When you design a building, you surely don’t want it to catch fire. Unfortunately, many buildings cannot properly do this yet. Each year more than fifty Australians die because of residential fires. In addition, Australia generates an average of 20.5 million tonnes of landfill waste annually, and a third of that is from construction.
A/Prof Kate Nguyen develops non-burning cladding system and has also worked with Enviro-SIP Australasia, a cladding company, to significantly improve the availability and sustainability of materials that slow the burning of a fire. This is part of a response to the current cladding crisis in Australia that is estimated to cost $6.2B to fix structural and safety defects.
She then converts different types of waste into fire-safe building materials and works on new ways to reduce construction waste in landfill.