Opinion: Architecture Should Not Cost Lives

Is it more dangerous to be a soldier or a construction worker? Astonishingly, it’s the latter. According to a recent report in the Guardian, 448 British soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan  since 2001. In the same period, 760 construction workers died on British building sites.

Life is cheap at the dirty end of architecture and not just in the UK. The number of fatalities of largely migrant workers from the Indian subcontinent imported to implement Qatar’s architectural ambitions, notably the stadiums for the 2022 World Cup, has been the subject of much hand-wringing discussion. And rightly so − over 400 Indian and Nepali building workers died in Qatar in 2013, and the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) has warned that up to 4,000 workers may die before a ball is finally kicked in 2022.

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Cite: Catherine Slessor. "Opinion: Architecture Should Not Cost Lives" 14 May 2014. ArchDaily. Accessed . <https://www.archdaily.com/506019/opinion-architecture-should-not-cost-lives> ISSN 0719-8884

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