The Architecture of Insecurity

 

ATF Headquarters in Washington, D.C.

“You accept a certain amount of risk in the decisions you make…                                                                                          We can’t fortify and put up perimeter security absolutely everywhere.                                                                                      No one would want to live in that city.”                                                                                                                                           Diane Sullivan of the National Capital Planning Commission (Washington, D.C.)

The construction of forts and defensive walls and towers to protect aggregations of people from roiling attacks is as old as the transition from our hunter-gatherer phase into a more sedentary agricultural notion of civilization. But building those structures was driven against wars, invading and looting forces, siege and conquest. As artillery became more sophisticated, air warfare standard, the practice of using physical barriers and watchtowers to defend from attackers quickly faded. The impact of the terrorist attacks of 9/11/01 may have changed all that, worldwide.

The notion of building physical impediments to protect against attack, to enhance structures to withstand blasts and protect person and property, are back. Sure, the watchtowers have been replaced by ubiquitous cameras, satellite imagery and vastly superior digital communications, but barrier architecture has returned. Until 9/11, security enhancements were, for the most part, add-ons. Even government buildings were constructed mostly for aesthetics over security, although our embassies began to take physical security very seriously after the 1983 bombing attacks in Beirut, Lebanon… even embassy construction in friendly countries, since terrorist groups were now operating worldwide.

But that’s the architecture of government. Unless there were serious internal conflict realities – like the “Troubles” in Northern Ireland from the late 1960s to 1998 – civilian architecture, particularly in larger, well-heeled cities, trended somewhere between utilitarian to simply stunning. Builders were more interested in the way a building looked from the street much more than they were concerned about setbacks from that street. No one cared about “line of sight” issues for closed circuit television (CCTV) cameras, that were then sparingly used… if at all. The thought of architecturally integrating barriers to entrances, security checkpoints and even layering approaches to main buildings through thick walls and landscaping that protected the main structure from assaults and blasts from outside suicide bombers, was not on most developers’ checklists. If a building looked like an armed fortress, builders correctly reasoned, who’d want to rent there? Who’d want to go inside to transact business?

Big rich buildings in big rich cities, venues for massive gatherings (sports, theater, concerts, conventions, exhibitions, etc.) and symbolic architectural skyscrapers became attractive targets. The infamous Twin Towers in lower Manhattan faced serious terrorist attacks twice, once in 1993 and again, by effectively the same terrorist group, in 2001. Despite the massive damage from a truck bomb to the North Tower in 1993, the site was woefully unprepared for the follow-up attack on 9/11. 

Nate Berg, writing for the September 10th FastCompany.com, describes the architectural aftermath of that horrific set of attacks on that fateful September morning in 2001: “Almost immediately, the design of buildings and urban spaces began to reflect the new tensions and security concerns of a world in which any place could be a target. Fences, concrete barriers, security cameras, and armed guards became an unsettlingly common sight, especially in dense urban areas.

“‘First, you saw temporary security quickly go up [in Washington, D.C.],’ says Diane Sullivan, director of the urban design and plan review division at the National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC), the federal government’s central planning agency for the D.C. region. Concrete traffic dividers, or Jersey barriers, were lined up in front of buildings and around public spaces to create buffer zones and direct the flow of cars and people. ‘Unfortunately, there are still some examples of that around Washington, D.C.,’ Sullivan says.

“Over the years, most of the ad hoc security elements have been better integrated into the design and planning process in the capital. ‘I think we recognize that permanent security is the reality, and we’ve seen a lot of projects transform what was temporary—the Jersey barriers, the planters that have gone up—into some really good designs in security in the public realm,’ Sullivan says…

“[The] the threat of urban violence has always been a reality for cities large and small. From a design perspective, though, the risks to city dwellers outside of wartime were hardly worth considering… ‘Whenever anybody thought about security, it was an afterthought in design,’ says Jon Coaffee, a professor of urban geography at the University of Warwick who focuses on terrorism and urban resilience. Though violence and unrest have long been known to occur in urban areas, the relative rarity of these events wasn’t enough to really influence the way buildings and spaces were designed…

“Even for lower-risk sites, there are considerations such as how far back a building should be set from the street and what type of surveillance systems and building materials are used. ‘We’re seeing more integration of technology with the building envelope,’ says Michael Sherman, director of the policy and research division at the NCPC. ‘We’re seeing more use of blast-resistant material that would allow you to have less setback requirements.’ More careful use of materials, he says, can help some of these projects avoid embodying what he calls ‘a bunker mentality.’

“Increasingly, security design is moving beyond the building and out into the landscape. ‘The threat has changed. It’s constantly evolving,’ Sullivan says. ‘Post-9/11, right away we were protecting buildings. Now as we have projects submitted to us, it’s really protecting public spaces—people in lines at museums, for example. Where you have a lot of people congregating at once, it’s a bigger risk.’

“Landscape architects are playing a more dominant role in designing safety and security elements for these kinds of spaces. Sullivan points to the National Museum of African American History and Culture on the National Mall, where protective elements are seamlessly integrated into the landscape surrounding the museum in the form of planted gardens, fountains, and embankments. ‘I think you’d be hard pressed to even know where the security is,’ Sullivan says.”

What’s worse, as the recent slam experienced from Hurricane Ida proved beyond any doubt, architectural planning also has to embrace the risks of high winds, flooding (from storm surges, coastal erosion, excessive snow and glacial thaws and powerful weather systems) and searing heat generated by climate change. Add fire risks in exposed regions of the country. The expected restrictions on water availability and electrical power usage from our attempts to deal with global warming make building design that much more complicated. But it is our reality, and we must deal with it.

I’m Peter Dekom, and we mired in a new construction quagmire, a balance somewhere between between aesthetics and practical reality… that just might have to be decided by necessity.