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Technology and architecture in an age of terrorism
Technology in Society 26 (2004) 161–167 www.elsevier.com/locate/techsoc
Technology and architecture in an age of terrorism Henry Petroski Duke University, Box 90287, Durham, NC 27708, USA
Abstract In the wake of the events of September 11, 2001, a number of hastily arranged measures were taken to thwart further terrorist attacks. Understandably, there was little time to design architecturally harmonious airport security stations or protective concrete barriers to follow up those that were put into service in an ad hoc way. Now that terrorism has become a defining condition of our age, it is necessary for engineers, architects, and other professionals to rise to the occasion and design into buildings and public spaces defensive security features that are functionally and aesthetically integral, thereby reclaiming somewhat our quality of life. # 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Architecture; Terrorism; Airport security; Bollards
Among the many ways in which the rise of terrorism has affected the quality of life in America and elsewhere is in the changing face of the built environment. Public buildings whose elevations, plans, and facades architects took pains to design have had their approaches and entrances barricaded and otherwise altered in adhoc ways. Grand prospects laid out by landscape planners can now resemble construction sites. The once free flow of traffic through expansive lobbies and atriums has been impeded with uncomplimentary metal detectors, X-ray equipment, and folding tables that make the spaces look like a cross between an airport security checkpoint and a flea market. Fears of truck bombs, explosives, and concealed weapons being brought near or into places of government, business, and culture has led to an abominable state of affairs for the appreciation of architecture.
Tel.: +1-919-660-5203; fax: +1-919-660-5219. E-mail address: [email protected] (H. Petroski).
0160-791X/$ - see front matter # 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.techsoc.2004.01.020
162
H. Petroski / Technology in Society 26 (2004) 161–167
Some months ago, I flew out of the Raleigh/Durham Airport in North Carolina, to give a talk at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. The approach road to the airport, which after many years of construction had finally been cleared of heavy equipment and traffic barriers, was open and welcoming with its recently completed landscaping and bright new signs. Before my wife and I drove very far, however, we found the road filled with traffic cones and barrels channeling all lanes down to one, where police waved some cars on and others to the side for random inspections. Driving up the departure ramp of any airport terminal these days invites the question of whether any flights are operating, there being so few cars in an area that used to look like a parking lot. Curbside parking and waiting are, of course, now prohibited, often with makeshift signs that appear to follow no grammatical, graphical, or aesthetic standards. There had long been a confusion of serpentine lines before airport ticket counters, but since September 11, 2001 they seem to have become more numerous in their categories and more confusing in their movement. Seldom are they attractive in their geometry, and never do they seem to compliment the space in which they are located. The entrance to everything seems to be cordoned off, and lines to reach the departure gates are counterintuitive and demand faith to join, as they snake toward and away from the security checkpoint. In Terminal C at the Raleigh/Durham Airport, from which my flight was leaving, the lines for departing passengers are confined to a long and narrow corridor, pushed off to one side to allow arriving passengers to exit on the other. Such a key location at this airport terminal that won architectural recognition when it opened is now its major bottleneck, the departing passengers clogged like salt in a shaker in the North Carolina humidity. Frequent fliers, who have learned to pack their wallets and pens in their suitcase, take off their shoes and belts and brass-buttoned blazers and load them into plastic bins that look like what I collected dirty dishes in when I was a busboy. Speedily reassembling themselves on the other side of the metal detector, those cleared for takeoff look disheveled when they reach the gate. When I reached Washington Reagan Airport, I reflected on how easy it is to exit the jetway, now that no one can meet anyone at their arrival gate. Now, since it is so difficult to park in a conveniently close location, few relatives, friends, or business associates even cluster near the exit beside the security checkpoint. Rather, increasing numbers of fliers use their cell phone to call whomever is meeting them, letting them know they have landed and will meet them curbside. The person with the car, who has been circling the airport or has been parked in some remote offsite location at the ready, drives to the prearranged pickup location and loads the traveler almost on the run, like a mail train snatching a mail pouch from a stanchion. To do so with any less dispatch risks being reprimanded by the traffic police. I had no one meeting me in Washington, so I was to pick up a rental car. To my surprise, no yellow Hertz, red Avis, green National, or any other rental car or hotel courtesy bus was in sight. After a few minutes of waiting, behind clumsy looking and misaligned traffic barriers, I figured something was amiss. When I asked a guard, he indicated to me that now there was only one kind of airport
