The burnt-out remains of Grenfell Tower will be “sensitively” dismantled, the government has confirmed, nearly eight years after fire gutted the 24-storey London tower block, killing 72 people.
The decision was triggered by expert advice that the tower is “significantly damaged”, said the BBC. The government has already committed to create a “fitting and lasting memorial” that would be a “sacred space” for “remembering and reflecting”, but just what form that memorial will take – and whether it should use material from the tower – remains a delicate question.
How have survivors and locals reacted?
“The overwhelming majority” of locals are in favour of demolishing the tower because they’re concerned that the burnt-out structure is unsafe, Mushtaq Lasharie, chair of the Lancaster West Residents’ Association, told the BBC. Taking the structure down would offer “closure”, although a “small minority” were in favour of it remaining “to remind people” of the tragedy.
Among former Grenfell residents and their families, opinions are mostly against the plans. Dismantling the tower puts the tragedy “out of sight and out of mind” for those responsible, survivor Emma O’Connor told Radio 4’s “Today” programme. She suggested that any unstable upper floors should be removed and then re-erected as a memorial.
But, while “of course it will be painful for survivors and neighbours” for the tower to come down, it is “toxic for a city to constantly contemplate its own tragic failures”, said Edwin Heathcote in the Financial Times.
What will replace Grenfell Tower?
There is already a plan to erect a permanent memorial at the Grenfell site but, again, there are a range of feelings over what form this should take. Suggestions have included transforming the tower into a “vertical garden” with a high level platform and hanging plants. Others have suggested that the site could become a park, a garden space, a museum, or a brand new structure that would reach the same height as Grenfell.
The independent Grenfell Tower Memorial Commission, which is in charge of selecting the design of the memorial, has so far only said that the eventual memorial should include a garden, monument and space for mourning.
Five design teams have been shortlisted to create the memorial, with the aim of the successful bidder submitting a planning application late next year. What happens next will define how we remember the tragedy, said Emma Dent Coad, architectural historian and MP for Kensington at the time of the fire, in Intelligence for Architects. And what is “certain” is that “there will be anger, upset and more trauma for my friends and neighbours down the road”.
What’s happened at other tragic landmarks?
In Hiroshima, Japan, a building left standing after the atomic bomb exploded on 6 August 1945 has been preserved and turned into a memorial to the people who were killed. The Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland has also been preserved as a reminder of the horrors of the Holocaust.
Ground Zero, the site of the 9/11 attacks on the twin towers of the World Trade Center in the US, is now a commemorative space that includes several monuments that pay tribute to the victims and survivors.
Some disaster sites, such as the former Chernobyl nuclear plant, have attracted large visitor volumes as part of a morbid travel trend known as dark tourism.