Lying manufacturers, incompetent inspectors, muddled regulations, contemptuous landlords – the blame for the Grenfell Tower fire has been hurled in all directions, exposing a housing and construction industry that is rotten at every level. But, after seven years of waiting, yesterday’s inquiry report makes it very clear that there was one professional actor that bore the ultimate responsibility for ensuring the safety of what was designed and built: the architect.
In the excoriating 1,700-page document, the architecture practice Studio E, which led the tower’s 2015 refurbishment, is picked out for numerous “significant” failings, from its lack of knowledge of the building regulations, to its reliance on subcontractors, to fundamental errors in the design of the new cladding, which had “catastrophic consequences”. The combination of combustible aluminium composite panels, used with equally combustible foam insulation, and a lack of proper fire barriers in the facade, was the equivalent of wrapping the tower in firelighters, leading to the avoidable deaths of 72 people. Studio E, the report concludes, bears “a very significant degree of responsibility for the disaster” – some of the most damning language used for any party involved.
Architects have long complained of the erosion of their status, seeing their role at the top of the tree relentlessly undermined and usurped by specialist subconsultants. There are now separate experts for every part of the design process, from environmental performance to facade design, people flow to drainage, leaving the architect as an increasingly ineffectual middleman, supposedly presiding over these multiple specialisms while having little technical knowledge of any of them.
The role of professional buck-passer is made all too clear in the Grenfell report. It lays out how technical queries from the cladding subcontractor, Harley Facades, about such crucial details as cavity barriers – which prevent smoke and fire from spreading through the gaps in walls and ceilings – were simply passed on to the fire consultants, Exova, “without [the architect] becoming directly involved”.
At every stage, it was assumed that others had the specialist knowledge. Studio E “treated subcontractors and consultants as solely responsible for their work and assumed, without inquiry, that it met the required standards,” the report finds, betraying “a fundamental misunderstanding about the nature of its obligations”.
As both the “lead consultant” and “lead designer” on the project, the report explains, Studio E (which entered voluntary liquidation in 2020) was responsible for coordinating the design of all parts of the project, determining the choice of materials and components, and advising on and monitoring the work of all the other consultants. But throughout their evidence, it continues, “Studio E’s witnesses sought to place responsibility on others”, assuming that the designated specialists would ensure that the chosen materials and their arrangement were suitable and would comply with the building regulations. In a recurring refrain, the report concludes: “That was clearly wrong.”
In the design of the facade, the inquiry finds that Studio E “fell well below the standard to be expected of a reasonably competent architect”. The designers simply “assumed” that the combination of the flammable cladding and flammable insulation was OK “because they had been used on other projects”. Relying on what other cowboy builders have done in the past “is not good enough”, finds the inquiry, particularly when the practice in question affects people’s safety, is inconsistent with industry guidance and, most importantly, “does not withstand rational scrutiny”.
There was no attempt to check that the facade design complied with the building regulations, the report states, adding that the aluminium cladding was chosen for “aesthetic reasons”, rather than based on any detailed information about the product’s safety and performance.
Studio E’s inexperience was evident from the beginning, from its own admission. In a 2012 email, the project associate Bruce Sounes noted that the practice was “a little green on process and technicality”, and proposed “some rapid CPD” (continuing professional development, architects’ regular ongoing training). In the end, the report finds, this rapid training consisted of nothing more than a discussion with the environmental engineering consultancy Max Fordham and some “research on the internet” into overcladding high-rise residential buildings – a kind of project that the practice had never undertaken before.
Pointing to systematic incompetence, the report concludes that Studio E’s failings are symptomatic of a “widespread failure among the profession” to properly understand the nature of the materials they are using. In short, architects have become so detached from the reality of construction, they simply don’t know what they’re building with any more. It has become a roulette game of choosing products from catalogues, within ever-tightening budgets, and hoping for the best.
None of this will come as much of a surprise to anyone familiar with how architects are trained, and how the profession operates. Most products are found by searching on the internet, with specifications written up by junior staff, now often with the help of AI. Nor is there much time given in the course to understanding the technical realities – and dangers – of construction.
Anyone who has been to a degree show or a “crit”, where students present their work to a jury of critics, will know that architectural education is a five-year training in visual representation and rhetorical obfuscation, with precious little time spent on learning how to actually make a building. It is a course that produces countless cod philosophers, gonzo anthropologists and aspiring conceptual artists, but few technically capable designers who know their cavity barriers from their damp proof membranes.
Fire safety wasn’t mentioned once in my five years of study, except when one tutor remarked on a fellow student’s project that “People might die!” in the event of a fire, because of the confusing arrangement of corridors and staircases. The whole room scoffed: who was this alarmist person polluting the sanctity of pseudish posturing with real-world concerns?
On another occasion, the “professional practice” tutor, who was principal of a major firm, told us that being an architect and running a project was “like hosting a dinner party”: you get to be the gracious one at the helm, who brings all the component parts of the team together, without having to know every aspect in detail. But you might want to check that your caterers aren’t serving rotten meat with a side dish of salmonella.
If you dare to call out the emperor’s new clothes, and suggest that architectural education should be more practical, the common riposte is: “People will learn all that technical stuff on the job.” This is true, and it is how the architecture profession has hobbled along. But would you trust a doctor who had learned on the job? Imagine medical school entailing five years of colouring in, and speculating on alternative future arrangements of imaginary bodily organs, then a graduate being handed a scalpel and access to Google. It’s OK, surgeons will learn on the job!
If architects want to be taken seriously as the “lead consultants” that they contractually purport to be, their training needs a fundamental overhaul, including a serious engagement with construction and contractual obligations – aspects that are cursorily covered by just a few lectures for the final Part 3 professional exams.
As the inquiry panel member Thouria Istephan, an architect and registered health and safety practitioner, said as the findings were published: “Put simply, if you work in the construction industry and you do not feel the weight of responsibility you have for keeping people safe, you are in the wrong job.”