H. Petroski / Technology in Society 26 (2004) 161–167
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shuttle—the black ones that took everyone everywhere they wanted to go. When I spotted one coming, I squeezed with my luggage between concrete barriers to catch a ride to the rental-car depot, where I squeezed through more barriers to get to my assigned car and then weaved it through more barriers toward the airport exit. The drive to Annapolis was uneventful, and I was right on time. About 10 minutes away, I called my host as agreed, and he instructed me to rendezvous with him in a public parking lot outside the academy grounds, lest I encounter trouble getting past the guardpost alone. Even though I had not met him before, he was easy to recognize, standing in full uniform beside his car. I followed him to the visitor’s gate, where I picked up my pass. Having that, I could come and go from the base as I wished. Entering the Academy grounds from Maryland Street in Annapolis is a grim reminder of the new guardpost architecture. Though not a particularly grand entrance before the heightened terrorism awareness, the gate is now protected by concrete highway barriers and oversized concrete planters that make it necessary to steer a car with considerable attention into position to present credentials to the guard on duty. Once past the maze and on base, I did not notice any special security. My visit went as planned, and I stayed in the convenient Bachelor Officer Quarters overnight. Since I had a very early flight home the next morning, I left Annapolis before dawn, assuming that I would beat the rush hour traffic. However, the nearer I approached Washington, the heavier the traffic became. Becoming concerned about the traffic backing up on the main highways around the city, I got off and took local streets. I navigated by dead reckoning toward Capitol Hill, from which I knew my way to the airport. I approached the Capitol along East Capitol Street, noticing nothing unusual until I passed the Folger Shakespeare Library. Immediately before me was the East Front of the Capitol, but it was hardly the scene that I knew. The plaza was hidden behind construction fencing, and the traffic was tightly channeled around it by concrete barriers. The Supreme Court, the Library of Congress, the House Office buildings were all transformed behind rigid if slightly askew hedges of concrete that looked incongruously like seawalls on the Hill. All along Independence Avenue, I lamented the assault on the city by the socalled Jersey barriers that I pictured having been transported from construction sites on ramshackle trucks that have been known to drop their cargo of protectionin-transit dangerously close to cars following them up hills and around curves. Perhaps Washington is at the same time the best and the worst example of monumental architecture ruined by pyrrhic victories over terrorists. True, truck bombs have been kept a safe distance away and car bombers have been thwarted, but what sits safe behind the barriers has been defiled by the protection as surely as if the buildings had been spray-painted with terrorist graffiti. The barriers are symbolic not of triumph in the war against terror but of defeat at the hands of our protectors. (I have since been to London, where the entrance to Downing Street seemed to be in competition with that to the White House for aesthetically insensitive security measures.)
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H. Petroski / Technology in Society 26 (2004) 161–167
It should not have to be so. There is no reason why buildings, monuments, and other potential targets cannot be designed and constructed to be terrorist-proof but not to look that way. Granted, there is no absolute protection, for there will always be a larger-than-imagined vehicle capable of carrying a larger-thanimagined bomb. The World Trade Center experience demonstrated that. After the 1993 truck bomb exploded in the underground garage, access to the basement levels beneath the twin towers was put under strict control. Eventually, of course, the terrorists found a vulnerability in the sky. It is not that no one had imagined attack by air. Indeed, when the twin towers were being designed, the scenario of them being hit by a Boeing 707—the largest airliner flying at the time—was considered. The towers were deemed able to survive such an attack on their structure, but of course, by 2001 there were larger planes in the sky, including Boeing 767s, carrying larger amounts of jet fuel. The Pentagon was also attacked on September 11. However, even though it contained about the same amount of office space as the twin towers, the Pentagon distributes that space horizontally rather than vertically. Not only did the Pentagon and its occupants suffer considerably less damage, but also the building provided an unplanned demonstration of what can be done structurally to protect a potential target without hopelessly sacrificing its architecture. In the wake of the bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City, engineers and architects became sensitized to structural vulnerabilities to explosions. The Pentagon was in fact undergoing strengthening of its facade when the attacks of September 11 occurred. Because