sales of the Reynobond PE cladding for use in low-rise buildings will continue.

An estimated 600 tower blocks in England believed to have similar cladding to that used at Grenfell are currently going through tests.

Samples taken from 75 high-rises tested so far have all failed safety tests, communities minister Sajid Javid said on Monday.

"We have witnessed a catastrophic failure," he told MPs, lamenting the slow speed at which samples were being submitted for tests.

Buildings which have already undergone safety checks include four tower blocks in north London which were evacuated on Saturday, with Javid saying inspectors discovered 1,000 fire doors were missing.

The minister also warned unsafe cladding "may not be a problem unique to social housing or tall buildings".

All hospitals have been asked to conduct additional checks and 15 government buildings "require further investigation", he said without giving further details.

Child identified by teeth

As work continues to prevent a repeat of the Grenfell Tower blaze, a London coroner's court heard how a five-year-old victim choked to death on fumes as he tried to escape.

The boy had to be identified by dental records after his body was found on the 13th floor, five levels lower than his home as he family tried to flee.

"It can't really be explained in enough detail how complex an investigation this is in terms of identification and in terms of recovery of bodies on a dangerous site that my team are not allowed to enter because the building is being shored up," Westminster coroner Fiona Wilcox told the court.

So far 18 people have been identified including Khadija Saye, a 24-year-old photographer who had exhibited at the Venice Biennale and lived on the 20th floor.

Saye was discovered on a hallway in the ninth floor and is believed to have died from fumes and burns.

Her mother Mary Mendy, 52, was identified by dental records after being found on the 13th storey. Her sister Betty Jackson said she will "be missed for a lifetime".

"My beloved sister, words can never describe the pain of losing you. I can't believe you are gone," she said in a statement published through London's Metropolitan Police.

Related Article:

Safety fears for thousands of tower block residents after London inferno

China gives new twist to world's second tallest building

Yahoo – AFP, Bill Savadove, 21 June 2015

The under-construction Shanghai Tower (bottom C), the Shanghai World 

Financial Center (L) and the Jin Mao Tower (AFP Photo/Johannes Eisele)

Shanghai (AFP) - The world's second tallest building, Shanghai Tower, will soon open in the Chinese financial capital with a twist -- a 120-degree twist, to be exact.

A softened triangular "outer skin" is literally twisted around a circular core, sending the glass and steel tower spiralling 632 metres (2,086 feet) into the grey sky above the city.

State-backed developer Shanghai Tower Construction and Development Co. views the modern design as a symbol of China's future, a super-tall building in the city's gleaming Pudong financial district, which did not even exist 25 years ago.

The under-construction Shanghai 

Tower, will soon open in the Chinese 

financial capital with a twist (AFP

Photo/Johannes Eisele)

People involved with the project said the building will open this summer, with office tenants moving in first, but the developer declined to comment.

"This twist is an iconic symbol of looking forward for the Chinese people," said Grant Uhlir, practice area leader and principal for Gensler, the US architecture firm whose design was chosen for the building which broke ground in 2008.

"It's been referred to as a strand of DNA. It's also been referred to a place where the ground connects with the sky," he said.

Although still dwarfed by the reigning champion Burj Khalifa in Dubai, which stands at 828 metres (2,732 feet), and with new challengers under construction, the $2.4 billion Shanghai Tower can still lay claim to a host of superlatives.

Besides being the tallest double-facade building, the world's fastest elevators travelling 18 metres per second will whisk people up and down while the globe's second highest hotel will be located on the 84th to 110th floors.

An estimated 16,000 to 18,000 people will pass through the Shanghai Tower every day. The building will sway up to a metre (three feet) in high winds, with a 1,000-tonne "damper" weight near the top reducing the effect.

'It has to be unique'

"When you do these iconic, super-tall buildings, it can't be a copy of something else. It has to be unique," said American chief architect Marshall Strabala, who participated in the project while at Gensler.

Now the head of his own firm, he spent part of his three-decade career working on some of the world's tallest buildings including the Burj Khalifa.

He said the double skin plays other roles besides pure design, providing insulation to keep the building cool in summer and warm in winter and reducing wind stress.

"This building is a giant Thermos bottle, that's all it is," he said.

But the vacuum flask metaphor masks the mind-numbing complexity involved in balancing the design, safety requirements, building codes and client demands that shaped the tower.

Marshall Strabala, the chief architect of the Shanghai Tower, poses next 

to a three-metre model of the tower (AFP Photo/Johannes Eisele)

Despite the futuristic look, concepts owing to Chinese culture are present.

A golden canopy at the base of the building was originally meant to be green, the colour of weathered copper, but the developer rejected the idea because in Chinese, the expression "wearing a green hat" means being a cuckold.

"It's not a good thing. Gold is a colour of prosperity," Strabala said.

