Grenfell Tower
| Grenfell Tower | |
|---|---|
Grenfell Tower in 2009, before refurbishment
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| General information | |
| Status | In ruins |
| Location |
London, W11 United Kingdom |
| Construction started | 1972 |
| Completed | 1974 |
| Renovated | 2016 |
| Destroyed | 14 June 2017 |
| Renovation cost | £8.7 million |
| Owner | Kensington and Chelsea London Borough Council |
| Landlord | Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation |
| Height | 67.3 metres (220 ft 10 in) |
| Technical details | |
| Floor count | 24 |
| Design and construction | |
| Architecture firm | Clifford Wearden and Associates |
| Main contractor | A E Symes |
| Renovating team | |
| Architect | Studio E Architects |
| Renovating firm | |
| Main contractor |
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Grenfell Tower was a 24-storey residential tower block in North Kensington, London, England. It 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 structure. The road itself was named after Field Marshal Lord Grenfell (1841 – 1925), a senior British Army officer.
The concrete structure's top 20 storeys consisted of 120 flats, with a total of 200 bedrooms. Its first four storeys were nonresidential until its most recent refurbishment in 2015–2016, which converted two of them to residential use, bringing it up to 127 flats and 227 bedrooms. It also received new windows and new (albeit faulty) cladding with thermal insulation during this refurbishment.
A major fire seriously damaged the building on 14 June 2017. 70 people were confirmed dead, according to the Metropolitan Police Service. Demolition of the tower is expected to start towards the end of 2018.
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 67.3 metres (221 ft) tall building contained 120 one- and two-bedroom flats (six dwellings per floor on twenty of the twenty-four stories, with the bottom four, the podium, being used for non-residential purposes). 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 22m square, giving an approximate usable area of 476 square metres (5,120 sq ft). The layout of each floor was designed to be flexible as none of the partition walls was 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 51.4 m2 (553 sq ft) in area and two-bedroom flats were 75.5 m2 (813 sq ft).
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Wikipedia