The Burning of the Achitecture School at TU Delft

fire in architecture building from w.pasman on Vimeo.

On the 13th of May a fire destroyed the entire architecture building on the campus of Delft University.

The official reading is that a leaking water pipe caused a short which caused a fire. The sprinklers had been turned off in order to repair the water pipe. Later they said that the building was old and was not even worth it to place sprinklers.

The fire rapidly destroyed the upper half of the south wing of the building, making the building unstable. That caused the fire fighters to retreat entirely from the building, after which the fire slowly ate away the north wing. The north wing finally collapsed, causing the fire to reach the ground and eating the remains of the south wing.

It is important to note that the fire also destroyed a rare exhibit of mid-century modern chairs recently added to the school. Sorry Mr. Eames.

(via: Vimeo & w.pasman)