of the scale of the building and the need to keep it functioning throughout the construction period, only one-fifth of the structure was being worked on at a time. As it happened, the hijacked airplane that struck the Pentagon did so in the vicinity of a juncture between a sector whose structural retrofitting was approaching completion and a sector that still retained its original structural characteristics. Among the things being done were the addition of steel reinforcement behind the fac¸ade and the installation of strong windows. The external difference between the two sectors was hardly noticeable, but the efficacy of the strengthening was apparent in the aftermath of the crash. Had the sector not undergone strengthening, considerably more damage and loss of life would no doubt have occurred. The new challenge to architects and engineers is to design structures that look as good as they ever have but to embed in them features that can withstand attacks. The Pentagon shows that it can be done. One of the obvious ways of protecting even a conventionally designed structure against car and truck bombs is to keep the vehicles at a safe distance. The hastily arranged Jersey-barrier approach is clearly not an aesthetically or psychologically appealing one, and architects and engineers must accept the challenge to accomplish the same effect in more unobtrusive and less heavy-handed ways. Terraced approaches to buildings, transparent fences that complement rather than clash with facades, and strong walls and windows that are aesthetically integral to the design are just some of the ways that a new architecture of defense might respond to the challenges.
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It is not just in the large that architecture and engineering can provide more appealing protection against terrorist attacks. Building lobbies, airport security checkpoints, site entrances, and the like can and should be designed to incorporate the detection of knives, guns, explosives, and chemical and biological weapons without intruding on the aesthetic sensibilities of patrons. Certainly there are ways to incorporate metal detectors, for example, into the de´cor of a checkpoint. Electronic tickets have already had an enormous impact in alleviating long lines at airport ticket counters. The combined efforts of architects and engineers should be able to make security checkpoints virtually invisible. Printing transponders of some kind on electronic tickets may be a possible way to ensure that, even in the case of no or inattentive security guards, no one without a proper boarding pass could enter the boarding gate area. (At some airports for a while, making sure the boarding pass matches the traveler had been relegated to the boarding gate anyway.) Metal detectors should be able to be disguised in seemingly decorative columns and other architectural details, and other security devices should be able to be similarly concealed. Only those passengers who trigger subtle alarms need be called aside for further scrutiny, perhaps by means of conventional X-ray and other devices that can be housed in rooms or alcoves out of the main flow of traffic and line of sight to and from boarding gates. For those who may object to surreptitious security checks as an invasion of privacy or as unlawful surveillance, a conventional security checkpoint with visible (and ugly) metal detectors and supermarket-counter-style X-ray machines could be located in a room out of the main corridor to boarding gates. Appropriately tagged passengers could be allowed to walk unimpeded to their gates through hidden and otherwise unobtrusive electronic surveillance devices; others could be shunted off to the left or right to subject themselves to being checked in the conventional overt and mechanical way. Technology and architecture should be able to link arms and rise to the occasion. They should be able to make dealing with the realities of terrorism achievable in more civilized and civilizing ways than are currently being applied. Since it is unlikely that threats of terrorism will completely disappear in the foreseeable future, it behooves engineers and architects to act now to restore everyday life at airports and other public places to the civility known before the present era. This can be done with the judicious application of modern magnetic, electrical, opto-electronic, chemical, and biological technologies in service to human safety and human dignity. In addition to being more people-friendly and less architecturally objectionable, concealed security devices might be much more effective in controlling access than present methods, which are subject to the faults and failings of human error. Several years ago, when I was called to jury duty, I was struck by the vulnerability of security controls at our county courthouse. When we prospective jurors showed up on the morning of our summons, we and our belongings were subjected to careful and thorough searches. Security guards looked into and riffled through the contents of bookbags and computer cases full of work that we had brought with us to make use of the time during the long periods of inactivity we have come to expect
