One of
The Dirt's intrepid international reporters sent us this photo from Rome demonstrating some curious security design decisions at the American embassy. Since it's in Italy, you'd think there'd be a stylish answer to security design in the city--but you'd be wrong. Instead, according to our sources, we have a metal barricade thrown up after 9/11, which only serves to keep people from walking on the sidewalk, and sits just three feet from a rather large wall surrounding the compound, making this security design solution absolutely superfluous. (But hey, check out those scooters!)
Mary Ann Lasch, FASLA, of Gensler, is a security design expert who has worked a lot with the General Services Administration attempting to craft guidelines for government buildings that create a safe environment for occupants, while creating a sense of openness for the public at large. We had a chance to talk with Lasch about the current state of security design--particularly in Washington, DC, and New York City--and what she sees for the future. Essentially, she sees things improving on the security design front as cities, and in particular, the federal government, become more keen on security design issues. She also notes that designing for the worst-case scenario no longer seems to be the default setting when it comes to perimeter security. Rather, developers are actually performing risk assessments and cost benefit analyses prior to throwing up bollards. Now there's some novel thinking.
Click here to listen to the full interview with Mary Ann Lasch, FASLA.
Although we're at the ASLA Annual Meeting & EXPO and IFLA 43rd World Congress, we're still following the papers; and
The New York Times has a big story this weekend on security design. The paper reports that after evaluations by the New York Police Department,
the city's Department of Transportation has ordered that planters and jersey barriers be removed from sidewalks throughout the city. The Times notes that "in recent years, counterterrorism experts have concluded that a poorly anchored planter, struck hard enough by explosive force or a speeding vehicle could become, to use police jargon, 'weaponized,'" adding that New York City streets are so narrow that car and truck bombers could get close enough to targets regardless of barriers. Manhattan's building owners, the paper notes, were never ordered to install planters and barriers, and took the measures voluntarily--in some cases at great expense.
Getting an outside perspective on the built environment is always healthy, and I can think of nothing more outside than a novelist whose work
BLDGBLOG describes as falling somewhere between "science fiction, urban surrealism, dark fantasy, magical realism, and even horror comedy." The author in question is Jeff Vandermeer, who has won a host of awards for his science fiction writing and has some
fascinating thoughts on urban design and the future of the city. BLDGBLOG has an interview with Vandermeer that runs the gamut from security design in a post-9/11 world, to geological deposits, to the Prague cityscape. We here at
The Dirt had never heard of Vandermeer until reading this interview, but we'll definitely be looking out for him on our next trip to
the public library.
The fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks spawned a deluge of writing and retrospective on how the country has reacted architecturally to the attacks. Of these retrospectives,
the package put together by the Chicago Tribune and its architecture critic Blair Kamin is the best we've seen. It begins with a video of Kamin discussing in general terms how the country has reacted, along with excellent photography by staff photographer
E. Jason Wambsgans. In the opener, Kamin notes that some are using security design as an impetus for making cities livelier, but in the vast majority of cases, security design is having a debilitating effect on public movement and public discourse. He singles out Washington, DC, as a particularly bad example, calling the city "Fort Washington," and saying, "If you go to the places that are national symbols, you're bound to be disappointed, because these places have been turned into fortresses."
In a long follow-up article, Kamin dissects what has happened to Washington and finds very little to like. He cites Capitol Hill, a neighborhood now beset with Jersey barriers and metal barriers that pop up out of the street, as a particular travesty. "Bollards," Kamin says, "trample the picturesque Capitol grounds of the great landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, like the battalion of Mickey Mouse's endlessly multiplying brooms in the movie Fantasia."
While he praises the original design by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, Inc., for securing Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House, he mourns the execution of the design, which was gutted by federal and local wrangling. Kamin also praises Laurie Olin's redesign of the Washington Monument grounds, which is quickly setting the standard for security design, but notes that the screening area at the base of the monument--which was not part of Olin's original plan--looks absolutely foolish in its attempt to echo the monument's monumental blocks of Maryland marble." It "sticks out like a fat toe," and serves as a stark reminder of how far Washington still needs to go when it comes to security design.
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