A white stone structure dubbed the "River Wall" on the lower floors conceptually cuts the building into west and east, like Shanghai itself is divided into Puxi and Pudong on either side of the Huangpu River.

"Pudong side is business, Puxi side is fun. The retail, restaurants (in the building) are on the fun Puxi side," Strabala said.

The developer is expected to shun using floor numbers with the number four, which sounds like the Chinese word for death.

Gensler says the building has 121 "occupied" floors, while the total number has been given as 127 or 128 storeys depending on how they are counted.

'Curse' of tall buildings

Office space will take up much of the 573,000-square-metre (6.2-million-square-foot) building, while the retail space is small compared to a shopping mall -- just four floors.

The building's arrival on the Shanghai office market could potentially pull down rents and drive up the vacancy rate, analysts said.

An empty office space in the Shanghai 

Tower, which is still under construction

(AFP Photo/Johannes Eisele)

"It remains to be seen whether the pool of tenants currently in Pudong is large enough to fill the building or whether Shanghai Tower will need to start offering discounts to attract others," said Michael Stacy, executive director of Cushman & Wakefield's tenant advisory group in China.

Property agents are quoting rental rates in a range of 9 to 16 yuan ($1.45 to $2.56) per square metre a day depending on location, but they say the developer is offering rent-free periods.

Strabala believes the prestige of the address will draw tenants though he jokes about the "curse" of tall buildings, which seems to follow economic strife.

Workers broke ground on Shanghai Tower in November 2008, just weeks after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, which helped spark the global financial crisis, and it will open at a time when China's economy is slowing.

Strabala, however, is not worried, stressing that recognition of the building as the world's second tallest will attract tenants.

"This building will fill up because people will want to be here," he said.

City to seize BTS antennae from illegally built towers

Triwik Kurniasari, The Jakarta Post, JAKARTA | Fri, 03/06/2009 10:29 AM

The city will take down and seize antennae from illegally erected base transceiver station (BTS) towers as it seeks to cut back on tower numbers.

Hari Sasongko, head of the property control and building monitoring (P2B) agency, said Thursday this was far cheaper more reasonable than dismantling the towers.

“It costs about Rp 5 million to Rp 7.5 million to dismantle a tower. That’s very expensive. So we chose to disable the towers by seizing the antennae,” he said.

“We have allocated funds of Rp 1 billion to for this operation.”

Since 2007, the P2B has dismantled 85 illegally built towers.

Officials and critics say Jakarta has become a city of towers, with many towers built each year without the necessary permits, the agency reported.

Of 3,124 towers in the capital, 1,028 do not have building permits, according to P2B data.

Hari admitted lack of monitoring was the main reason for the mushrooming of BTS towers.

“It’s hard for us to control tower developments, due to human resource constraints,” he said.

“We used to have only one team to arrange building permits and control the towers. Now we have two different teams handling the two responsibilities. There will be building inspectors to check the towers. We will no longer tolerate tower owners who breach regulations.”

He added his office was in discussions with the city’s spatial planning agency to determine which areas were appropriate for setting up BTS towers.

Spatial planning agency head Wiriyatmoko said he hoped cell phone operators would share towers to cut back on tower numbers.

“Three operators or more can share a tower. Ideally, this city needs no more than 700 towers,” he said.

Gunawan Tjahjono, a professor of architecture from the University of Indonesia, previously said shared towers could help ease the “visual” and space pollution problems.

Merza Fachys, chairman of the Indonesian Association of Cellular Telecommunications, said one reason why BTS towers were mushrooming was because they needed high positions.

But he pointed out that a BTS did not necessarily require a tower.

“We can put BTS on the roofs of tall buildings,” he said.

In addition to visual pollution, the sprouting of towers and BTS has also sparked protests from local residents.

In early February, residents of Lagoa in Tanjung Priok, North Jakarta, raised concerns that a BTS tower on Jl. Mengkudu posed health risks through radiation.

Wiriyatmoko said the administration was still developing a fiber optic network aimed at reducing the number of BTS.

He added the network would be more cost effective for BTS owners because the equipment could be attached to existing buildings, street lamps or pedestrian bridges, and would not require tall towers.

The network is also expected to be able to improve Internet connections for high schools.

Emaar Jakarta tower to be the tallest in SE Asia

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Tue, 05/06/2008 2:01 PM

 

Dubai-based real estate giant Emaar Properties plans to build a landmark tower in Jakarta, which would be the tallest skyscraper in Southeast Asia, a presidential envoy says.

 

Special envoy for the Middle East Alwi Shihab said Monday the Chairman of Emaar, Mohamed Ali Alabbar, had proposed the project to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono during an informal meeting on Saturday.

 

"At the moment, we're still looking for the right location in Jakarta for the site of the project... we are ready to build the tower, our homework is to find the right location, " Alwi told The Jakarta Post.