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as part of a jury pool. Then our bags were double-checked by being passed through an X-ray machine. It all made sense in a climate of terrorism and revenge. At lunchtime, prospective jurors were directed to local restaurants and told when to return for the afternoon session. Exiting the courthouse was understandably uncontrolled, and we jurors roamed to points downtown to feed our stomachs, stretch our legs, and enjoy the sunshine. Upon returning to the courthouse, not a few of us were surprised that we were waved through security checkpoints, complete with closed bookbags and whatever else we carried or picked up over lunchtime, as long as our red ‘‘jury pool’’ pass was visible. The same means of concealing a weapon or other disruptive device that had been the object of such scrutiny that morning was in the afternoon considered innocuous. Security guards had no assurance and no reason to assume that a person to whom a jury pool pass was attached was in fact the same person who left for lunch. Anyone intent on evil doing might easily have waylaid one prospective juror for her badge or simply pickpocketed another for his and so gained access to the courthouse unimpeded. How much more safe and secure our public places might be if security technology were embedded in the architecture. In addition, these spaces would be more attractive and of a whole with their overall design. Furthermore, one might also assume that those intent on doing wrong might be less forewarned that they were under surveillance and so be less prepared to circumvent it. There is no reason why our public places cannot be restored to their pre-terrorist condition, where people moved freely about airports and other public spaces, undeterred by checkpoint procedures that are intrusive to millions upon millions of innocent people who simply want to catch a plane or visit a building or enjoy a monument or park. Air travelers especially have become accustomed to producing identification and subjecting themselves to searches. Who does not wish it could be done in a more civilized and less public manner? There is some indication that architects and engineers have been rising to the occasion and recapturing public spaces from ugly Jersey barriers, unattractive metal detectors, and other oppressive obstructions of virtually no design value. A recent article in the New York Times [1] indicated that the Washington National Capital Planning Commission had approved a landscape architect’s redesign of Pennsylvania Avenue by replacing the ubiquitous concrete barriers and planters with ‘‘reinforced metal posts known as bollards.’’ Some of the bollards would be permanently fixed in the ground, while others would be retractable so that motorcades and parades could pass freely. Trees were also planned to replace some existing concrete bollards, which are necessarily larger and more obtrusive than the metal kind. According to the chairman of the planning commission’s security task force, ‘‘There’s nothing like an oak tree to stop a truck’’ (though it might be wise to leave the bollards in place until the trees matured). He also was reported as saying that although he ‘‘wouldn’t want landscape architects to protect the president,’’ he also did not want ‘‘security people to design our urban streetscape.’’ Among other ideas that were being looked at were the use of ‘‘ordinary street fixtures’’ like the ‘‘uprights of a park bench ... or the posts in a tree fence’’ to serve
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as bollards, thus ‘‘forming a layered line of defense through which pedestrians can travel easily and unselfconsciously.’’ New York City officials soon took note of the Washington approach, and the New York Art Commission and the Design Trust for Public Places issued ‘‘design guidelines for anticrime measures like fences, gates and guard booths.’’ In St. Paul, Minnesota, Jersey barriers installed at a US courthouse after the Oklahoma City bombing attracted the criticism of a federal district judge, who insisted that ‘‘decisions related to security are made rationally and not out of fear.’’ To respond to the judge’s objections, an architect ‘‘designed a series of randomly stacked, rough-edged granite slabs, 12 to 16 inches thick,’’ on which people could sit and skateboard and so ‘‘enliven rather than deaden the plaza’’ before the courthouse. Still other solutions focus on enhancing rather than replacing Jersey barriers. One pair of architects was seeking a ‘‘patent on a method of attaching brackets that would support benches, planters, billboards, bicycle racks or trellis canopies’’ on the oppressive concrete eyesores. Once architects and engineers set their minds to enhancing the urban space that is presently overrun with Jersey barriers and other impromptu safety measures, there is likely to be no end to the creative ideas that will be proposed for recapturing the public spaces in cities everywhere for people to enjoy and roam freely throughout. References [1] Dunlap DW, Envisioning a safer city without turning it into slab city. New York Times, 17 April 2003 (national edition):A-23. Henry Petroski is the Aleksandar S. Vesic Professor of Civil Engineering and a professor of history at Duke University. He writes and lectures frequently on the nature and history of engineering, design, and failure, and explores these and other topics in his regular engineering column in American Scientist. Among his books are To Engineer Is Human, The Pencil, The Evolution of Useful Things, Engineers of Dream, Remaking the World, The Book on the Bookshelf, and Paperboy, a memoir. His latest book is Small Things Considered: Why There Is No Perfect Design, published by A.A. Knopf.
