Safe School Design
Landscape and Urban Design
Designing to meet user needs while maintaining stewardship of the natural and built environments becomes increasingly more challenging when security requirements are factored in. Design principles at the school site should include an emphasis on selection of low-impact development techniques and environmental stewardship; compatibility of context and relationship with adjacent uses, forms, and styles; establishment of scale and identity through aesthetic design; connectivity among buildings, uses, activities, and transportation modes; resource conservation; cultural responsiveness; and the creation of appealing public spaces. These objectives are generally achieved through the work of two closely related disciplines, landscape design and urban design. For the purposes of this document, these two disciplines are virtually overlapping and will, therefore, be addressed together.
Landscape design. Many landscape features can be used in school design to enhance security. Landscape design features should be used to create the level of protection without turning the school into a fortress. Elements such as landforms, water features, and vegetation are among the building blocks of attractive and welcoming spaces, and they can also be powerful tools for enhancing security. These features can be used not only to define or designate a space, but also to deter or prevent hostile surveillance or unauthorized access. Vegetative groupings and landforms can even provide some level of blast shielding. Stands of trees, earthen berms, and similar countermeasures generally cannot replace setbacks, but they can offer supplementary protection. However, landscaping can also have detrimental impacts for safety and security, and designers should consider the unique requirements of the school project to ensure that the landscape design elements they choose will be appropriate and effective.
With careful selection, placement, and maintenance, landscape elements can provide visual screening that protects school gathering areas and other activities from surveillance without creating concealment for covert activity. However, dense vegetation in close proximity to a school building can screen illicit activity and should be avoided. Additionally, thick ground cover such as English ivy or vegetation over 4 inches tall such as monkey grass can be used to conceal bombs and other weapons; in setback clear zones, vegetation should be selected and maintained with eliminating concealment opportunities in mind. Similarly, measures to screen visually detractive components such as transformers, trash compactors, and condensing units should be designed to minimize concealment opportunities for people and weapons.
Urban design. Numerous urban design elements present opportunities to provide school security. The scale of the streetscape should be appropriate to its primary users, and it can be manipulated to increase the comfort level of desired users while creating a less inviting atmosphere for users with malicious intent. However, even at the pedestrian scale, certain operational requirements must be accommodated. For example, although efficient pedestrian and vehicle circulation systems are important for school functions and operations, they are also critical for emergency response, evacuation, and egress, and must be able to accommodate vehicles up to the largest fire apparatus in the community. Furthermore, despite an emphasis on downsizing the scale of the streetscape, it is critical to maintain the maximum stand-off distance possible between vehicles and structures.
At the school perimeter, walls and fences used for space definition may be hardened to resist the impact of a weaponladen truck; however, planters, bollards, or decorative boulders could accomplish the same objective in a much more aesthetically pleasing manner. Such an approach also creates permeability, which would allow pedestrians and cyclists to more easily move through the space.
Landscape and urban design inherently define the "lines of sight" in a space. These techniques seek to deny aggressors a "line of sight" to a potential target, either from on or off site. This increases the protection of sensitive information and operations by using stand-off weapons. In addition to the use of various types of screening options, anti-surveillance measures (e.g., using building orientation, landscaping, screening, and landforms) to block sight lines can also be used.
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