 

Emaar, the largest land and real estate developer in the Gulf, is famed for its ongoing construction of Burj Dubai in Dubai, which would be the highest skyscraper in the world. The 718 meter-tall building is scheduled to be fully constructed by the end of this year.

 

Alwi said the Jakarta project was part of the company's commitment to invest in Indonesia.

 

In March, Emaar signed a joint venture agreement with the state-owned Bali Tourism Development Corporation to build an integrated tourism project in southern Lombok, West Nusa Tenggara, with a total investment of US$600 million. During the initial stage, they would build four luxury hotels, including Ritz Carlton and Giorgio Armani hotels, along with related tourist facilities.

 

"Emaar has started building its offices in Lombok and is carrying out trainings in conjunction with the tourism ministry for locals to assist in its projects," Alwi said, adding that up until now, the Indonesian government had received investments worth almost $5 billion from the Middle East and that it was targeting to attract $10 billion by 2009.

 

He said among those committed to invest in the country was Ras Al-Khaimah of the United Arab Emirates, which would bring a total investment worth $1.5 billion to construct an integrated port at Tanjung Api-Api, and a railway line from Palembang to Tanjung Api-Api.

 

Another company, Dubai Drydock, is ready to invest up to US$1 billion for the construction of a shipyard and an industrial city in Batam.

 

The envoy said the company had opened its office in Indonesia and had paid for the project's land, while adding that conglomerate company Pacific Inter-Link planned to invest US$500 million in a palm oil refinery plant in Dumai, Riau.

 

Dubai-based Al Ghurair Group also showed its commitment to invest around $500 million in the renovation and improvement of old refinery plants.

 

Previously, Saudi Telecom Company's Axis invested US$1 billion in the telecommunication industry. Alwi said the investors hoped to fully realize their commitments soon.

 

"Some of them complained that bureaucracy in our country has been too slow in responding to their proposals. While it only takes a few months to manage permits in Malaysia, for example, it could take years in Indonesia," Alwi said.

 

This had caused many of them to invest in Malaysia and Singapore instead, he added. (dia)

More upscale apartments built

The Jakarta Post

The growing demand for upscale and modern high-rise residences has prompted many developers to build apartment towers.

The Agung Podomoro Group, for instance, has completed its deluxe residential complex called The Peak at Sudirman.

The Peak at Sudirman stands on 1.5 hectares of land and consists of four towers; two 35-floor towers facing south and two 55-towers facing north.

"One of the twin 35-floor towers will be run as a serviced residence by early 2008," The Peak at Sudirman said in a statement.

The residential complex has a variety of facilities including cafe and restaurant, ATM, Olympic-size swimming pool, children's playground, jogging track, tennis court and business center.

"Security is also a high priority for The Peak at Sudirman," it said, adding that there is a 24-hour security team and a CCTV system in place. -- JP

Jakarta strikes new low-cost housing deal

Mustaqim Adamrah, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Less-affluent families in the capital may have a reason to smile after the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the Jakarta chapter of the Indonesian Real Estate Developers Association (REI) and the Jakarta administration on Tuesday.

Under the MOU, 28 REI Jakarta members will build eight towers containing 100 low-cost apartments in each as compensation for failing to meet their responsibilities under a gubernatorial decree.

The towers, to be built in North Jakarta's Marunda area, will contain apartments priced at between Rp 144 million (US$15,700) and Rp 150 million.

The administration and developers are yet to agree on the exact start date of construction.

REI Jakarta chairman Tulus Sawoso said the MOU was drafted in line with the obligation of the association's members to construct low-cost housing in the city.

"Due to sluggish business and the current economic climate, 28 developers are yet to construct low-cost housing as required under a gubernatorial decree," he said at City Hall after signing the MOU.

"However, their commitment to provide these facilities is now evident with the signing of the MOU."

The decree stipulates that developers who build structures on 5,000 square meters of land or more must allocate 20 percent of the area for the construction of low-cost apartments.

Tulus said developers were expected to build the apartments, while the administration and related institutions would install supporting infrastructure such as water and electricity.

Governor Fauzi Bowo said such apartments, to be managed by the city administration, would be used predominately to house Jakartan squatters with city ID cards living on riverbanks, under elevated roads and in other restricted areas.

"In addition to the planned 800 low-cost apartments, we will build 1,000 apartments in Marunda," he said.

The administration is planning to build a total of 3,820 low-cost apartments on 41.8 hectares of land in Marunda, 6,560 units on 41 hectares of land in Rorotan and 1,700 units on 17.83 hectares of land in Rawa Bebek, all in North Jakarta.

The head of the planning division at the city housing agency, Putu Indiana, said at least 11,300 low-cost apartments were needed in Jakarta.

However, he said the administration was only able to build 1,100 units in 2007 with the Rp 400 billion allocated for the purpose in the 2007 city budget.

He said between 1985 and 2006, more than 23,000 low-cost apartment units were built in the city.