by Thom Zaremba, shareholder at Roetzel & Andress
Today’s word is resilience.
Open almost any form of social media, and whether they’re talking about politics, society, mental health, the economy, or, yes, even buildings, there’s a good chance someone is talking about resilience.
But what does resilience mean? The dictionary defines it as “the capacity to withstand or to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness.” That’s great if you’re talking about someone recovering from the flu, but what does it mean when you’re talking about buildings? After all, the International Code Council (ICC) has authored many of the building codes in this country, and it talks a lot about resiliency. In fact, ICC named one of its divisions the “Center of Focus on Energy, Resilience and Innovation,” and it has published a “Resiliency Tool Kit” aimed at achieving a resilient nation through properly implemented building codes.
Wow! Resilient buildings certainly sound important, but is it as simple as implementing building codes? Or is there something more to it? I intend to investigate that in this and my next several blogs!
Although there have been efforts to add a definition for the term resilience in the International Building Code (IBC), those efforts have failed to date. However, in its Resiliency Tool Kit, the ICC says that it frames resilience in four ways:
- Efficient disaster mitigation and recovery;
- Ensuring mental and physical health and wellbeing;
- Improving building lifecycles; and
- Creating a sustainable community.
Of these four, I intend to focus on the lifecycle resiliency of buildings as they age and how glass, coupled with periodic building inspections, can make buildings more resilient. After that, I plan to look at the ICC’s fourth facet of sustainability, namely, “creating a sustainable community” through recycling, specifically, the infinite recyclability of glass.
I chose a building’s lifecycle from the other facets of resiliency identified by the ICC for my next several blogs, primarily because, in the early morning hours of June 24, 2021, 55 out of the 135 residential units in the 12-story high Champlain Towers condominium complex in Surfside, Florida, collapsed to the ground, killing 98 people, including three children.
The so-called Surfside Collapse occurred because of the complex’s natural aging, i.e., lifecycle. An entire segment of Florida’s building stock had been ignored for nearly 40 years since an occupancy permit allowing people to live there was issued in 1981. As if the death of 98 people wasn’t unsettling enough, the ensuing legislation enacted in Florida to prevent similar disasters speaks volumes as to the costs and consequences of ignoring the long-term resiliency of our existing building stock.
But how and why did the Surfside Collapse happen? Could it have been prevented? Why was a building, home to several hundred people, allowed to deteriorate to the point that it finally collapsed under its own weight, resulting in so many deaths?
In my next several blogs, we’ll examine and try to answer all these questions. After that, we’ll focus on community sustainability through the magic of glass’ infinite recyclability. Then, as we close the chapter on sustainability, we’ll examine climate change and how it affects our buildings. Are buildings resilient enough for us and them to survive climate change? Stay tuned. We have an awful lot to explore!