THE TENSION between security and freedom plays out every day at the airport. But less well appreciated is how the fear of attacks affects architecture. The short answer is: strangely. Consider the metal detectors shoehorned into State House entryways, or at the too-huge-to-be-decorative spherical bollards that now dominate the sidewalk outside the Thomas P. O'Neill Federal Building near North Station.
Architects of new buildings are also scraping for gentle ways to fend off gunmen and truck bombs. The new US embassy in Berlin, which formally opens July 4, sits on prime real estate in the German capital. Its designers showed creativity, and the State Department some flexibility, in dealing with safety rules requiring new embassies to be set well back from the street. But the embassy's small windows and cautious style still come across as defensive - as "Fort Knox at the Brandenburg Gate," to quote one critic.
How much responsibility for preventing attacks should fall to building designers, anyway? The limits of bricks-and-mortar security were evident in a panel discussion at the recent American Institute of Architects convention in Boston.
Architect Thomas Vonier, who led the panel discussion, makes a helpful distinction between "real security" and "theater security." He argues for "secure enclaves" - areas of cities where high-value targets could be concentrated, access could be limited, and authorities could unobtrusively assess the motives of passersby.
Two non-architects on the same panel, however, expressed more concern about the danger of walling off government buildings from the outside world. Henry Crumpton, who served as the State Department's counterterrorism coordinator, argued that security "is less about physical barriers but about intelligence." And US District Judge Douglas Woodlock, who chaired the committee that oversaw the design of Boston's federal courthouse, noted "the cost of giving up your engagement with the city."
Amid a demonstrated threat to embassies and other public buildings, it might seem trifling to argue against gates and 1,000-pound flower planters on grounds that seem merely aesthetic. But buildings send messages, and people expect a superpower to show some confidence - and not "default to a bunker mentality," as Crumpton put it.
There are encouraging signs. The streetscape near the O'Neill building is being redesigned, for instance, and the US General Services Administration is working with the Boston Redevelopment Authority to find a better solution than the existing bollards. Barriers only go so far, and danger can never be designed away entirely.
