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A session at the 2003 AIA National Convention
Panel:
Barbara Nadel, FAIA, Barbara Nadel Architect
Edward Feiner, FAIA, U.S. General Services Administration
Thom Mayne, AIA, Morphosis Architects
Antoine Predock, FAIA, Antoine Predock Architect
Moshe Safdie, FAIA, Moshe Safdie and Associates Inc.
Terrorism, crime, biohazards, and workplace violence have
heightened public awareness about security in the built
environment, requiring architects and government agencies to
balance the needs for openness and enhanced security.
Facilities today are balancing security with public access, using
transparent security site planning and building design solutions to
minimize obvious barriers and maximize design excellence. These
approaches include integrating the landscape and perimeter security
measures into site design and keeping abreast of the latest trends
in security and technology.
The need for security is particularly high in government buildings,
and the General Service Administration's (GSA) Design Excellence
Program, encompassing federal courthouses and office buildings, has
produced award-winning architecture that strengthens urban centers
and the civic landscapes through attention to transparent security
measures.
How to keep the "public" in public buildings is a major question,
said Edward Feiner, FAIA, who represented the GSA. There is a
federal presence in communities across the country, and for
generations these buildings have represented, in imagery, the
federal government. "How do you deal with security while providing
openness and access?" he asked.
The U.S. government and the rest of the country are out of sync,
with the government usually lagging about 5 to 10 years behind.
However, it underwent a baptism by fire in 1995, when the Alfred P.
Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City was blown up, Feiner
noted. After the bombing, the federal government came up with some
of the answers, though certainly not all.
We could build fortresses and bunkers, said Feiner, but that's just
a knee-jerk reaction. There is no way to protect ourselves from all
risks, but negligence is not acceptable, either, he said. The
answer is to find an acceptable balance: to thwart terrorists who
would separate people from their government while avoiding a new
era of military-style security planning.
Security is part of a deeper discussion, said Thom Mayne, AIA.
Barricading is not an acceptable response to fear, and public
architecture must remain open, he said. "One of the big questions
in designing federal buildings is security, and how you can
structure architecture from the beginning to deal with security
issues."
Mayne's firm, Morphosis, is working on a 600,000-square-foot
federal building complex in San Francisco. The project, which
includes two buildings separated by a plaza, is intended to spur
redevelopment in the neighborhood. It will also reduce federal
energy consumption in San Francisco by 50 percent, through
sustainable elements and the reduction of the complex from five
buildings to two.
The signature tower is just 65 feet wide to allow light in from
both sides and reduce the need for interior lighting. In addition,
it will have a stainless steel shell screen hanging over its south
side to create a natural circulation engine. This is a main part of
the building's cooling and heating system. A high-tech building
management system monitors interior temperatures and automatically
opens and closes floor-level vents to allow air to circulate.
Without walls separating offices, air can flow freely.
The building does not have conventional heating and air
conditioning systems in 70 percent of its space. It has a backup
water heat pump system, tested and partially designed by the
scientists at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. To further save energy,
elevators don't stop on every floor but on every third floor,
although there is a backup elevator for the handicapped. The
high-tech designs added 5 percent to the building's cost, but over
time money will be saved because of energy efficiency. Not putting
in standard air conditioning units saved $11 million.
A three-story sky garden gives employees and the public outside
space and bay views. The tower's entrance is a 90-foot-high,
cathedral-like passageway. The building is capped by an 18-foot,
three-sided tube that serves as its crest.
Mayne blended security with an environmentally advanced approach in
the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's
208,000-square-foot satellite operations center in Suitland, Md.
The award-winning, environmentally friendly design includes a
140,000-square-foot roof touted as the largest green roof in the
country. The roof will be punctuated with skylights and large
landscaped courtyards. The project has been design to meet silver
level requirements for the U.S. Green Building Council's LEED
(Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Green Building
Rating SystemTM.
"You can focus on security, sustainability, whatever," noted
Antoine Predock, FAIA, "but truly good architecture will have it
all." Predock designed the new city hall and public plaza in
Austin, Tex., using the project to link the redeveloping mixed-use
Warehouse District to Town Lake.
