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Think of where you feel
most secure. Lying fully prone on a warm beach or snuggled
in your own bed? Lost in swirling crowds during a lunchtime
break or hiking in the high country? Few would answer,
“Behind locked doors and high walls.” As psychologist
Richard Farson has observed, the term “security”
is bound in paradox: Where security systems assert themselves
most forcefully—in prisons, for example—fear,
discomfort, and even danger often flourish; conversely,
the absence of visible protection can promote the feeling
of well-being.
In recent months, security by design
has leaped from a single item on the architect’s
programmatic checklist to the headlines. Architects
and other design professionals are engaging in a national
debate, spawning a mini-industry of consultants, Web
sites, and AIA conferences in their wake, to discuss
safety and security for the built environment. If you
take Farson’s point, however, you quickly realize
that security engages both fact (statistical reality)
and perception, with design at the fulcrum, balancing
the two.
When terrorism shattered our world,
did facts dictate that all buildings become bunkers?
Two building types illustrate the dilemma, with differing
solutions. As Jane Loeffler, Ph.D., has written, embassies
evolved, by policy, from projections of American culture
(remember Edward D. Stone’s embassy in India) to
thick-walled, heavily protected, interior-oriented structures
with little room for architectural involvement. Despite
the Nairobi bombings and contemporary realpolitik, critics
decry these fortresses, with their unintended negative
connotations of America’s image abroad.
By contrast, American courthouses,
under the direction of the General Services Administration
(GSA) and prompted by an ethos passionately articulated
by former senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, had begun
to open up. In buildings from Las Vegas to Boston, we
began to see symbols of justice that democratically
engaged the city, opening a transparent, public face
to the community, while sequestering judges chambers,
juries, law enforcement, and defendants in more protected,
private areas. Courtrooms became the mediating space
between the two exposures. Can this openness continue?
In this murky time, risk assessment
can help provide direction for decision making by architects.
By isolating the types of potential threats and addressing
each as a design dilemma, imaginative solutions can
produce buildings that enhance our feelings of well-being
while simultaneously providing protection. Our plans
may change: As in the new GSA courthouses, layered zones
may progressively increase in wall thickness, in material
strength, and in active protective systems from public
to private realms. Buildings at high risk for blast
damage can offer greater setbacks, wall hardening, minimized
adjacency, and mitigation of projectile damage, none
of which need affect the public’s appreciation
of transparency or accessibility. It should be possible
to appear open and be safe.
Make no mistake, the moment is
dangerous. The list of potential security challenges
can seem daunting—biohazard, theft, crowd control,
arson, chemical attack. However, if we are able to determine
which threats to address dispassionately, our solutions
can become part of our overall design palette, much
as we design for fire safety today. New products and
systems may be invisible components of total building
safety, similar to systems for fire suppression or thermal
comfort. Speaking from his experience with airport design,
architect Laurence Speck offered, “If it’s
designed in, it should be as natural as a stove in a
kitchen.”
Architectural Record wants
to help. While this April issue includes the latest
definition of “home,” our most sacrosanct
environment, we wanted to address the notion of security
in other types of buildings and structures. Together
with our sister publication, Engineering News Record,
we offer a special publication, Building for a Secure
Future, that addresses the security paradox, encouraging
us to design buildings that are simultaneously transparent,
welcoming, and safe. Do you feel secure where you are
today?
Join Robert Ivy as he jots down
notes on his travels and the state of architecture today
in the Editor's Journal.
Check out our index
of past editorials.
If you wish to write to our
editor-in-chief you can email him rivy@mcgraw-hill.com.
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