Technology and architecture in an age of terrorism Henry Petroski Duke University, Box 90287, Durham, NC 27708, USA
Abstract In the wake of the events of September 11, 2001, a number of hastily arranged measures were taken to thwart further terrorist attacks. Understandably, there was little time to design architecturally harmonious airport security stations or protective concrete barriers to follow up those that were put into service in an ad hoc way. Now that terrorism has become a defining condition of our age, it is necessary for engineers, architects, and other professionals to rise to the occasion and design into buildings and public spaces defensive security features that are functionally and aesthetically integral, thereby reclaiming somewhat our quality of life. # 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Architecture; Terrorism; Airport security; Bollards
Among the many ways in which the rise of terrorism has affected the quality of life in America and elsewhere is in the changing face of the built environment. Public buildings whose elevations, plans, and facades architects took pains to design have had their approaches and entrances barricaded and otherwise altered in adhoc ways. Grand prospects laid out by landscape planners can now resemble construction sites. The once free flow of traffic through expansive lobbies and atriums has been impeded with uncomplimentary metal detectors, X-ray equipment, and folding tables that make the spaces look like a cross between an airport security checkpoint and a flea market. Fears of truck bombs, explosives, and concealed weapons being brought near or into places of government, business, and culture has led to an abominable state of affairs for the appreciation of architecture.
Tel.: +1-919-660-5203; fax: +1-919-660-5219. E-mail address: [email protected] (H. Petroski).
0160-791X/$ - see front matter # 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.techsoc.2004.01.020
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H. Petroski / Technology in Society 26 (2004) 161–167
Some months ago, I flew out of the Raleigh/Durham Airport in North Carolina, to give a talk at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. The approach road to the airport, which after many years of construction had finally been cleared of heavy equipment and traffic barriers, was open and welcoming with its recently completed landscaping and bright new signs. Before my wife and I drove very far, however, we found the road filled with traffic cones and barrels channeling all lanes down to one, where police waved some cars on and others to the side for random inspections. Driving up the departure ramp of any airport terminal these days invites the question of whether any flights are operating, there being so few cars in an area that used to look like a parking lot. Curbside parking and waiting are, of course, now prohibited, often with makeshift signs that appear to follow no grammatical, graphical, or aesthetic standards. There had long been a confusion of serpentine lines before airport ticket counters, but since September 11, 2001 they seem to have become more numerous in their categories and more confusing in their movement. Seldom are they attractive in their geometry, and never do they seem to compliment the space in which they are located. The entrance to everything seems to be cordoned off, and lines to reach the departure gates are counterintuitive and demand faith to join, as they snake toward and away from the security checkpoint. In Terminal C at the Raleigh/Durham Airport, from which my flight was leaving, the lines for departing passengers are confined to a long and narrow corridor, pushed off to one side to allow arriving passengers to exit on the other. Such a key location at this airport terminal that won architectural recognition when it opened is now its major bottleneck, the departing passengers clogged like salt in a shaker in the North Carolina humidity. Frequent fliers, who have learned to pack their wallets and pens in their suitcase, take off their shoes and belts and brass-buttoned blazers and load them into plastic bins that look like what I collected dirty dishes in when I was a busboy. Speedily reassembling themselves on the other side of the metal detector, those cleared for takeoff look disheveled when they reach the gate. When I reached Washington Reagan Airport, I reflected on how easy it is to exit the jetway, now that no one can meet anyone at their arrival gate. Now, since it is so difficult to park in a conveniently close location, few relatives, friends, or business associates even cluster near the exit beside the security checkpoint. Rather, increasing numbers of fliers use their cell phone to call whomever is meeting them, letting them know they have landed and will meet them curbside. The person with the car, who has been circling the airport or has been parked in some remote offsite location at the ready, drives to the prearranged pickup location and loads the traveler almost on the run, like a mail train snatching a mail pouch from a stanchion. To do so with any less dispatch risks being reprimanded by the traffic police. I had no one meeting me in Washington, so I was to pick up a rental car. To my surprise, no yellow Hertz, red Avis, green National, or any other rental car or hotel courtesy bus was in sight. After a few minutes of waiting, behind clumsy looking and misaligned traffic barriers, I figured something was amiss. When I asked a guard, he indicated to me that now there was only one kind of airport
