Integrating lifecycle fire resilience into sustainability thinking for high-rise residential buildings

The Wang Fuk Court and Grenfell Tower fires illustrate that sustainability and fire resilience cannot be considered independently in high-rise residential buildings. Although these disasters have often been attributed to specific materials or renovation activities, they more fundamentally reveal systemic interactions among culture, technology, and management across the building lifecycle. This Short Communication extends the Culture-Technology-Management (CTM) framework by integrating lifecycle fire resilience into sustainable building thinking, arguing that it should be regarded as a fundamental condition of building sustainability. Examples include façade retrofits, combustible insulation systems, temporary renovation materials, and lifecycle management decisions that may unintentionally reshape fire risk if fire resilience is not explicitly considered. Using the Wang Fuk Court and Grenfell Tower fires as illustrative examples, this paper demonstrates how sustainability-oriented interventions should be continuously coordinated with fire safety throughout the building lifecycle. It argues that sustainability assessment should therefore extend beyond environmental and operational performance to explicitly incorporate lifecycle fire resilience. © 2026 The Authors.