Students this fall are returning to facilities that are built, literally from the ground up, with security concerns in mind. From bullet-resistant glass to roof-top recreation areas, school districts are implementing architectural solutions to the safety problems that occur on school grounds.

Architects are working closely with school personnel and law enforcement agencies to develop plans that protect students from threats that originate inside and outside the school walls. For example, architects are widening hallways, eliminating blind corners, and removing lockers in an effort to increase visibility and open spaces, and to limit the possibility of storing contraband, according to architects interviewed for recent news stories by CNN, NBC, and the Seattle Times. (see related story)

In effect, school architects are employing the same techniques they use in more traditional crime-ridden areas, such as malls and parks.

While much public attention is being paid to the advent of cameras, metal detectors, and security personnel in school hallways, architects are working to find ways to open the schools while making them part of a more closely-knit environment. They are building facilities, such as the Tenderloin Community School by EHDD Architecture, both in San Francisco, that is not only a preschool and K–5 elementary school, but a gathering place for the community. The 66,000-square-foot campus also features a family resource center, a community kitchen, rooftop community garden, adult education classes, medical and dental clinics, and a counseling center. The idea of facilities such as this is to put more adults around the school to deter loitering and vandalism and to develop a sense of community-ownership.

Other schools are turning to environmental design techniques such as enclosed landscaped courtyards and skylights. "If you provide kids with a really great environment that is beautiful to look at and made of quality material, it actually calls for them to more respectable," Patricia Shelby, manager of Capital Projects for a Maple Valley school in Tahoma, Wash., told the Seattle Times.

Copyright 2001 The American Institute of Architects. All rights reserved.