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shuttle—the black ones that took everyone everywhere they wanted to go. When I spotted one coming, I squeezed with my luggage between concrete barriers to catch a ride to the rental-car depot, where I squeezed through more barriers to get to my assigned car and then weaved it through more barriers toward the airport exit. The drive to Annapolis was uneventful, and I was right on time. About 10 minutes away, I called my host as agreed, and he instructed me to rendezvous with him in a public parking lot outside the academy grounds, lest I encounter trouble getting past the guardpost alone. Even though I had not met him before, he was easy to recognize, standing in full uniform beside his car. I followed him to the visitor’s gate, where I picked up my pass. Having that, I could come and go from the base as I wished. Entering the Academy grounds from Maryland Street in Annapolis is a grim reminder of the new guardpost architecture. Though not a particularly grand entrance before the heightened terrorism awareness, the gate is now protected by concrete highway barriers and oversized concrete planters that make it necessary to steer a car with considerable attention into position to present credentials to the guard on duty. Once past the maze and on base, I did not notice any special security. My visit went as planned, and I stayed in the convenient Bachelor Officer Quarters overnight. Since I had a very early flight home the next morning, I left Annapolis before dawn, assuming that I would beat the rush hour traffic. However, the nearer I approached Washington, the heavier the traffic became. Becoming concerned about the traffic backing up on the main highways around the city, I got off and took local streets. I navigated by dead reckoning toward Capitol Hill, from which I knew my way to the airport. I approached the Capitol along East Capitol Street, noticing nothing unusual until I passed the Folger Shakespeare Library. Immediately before me was the East Front of the Capitol, but it was hardly the scene that I knew. The plaza was hidden behind construction fencing, and the traffic was tightly channeled around it by concrete barriers. The Supreme Court, the Library of Congress, the House Office buildings were all transformed behind rigid if slightly askew hedges of concrete that looked incongruously like seawalls on the Hill. All along Independence Avenue, I lamented the assault on the city by the socalled Jersey barriers that I pictured having been transported from construction sites on ramshackle trucks that have been known to drop their cargo of protectionin-transit dangerously close to cars following them up hills and around curves. Perhaps Washington is at the same time the best and the worst example of monumental architecture ruined by pyrrhic victories over terrorists. True, truck bombs have been kept a safe distance away and car bombers have been thwarted, but what sits safe behind the barriers has been defiled by the protection as surely as if the buildings had been spray-painted with terrorist graffiti. The barriers are symbolic not of triumph in the war against terror but of defeat at the hands of our protectors. (I have since been to London, where the entrance to Downing Street seemed to be in competition with that to the White House for aesthetically insensitive security measures.)
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H. Petroski / Technology in Society 26 (2004) 161–167
It should not have to be so. There is no reason why buildings, monuments, and other potential targets cannot be designed and constructed to be terrorist-proof but not to look that way. Granted, there is no absolute protection, for there will always be a larger-than-imagined vehicle capable of carrying a larger-thanimagined bomb. The World Trade Center experience demonstrated that. After the 1993 truck bomb exploded in the underground garage, access to the basement levels beneath the twin towers was put under strict control. Eventually, of course, the terrorists found a vulnerability in the sky. It is not that no one had imagined attack by air. Indeed, when the twin towers were being designed, the scenario of them being hit by a Boeing 707—the largest airliner flying at the time—was considered. The towers were deemed able to survive such an attack on their structure, but of course, by 2001 there were larger planes in the sky, including Boeing 767s, carrying larger amounts of jet fuel. The Pentagon was also attacked on September 11. However, even though it contained about the same amount of office space as the twin towers, the Pentagon distributes that space horizontally rather than vertically. Not only did the Pentagon and its occupants suffer considerably less damage, but also the building provided an unplanned demonstration of what can be done structurally to protect a potential target without hopelessly sacrificing its architecture. In the wake of the bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City, engineers and architects became sensitized to structural vulnerabilities to explosions. The Pentagon was in fact undergoing strengthening of its facade when the attacks of September 11 occurred. Because of the scale of the building and the need to keep it functioning throughout the construction period, only one-fifth of the structure was being worked on at a time. As it happened, the hijacked airplane that struck the Pentagon did so in the vicinity of a juncture between a sector whose structural retrofitting was approaching completion and a sector that still retained its original structural characteristics. Among the things being done were the addition of steel reinforcement behind the fac¸ade and the installation of strong windows. The external difference between the two sectors was hardly noticeable, but the efficacy of the strengthening was apparent in the aftermath of the crash. Had the sector not undergone strengthening, considerably more damage and loss of life would no doubt have occurred. The new challenge to architects and engineers is to design structures that look as good as they ever have but to embed in them features that can withstand attacks. The Pentagon shows that it can be done. One of the obvious ways of protecting even a conventionally designed structure against car and truck bombs is to keep the vehicles at a safe distance. The hastily arranged Jersey-barrier approach is clearly not an aesthetically or psychologically appealing one, and architects and engineers must accept the challenge to accomplish the same effect in more unobtrusive and less heavy-handed ways. Terraced approaches to buildings, transparent fences that complement rather than clash with facades, and strong walls and windows that are aesthetically integral to the design are just some of the ways that a new architecture of defense might respond to the challenges.