The structure angles away from adjacent streets, lending an air of
informality to the surrounding grid and creating several miniplazas
where the public can gather. The setbacks also enhance site
security. A massive chunk of limestone, emerging from bedrock at
the lowest level of the parking garage, anchors the project to the
site. Tree-lined terraces spill from the building and connect to
the plaza at the lake. The building's skin and roof are bronze, as
is the ceiling.
The plaza winds its way around the limestone peninsulas of the
terraced building. Water originates from the canyon-like space
inside the building and runs through a group of monumental
limestone boulders in the plaza. The plaza contains a limestone
stage for performances, with amphitheater seating. The amphitheater
is protected from the sun by a trellised structure made up of
photovoltaic cells.
Predock also designed a federal courthouse in Las Cruces, N.Mex.,
on a 1.54-acre site near the city hall. The 206,000-square-foot,
six-story courthouse has six courtrooms and numerous offices. It
features two irregularly shaped, copper-colored rectangular
buildings separated to create a courtyard area that will frame the
view of the Organ Mountains.
He worked with the GSA's Regional Historic Preservation Office and
the State Historic Preservation Office to address issues related to
historic preservation and to constructing a building that would fit
in with adjoining neighborhoods and ensure sensitivity to important
historic and cultural areas.
The courthouse also complies with federal standards adopted after
the Oklahoma City bombing. To meet the 50-foot setbacks around the
building, the GSA purchased several downtown streets around the
parking lot, which makes the site very tight.
The threat of terrorism raises fundamental questions, and civil
liberties could be compromised. The parallel to architecture is
that its openness could also be compromised, noted Moshe Safdie,
FAIA. "Security is fighting the last war," Safdie said. "We're
struggling between being a moving target for suicide bombers, car
bombs, and making buildings accessible and urbane."
In the mid-1970s, designing for security meant no plantings and no
ground-level windows, but these efforts never solved the social
issues of crime, Safdie said. "Terrorism is different. There is a
balance between risk taking and covering your back."
Safdie is addressing that balance in the design of the U.S.
Courthouse in Mobile, Ala. The 322,000-square-foot facility
(scheduled to open in 2007) will have 10 courtrooms, with room to
expand, and numerous offices.
The entrance to the new courthouse will be a great, glazed facade
that extends as a colonnaded arcade and accommodates a grand
staircase that rises to every floor. The colonnade curves around
the two-block site, encircling a cluster of oak trees along St.
Louis Street. Proposed additional planting will extend this
landscape to form a civic piazza in which the oaks, a reflective
pool, and soft and hard landscaping will create a community
gathering place.
Conception Street, which bisects the site, will remain a pedestrian
path, with the building bridging over the promenade.
Three-story-high garden walls will match the scale of adjacent
residential buildings, enhance the building's security, and define
the urban street edge. The south-facing areas will be shaded by oak
trees and complemented by a linear lightwell running the length of
the building and providing daylight to the offices. In addition,
all courtrooms are fitted with windows and/or skylights to enhance
the environment.
The building's pale color scheme-including a great deal of the
light buff Alabama limestone-is intended to follow the local
architectural tradition and to offer a nice contrast with the dark
green of the oak leaves.
Safdie's 125,200-square-foot Headquarters of the U.S. Institute of
Peace is slated for completion in 2006. Its site, on the last open
spot on the National Mall, makes the building a highly symbolic
structure.
The headquarters will contain administrative offices, research
facilities (including a library and archives), a public conference
center, and an interactive education center dedicated to the themes
of international conflict management and peacemaking. Two atria
will fan out from a corner entrance, one toward the Potomac River
and the other toward the Lincoln Memorial. The first will house the
research spaces, and the other will accommodate public activity and
conferences. A second entrance on the Mall will lead into the
education center.
The public spaces in the building will be roofed by a series of
spherical and toroidal segments, constructed of steel frame and
white translucent glass. During the day they will be white, but at
night they will glow from within, making them visible not only
along the mall but also across the bridges from Virginia.
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