Designing for Security
Illustration: Michael Glenwood aka Michael Gibbs

In the 18th century, English philosopher Jeremy Bentham proposed a building meant to eradicate bad behavior. The pattern concept—which Bentham said could be used for everything from schools and hospitals to housing and prisons—was a circular construction with an ascertainment tower at its core. Occupants of those buildings would know that a centralized authorization watched them and would act appropriately. This infamous Panopticon has been debated always since, with critics calling it a barbarous marriage of social applied science and compages, one that augured the coming era of CCTV and abiding public monitoring.

Today, society continues to debate the role that architecture should play when it comes to security. There'due south an abundance of abysmal examples: buildings buttressed by bailiwick of jersey walls, metallic spikes, barbed wire, confined, and berms or surrounded past a phalanx of security; defensive architecture designed to role like a fortress or retrofitted with tacked-on deterrents. How, and so, should architects pattern safe spaces that are also beautiful and humane?

It'south a question that's been taken up recently by some of the most targeted of edifice types, including U.S. embassies. "Embassies and consulates must exemplify the best of American architecture, environmental stewardship, and innovation," Secretary of State John Kerry said in 2013 when discussing the U.S. Land Department's new Design Excellence initiative. Architects are being mandated to motion across the bunker and create buildings abroad that are capable of keeping people inspired equally well as safe.

Dorsum home in America, nosotros are—co-ordinate to the numbers—safer than ever. Crime statistics from the FBI show that violent and quality-of-life crimes have diminished over the decades. However, information technology doesn't necessarily feel that way. Not afterward people with guns breached offices and pic theaters, churches and elementary schools. Security is every bit much about perception as it is about reality, and cultural anxiety often influences edifice pattern.

Lynda Buel, the owner and CEO of SRMC, a security consultation firm based in Columbus, Ohio, has a background in criminology and criminal justice, as well equally thirty years of professional security management experience, including working with AEC firms. She says it'south not just clients of loftier-risk structures—courthouses, embassies, and federal buildings—who are taking security seriously these days; it's likewise universities, hospitals, schools, and residential and part buildings. "Organizations are increasingly enlightened of the demand for security measures," Buel says. "Simply the other matter I hear from our clients is that they desire the experience of an open, welcoming environment. They want a residual."

Identifying Vulnerabilities

Patrick Gilbert, AIA, a senior architect with Gresham, Smith and Partners (GS&P), explains that achieving this balance comes from building in, rather than bolting on, security measures. "Security is not an improver; rather it's thinking holistically about a building site or concept," he says.

Gilbert specializes in corporate and urban design, and ever interviews clients about security needs, both real and perceived. "We ask, 'What are your hot buttons, your vulnerabilities? What are the things that business concern you?' Sometimes it's well-nigh providing a comfortable and safe place for employees; other times it'southward well-nigh securing critical information," Gilbert says.

When it comes to the average urban campus or a corporate office edifice, thoughtful integration and environmental design should back up safety. Gilbert points to the concepts of the International Law-breaking Prevention Through Environmental Design Association (CPTED), which encourage strategies in mural and architectural design to deter crime. A clearly demarcated and well-lit path from the parking garage to the entrance, for example, coupled with one main entry to a building versus multiple entries, helps bolster a edifice'due south perimeter security.

"Our clients recollect about security on a more than prevalent basis than 15 years agone," Gilbert says. "Nosotros're sometimes surprised by how many bring it up, especially in office buildings, where it'southward less virtually keeping people out than information technology is most creating an environment where employees feel rubber."

Ensuring Reassurance

That sense of security is paramount. "There'south how safe you are and at that place's how condom you experience—and they are both important," says Joseph Collins, FAIA, a partner at Portland, Ore.'south ZGF Architects.

Collins works with universities, from Stanford to Johns Hopkins, where information technology'due south oft most mitigating fear through built environs interventions such as skilful illumination, sight lines, and wayfinding.

"There is a heightened sensation of security bug these days, but I would besides say that our job as architects has never changed. Information technology's to accost these important issues and yet create delightful experiences that don't feel overbearing," Collins says. "When you lot're in higher, you want to feel that freedom of existence in college. It'southward our job to balance security concerns and help make them fade into the groundwork." (Buel notes that more of her university clients are inviting compages firms in at the early on planning stages of development because "they recognize how expert design can heighten condom.")

This same need for balance extends to role and residential environments. Sometimes security interventions—cameras, guards, metallic detectors—are made visible in areas like the lobby, to establish that those measures are in identify, but they go more discreet on the interior. "Clients desire to protect what they need to protect, just they don't always want information technology out in front," says Sue Kerns, primary and manager of interiors at ZGF.

The rise of tech businesses with hackworthy product development, and of university-based labs conducting sensitive enquiry, is also influencing architecture. "We take tech clients worrying about corporate espionage," Kerns says. "A software client of ours has different levels of badging for different security access, so nosotros had to be careful how we designed the circulation."

GS&P has clients who comport secretive projects that require what'southward known as "sensitive compartmented information facilities." Think of information technology equally a kind of loftier-tech moat to proceed people, and hackers, out.

"It'south an function-within-an-office for working on sensitive projects, and we see this with our clients who have connections to the federal government," Gilbert says. "We'll build a suite within an office that has foil-lined walls and other methods to keep intellectual and electronic data from existence compromised. These spaces are very quiet, so y'all don't even realize the part exists."

Thinking 10 Years Ahead

Keeping security discreet is something more architects and landscape architects should make a priority, according to James Timberlake, FAIA, founding partner of KieranTimberlake. "In general, architects need to challenge the theory that overt visual deterrents, which are the most aggressive features in the landscape, are the answer," Timberlake says. "If information technology'southward a K–8 school, and y'all've put a metallic detector at the front door, what does that say? Security should be more than integrated, more discreet, and architects should offset endeavour to think of passive ways to contain security requirements."

KieranTimberlake's design for the Embassy of the United States, London, which is at present under construction in the Nine Elms commune of the English language capital letter city, incorporates natural elements as security. Situated in the center of a near v-acre site, the embassy grounds will include curving walkways, a large pond, low garden walls, fixed benches, and varying elevations in the topography to achieve security measures that don't experience obtrusive. "We chose to use the elements of architecture and landscape as a unimposing fashion of incorporating the requirements that the State Department desired," Timberlake says.

Security is also an ongoing chat. "You accept to proceed revisiting it," Timberlake says. "Step one is request the right questions, footstep ii is setting the right goals for a project, and step 3 is reconfirming those goals throughout. It's not enough to enquire those questions once. We've asked the State Department, 'Has anything changed in the 20 months since this projection started?' Well, yes, the cameras take gotten ameliorate. So you make adjustments."

As engineering swiftly changes, and client needs do as well, building adaptable spaces becomes important. "The world evolves, so does security," Buel says. "We take a saying: 'You must be fast, fluid, and flexible.' Architects demand to recollect well-nigh ten years down the route. Ask a client what the plans for the infinite might exist in a decade, and what types of security infrastructure should be in place to support it. Put in the cobweb cables and the pipes at present. And make sure It is a function of the conversation."

In fact, bring everyone to the tabular array. "In the past, architectural firms often designed in a bubble," Buel says. "They would encounter with the higher-ups within the arrangement, but at present they are engaging stakeholders at all levels of the arrangement—the people who live, work, and play in those environments."

While Bentham may have designed a means for deterring abnormal beliefs with his Panopticon, he forgot the importance of human experience. When information technology comes to security, "inviting everyone to the table makes all the deviation," Buel says.