H. Petroski / Technology in Society 26 (2004) 161–167
165
It is not just in the large that architecture and engineering can provide more appealing protection against terrorist attacks. Building lobbies, airport security checkpoints, site entrances, and the like can and should be designed to incorporate the detection of knives, guns, explosives, and chemical and biological weapons without intruding on the aesthetic sensibilities of patrons. Certainly there are ways to incorporate metal detectors, for example, into the de´cor of a checkpoint. Electronic tickets have already had an enormous impact in alleviating long lines at airport ticket counters. The combined efforts of architects and engineers should be able to make security checkpoints virtually invisible. Printing transponders of some kind on electronic tickets may be a possible way to ensure that, even in the case of no or inattentive security guards, no one without a proper boarding pass could enter the boarding gate area. (At some airports for a while, making sure the boarding pass matches the traveler had been relegated to the boarding gate anyway.) Metal detectors should be able to be disguised in seemingly decorative columns and other architectural details, and other security devices should be able to be similarly concealed. Only those passengers who trigger subtle alarms need be called aside for further scrutiny, perhaps by means of conventional X-ray and other devices that can be housed in rooms or alcoves out of the main flow of traffic and line of sight to and from boarding gates. For those who may object to surreptitious security checks as an invasion of privacy or as unlawful surveillance, a conventional security checkpoint with visible (and ugly) metal detectors and supermarket-counter-style X-ray machines could be located in a room out of the main corridor to boarding gates. Appropriately tagged passengers could be allowed to walk unimpeded to their gates through hidden and otherwise unobtrusive electronic surveillance devices; others could be shunted off to the left or right to subject themselves to being checked in the conventional overt and mechanical way. Technology and architecture should be able to link arms and rise to the occasion. They should be able to make dealing with the realities of terrorism achievable in more civilized and civilizing ways than are currently being applied. Since it is unlikely that threats of terrorism will completely disappear in the foreseeable future, it behooves engineers and architects to act now to restore everyday life at airports and other public places to the civility known before the present era. This can be done with the judicious application of modern magnetic, electrical, opto-electronic, chemical, and biological technologies in service to human safety and human dignity. In addition to being more people-friendly and less architecturally objectionable, concealed security devices might be much more effective in controlling access than present methods, which are subject to the faults and failings of human error. Several years ago, when I was called to jury duty, I was struck by the vulnerability of security controls at our county courthouse. When we prospective jurors showed up on the morning of our summons, we and our belongings were subjected to careful and thorough searches. Security guards looked into and riffled through the contents of bookbags and computer cases full of work that we had brought with us to make use of the time during the long periods of inactivity we have come to expect
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as part of a jury pool. Then our bags were double-checked by being passed through an X-ray machine. It all made sense in a climate of terrorism and revenge. At lunchtime, prospective jurors were directed to local restaurants and told when to return for the afternoon session. Exiting the courthouse was understandably uncontrolled, and we jurors roamed to points downtown to feed our stomachs, stretch our legs, and enjoy the sunshine. Upon returning to the courthouse, not a few of us were surprised that we were waved through security checkpoints, complete with closed bookbags and whatever else we carried or picked up over lunchtime, as long as our red ‘‘jury pool’’ pass was visible. The same means of concealing a weapon or other disruptive device that had been the object of such scrutiny that morning was in the afternoon considered innocuous. Security guards had no assurance and no reason to assume that a person to whom a jury pool pass was attached was in fact the same person who left for lunch. Anyone intent on evil doing might easily have