Do you feel lucky?

Recently I had dinner with the head of security at a major university during a two-day design session on a major project. The issue of when to involve building security in the design process came up. The case in point was a Gehryesque building on his campus which presented particular challenges to his security staff. A building with walls that aren’t perpendicular, combined with a circulation system that is not immediately evident can be confusing to the uninitiated. His solution was to have his staff spend enough time in the building so they learned the layout and knew it like the back of their hand – know your neighborhood. However, his point was to question why build something that confusing in the first place? Why not involve the security staff early in the design process rather than simply locate security cameras and organize a security check point (if there are any) at the loading dock and the desk in the front lobby.

Since 9/11 we have all dealt with increased security but often security is usually addressed half way through the design process, not at the inception of the project. For the most part we have been looking at security through the lens of a large-scale terrorist attack — someone trying to gain access to the building or do significant damage by proximity, like in Kansas City. But, should we be thinking more about an armed perpetrator already in the building, like situations in Virginia Tech and Sandy Hook. While PAYETTE does not participate in the K-12 market, there has been increased awareness of these issues in the market segment and it will be interesting to see the design of the new Sandy Hook school.

I tucked this discussion in the back of my head until I noticed an article in a recent issue of College Planning & Management that asked if academic institutions were going to start allowing their students to carry handguns on campus. Frankly, this is something I had never really considered living in this liberal bubble we call Massachusetts.

When I was in high school in the late 60’s the Dirty Harry movies were all the rage and it may have been one of the first series of movies to glorify a particular gun, his 44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world! Most red-blooded American males could quote the various lines from the movie but few expected to ever own such a weapon and I would hazard a guess that none of them would think to bring such a thing to school. But I guess times they are changing. A recent survey suggests that there are over 250 million guns in this country and counting and unfortunately some will end up on college campuses.

We all know Haussmann redesigned the streets of Paris to make them ‘revolution proof’ so as to control revolting peasants or is it peasants who are revolting? I never could tell. Straight and wide is better than narrow and curvy if you are on horseback. If a Gehryesque building is analogous to a medieval town, is it a better place to conceal oneself, and is a building with a straight central corridor a harder place to hide in? Well, I guess it depends on who you are, the ‘perp,’ the occupant, or a security guard.

Recently a client of ours asked that when the building is ‘in lock down’ that no one should be able to see into any of the rooms off the corridor system. What happens to transparency and education on display? Education on display is an idea that has become very popular in recent years. Are we going back to blank corridors with solid doors? Is the next request going to be CMU hallway since they are more resistant to bullets than drywall? Maybe those 60’s buildings we have been renovating aren’t so bad after all. Will we have metal detectors at the front door and or pat downs by campus police? Unfortunately, some of these ideas are all too familiar in some of our inner city schools, but haven’t yet affected open university environments.

So what does the possibility of students packing heat mean to the design professional? Do we need to consider the opposite to ‘lock down,’ are buildings going to be more porous, allowing numerous escape routes, accepting the fact that there will be guns in all buildings and quick evacuation is paramount? Can one even design for this eventuality?

Or is this an overactive imagination on my part, reacting to a couple of isolated cases that do not reflect the vast majority of academic instructions in this country? But if guns do start to show up on campuses then it may come down to a risk benefit analysis. I guess in the end I ask, how lucky do you feel?