ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the difficult birth of new regulations that apply to robustness, and what they demand. It explores their worth, how they may be followed and to what extent they have they been effective. The cost of making all modest four-storey buildings of standard construction robust, when subjected to the rare and unforeseen event of an explosion, may be deemed excessive compared to the cost of the repairing the collapse. Demolition engineers demolish tall buildings by using explosions to initiate a progressive collapse. To prepare for the demolition, all non-loadbearing walls are removed, as they stiffen the building. In older buildings, non-loadbearing walls were often of masonry, which can provide considerable stiffening to framed structures when vertical structure is removed. This is less likely with modern building as modern architecture eschews, in the main, masonry cladding preferring full glazing, or other forms of lightweight cladding. The chapter concludes how robustness is approached.
