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Landscaping invoice example for Security

Laurie Olin: Security has become a huge topic for those who design, especially for the government and especially for the public realm. It wasn't just 9/11, it started actually with the bombing in Oklahoma City and then the couple of embassies in Africa. So the federal government has been very concerned about security for quite a while. And, it's a serious problem, internationally and nationally. And the first response was a terrible defensive one on the part of almost all of us. Marion Pressley: It happened so quickly that the solution was the Jersey barrier and basically they were things that we had available to us. They were the kinds of things that could be brought into place, slapped down and nobody could get through them. Charles Birnbaum: Being a Washingtonian, I live in the city and so I remember at one point where I started counting bollards after September 11th, a decade ago. And it got to the point where it was impossible to do. And so I think that the ideal scenario is when you're dealing with the issue of security these should not be pu-pu platter solutions that just come out of a catalogue. They should be site specific and nuanced and they should be as subordinated as humanly possible. Laurie Olin: A couple of us began thinking, wait a minute this is not a new problem. This is an old problem. It goes back almost to the stone age where we were trying to keep the animals in and the lions and tigers out. We've been doing this from, you know, railings and fences to doors and castle walls. It dawned on me that one had to somehow figure out how to take security devices and use them to leverage some benefit or amenity in the public realm. And my first chance to try that was at the Washington Monument... Charles Birnbaum: You see there very site specific solutions where the landscape has the ability to absorb, in what almost feels like an effortless fashion, the ability to provide security. Laurie Olin: So I was trying to think what to do and it dawned on me that around the U.S. Capitol there were these beautiful walls that the Holmstead firm had done. They direct traffic and they have this nice sort of grading behind them and they're handsome and it dawned on me that well, the answer is right there, we could have these nice low walls and people could sit on them to watch the softball games, but cars going at a high speed or trucks full of bombs aren't going to get to the Washington Monument. So the notion that you could actually design furniture or you could through a combination of things enhance the pedestrian environment instead of make it seem like it's full of tank traps, if you could make it so it wasn't all negative, but these were welcoming things in the public realm that they could use or that were attractive that seemed to me, that's the game. Shane Coen: I think any time today if we're asked to do anything, let's say we were asked to create a wall, a barrier wall. We need to think of that as a piece of art, you know. How can we tell the story? How can we make that evocative? Does it need to be a wall? Can it be a landform? Can it be a different sort of system? Mary Margaret Jones: Storm water management can become a feature that's also the security of the building. Topography can become a feature that also becomes a part of the answer for security of a federal complex. So it saves money. Our medium is all of the above and it makes a better result in the long run. Charles Birnbaum: I think that every space, every city, every community is different and so I think the challenge is not to sort of create something that's so rigid but to have the opportunity to really read the landscape and understand the community to guide change in dealing with security. Mary Margaret Jones: And so often if we're brought in too late, then the issue of security becomes the picket fence of bollards that is not friendly to anyone, costs a lot of money, they don't look good over time, you know, they're hard to maintain. And so to think of security as embedded in a landscape idea from the beginning is a much better way than thinking of securing a project once you've already envisioned that project. Pat O'Donnell: So the question is how can you integrate the notion of security in a way that makes the landscape feel right and feel like there's still music playing, like there's still the appropriate movements and the appropriate perceptions and you're not saying oops, just went through the security barrier. Tom Leader: All I have to say about security is that resistance is futile. You got to embrace it, you got to move into it and express it in ways that are not superficial, that they're integral to the whole conception of the place.