waylaid one prospective juror for her badge or simply pickpocketed another for his and so gained access to the courthouse unimpeded. How much more safe and secure our public places might be if security technology were embedded in the architecture. In addition, these spaces would be more attractive and of a whole with their overall design. Furthermore, one might also assume that those intent on doing wrong might be less forewarned that they were under surveillance and so be less prepared to circumvent it. There is no reason why our public places cannot be restored to their pre-terrorist condition, where people moved freely about airports and other public spaces, undeterred by checkpoint procedures that are intrusive to millions upon millions of innocent people who simply want to catch a plane or visit a building or enjoy a monument or park. Air travelers especially have become accustomed to producing identification and subjecting themselves to searches. Who does not wish it could be done in a more civilized and less public manner? There is some indication that architects and engineers have been rising to the occasion and recapturing public spaces from ugly Jersey barriers, unattractive metal detectors, and other oppressive obstructions of virtually no design value. A recent article in the New York Times [1] indicated that the Washington National Capital Planning Commission had approved a landscape architect’s redesign of Pennsylvania Avenue by replacing the ubiquitous concrete barriers and planters with ‘‘reinforced metal posts known as bollards.’’ Some of the bollards would be permanently fixed in the ground, while others would be retractable so that motorcades and parades could pass freely. Trees were also planned to replace some existing concrete bollards, which are necessarily larger and more obtrusive than the metal kind. According to the chairman of the planning commission’s security task force, ‘‘There’s nothing like an oak tree to stop a truck’’ (though it might be wise to leave the bollards in place until the trees matured). He also was reported as saying that although he ‘‘wouldn’t want landscape architects to protect the president,’’ he also did not want ‘‘security people to design our urban streetscape.’’ Among other ideas that were being looked at were the use of ‘‘ordinary street fixtures’’ like the ‘‘uprights of a park bench ... or the posts in a tree fence’’ to serve
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as bollards, thus ‘‘forming a layered line of defense through which pedestrians can travel easily and unselfconsciously.’’ New York City officials soon took note of the Washington approach, and the New York Art Commission and the Design Trust for Public Places issued ‘‘design guidelines for anticrime measures like fences, gates and guard booths.’’ In St. Paul, Minnesota, Jersey barriers installed at a US courthouse after the Oklahoma City bombing attracted the criticism of a federal district judge, who insisted that ‘‘decisions related to security are made rationally and not out of fear.’’ To respond to the judge’s objections, an architect ‘‘designed a series of randomly stacked, rough-edged granite slabs, 12 to 16 inches thick,’’ on which people could sit and skateboard and so ‘‘enliven rather than deaden the plaza’’ before the courthouse. Still other solutions focus on enhancing rather than replacing Jersey barriers. One pair of architects was seeking a ‘‘patent on a method of attaching brackets that would support benches, planters, billboards, bicycle racks or trellis canopies’’ on the oppressive concrete eyesores. Once architects and engineers set their minds to enhancing the urban space that is presently overrun with Jersey barriers and other impromptu safety measures, there is likely to be no end to the creative ideas that will be proposed for recapturing the public spaces in cities everywhere for people to enjoy and roam freely throughout. References [1] Dunlap DW, Envisioning a safer city without turning it into slab city. New York Times, 17 April 2003 (national edition):A-23. Henry Petroski is the Aleksandar S. Vesic Professor of Civil Engineering and a professor of history at Duke University. He writes and lectures frequently on the nature and history of engineering, design, and failure, and explores these and other topics in his regular engineering column in American Scientist. Among his books are To Engineer Is Human, The Pencil, The Evolution of Useful Things, Engineers of Dream, Remaking the World, The Book on the Bookshelf, and Paperboy, a memoir. His latest book is Small Things Considered: Why There Is No Perfect Design, published by A.A. Knopf.