Customer Reviews

Security and Site Design: A Landscape Architectural Approach to Analysis, Assessment and Design Implementation

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A very good basic resource for understanding what 'physical security' is about and how it can be combined with landscape design to look good and include public amenities. The best section is the collection of case studies of how it has been done well already, such as at official public buildings and public streetscapes. There's a good synopsis of the book on the NJ landscape architecture assoc. (...)

Today's discussions of the public realm seem dominated by the idea of threat - whether natural or man-made. As designers we have an obligation to respond both to public concerns and to our professional charge of creating dynamic and vital spaces. But how do we create these spaces, and integrate security measures so they're not rendered as arrays of bollards, streetlamps, and planters?

I was pleased to find Security and Site Design to help guide my questions on this issue. Where we as a culture quickly become absorbed in escalating levels of fear, the authors, Hopper and Droge, outline a basic plan for integrating our concerns into our designs. Of particular note is their emphasis that not all potential threats can be nullified through design. In fact, our public places would no longer be the civic spaces they were meant to be if we were to cater solely to our worst fears. I found in their writing a delicate balance between designing to a reasonable threat level and maintaining our professional charge of creating "a sense of place".

The book outlines through examples and numerous case studies the basic physical areas where one can have the greatest influence in terms of security: street, parking lane, sidewalk, building yard, building perimeter, and building interior. Although I was admittedly dismayed to find out at what distance my body would completely disintegrate if standing near a truck bomb, I appreciated the fact that frank discussions about threats and their relative likelihood were contextualized in the practical issues of design decisions that have to be made.

Hopper and Droge do not purport to have all the answers, pointing out that the field of security design is still in its infancy and holds the potential for many technical and programmatic innovations to be made. For better or worse, it looks like we'll be exploring the topic for a long time to come.

Frankly I was disappointed in this book. Its emphasis on landscape only doesn't mean that all the same information isn't already to be found in other sources on building security. Although the authors relish the information on the power of differing explosions, there's not a lot of technical information on actually countering them. Vehicle delivered bomb blasts are pretty much it for the threats considered. And the suggested responses are predictable ones already seen around government buildings. This book might be useful if you have never considered the subject at all; otherwise it's not.