building design as a counter bomb technique

In decades past, when it was important for businesses and government agencies to be near to one another so they could communicate among themselves, they built what have become targets for car bombers. Those targets are called high rise buildings.

Architects wanted to put everyone close together. And at the time they had sound reasons to do so. Since land prices in urban centers were high it made sense to build up, many floors high. There efficiencies in this as well. The times were different, an no one even thought about the need for security in and around an office building. They were soft targets--but no one was targeting them so it made no difference.

At first the buildings were just office buildings, from the first floor to the top of the elevator shaft. Then someone discovered that you could park cars on the bottom floors and put the offices above. It was a great idea; unfortunately evil minded people noted that you could easily bring a vehicle loaded with explosives into the parking area, leave it near a support pillar, and see if the explosives could bring down the whole building like a house of cards.

In all honesty, it's pretty hard to turn a properly engineered high-rise into rubble. But it is not for a lack of trying that it isn't done more often. It's safe to assume that even more disastrous bombings than the Oklahoma City Federal Building will happen one day. Bad luck or a good blend of knowledge about explosives and architecture will eventually combine to bring down a major high rise with a cost of a thousand or more lives.

Today all business sites, whether a facility, complex, or just a single building, need to be `hardened' to make them more difficult to attack. Today, for instance, there are measures everywhere to keep people from bringing explosive devices into a building with them. In many work environments all employees and visitors should pass through a guard station, one that may be equipped with metal detectors. In many businesses all packages are screened by X ray devices. As established security measures continue to make buildings more difficult to penetrate, or as it becomes more difficult to inflict damage on a target with impunity, bombers tend to move to some `softer' target. Just as good security measures can harden buildings and facilities, "protective architecture" is the best way to displace the threat to some other potential bombing target.

Protective/anti-ballistic architecture, a new field for architects and contractors, has become a hot new line of work. It is a needed one, one that incorprates new idea about how the workplace should be organized.

Today, with the proliferation of telephones, tele-conferencing systems, E-mail, computer networks, and fax machines, the pressing need to concentrate people at a single location has disappeared. The reasons to build higher and higher have disappeared. The reasons that a company or agency had to site central offices in one of a dozen major metropolitan areas no longer exists, either. Near-instantaneous communications have made it possible to put the headquarters and offices virtually anywhere. A company headquarters for many businesses can now consist of a series of rooms in individuals' home or dispersed offices that can be effectively hardened while reducing the size of the target considerably. These types of offices can often be strung together by cables, phones, faxes and electronic networks.

Dispersing offices across the country, using electronic communications in place of physical proximity, and constructing dispersed "office campuses" of one and two storey buildings with parking restricted to areas away from, (certainly not under, the buildings) can eliminate or reduce the potential for attack by someone using a Lebanese Car Bomb technique. Screening of mail and packages--and encouraging the use of electronic mail, faxes, etc.--can reduce the danger of letter bomb attacks at offices.

Many of the the bomb-hardened business centers of the future will be in small communities across the country. Even if built as high-rises in larger communities, the buildings will be set back from the curb. Wide sidewalks or plazas, preferably a plaza with steps either up and down, and beautifying barriers that prevent someone from driving over the curb and up to the door, will be common. In larger buildings the lobby will have no windows. The building will be designed with a heavy roof and thick walls while windows will be kept to a minimum. Floors and supporting structures in multi-storey structures will be reinforced to prevent or alleviate pancaking. All company buildings--wherever located--will be linked electronically and home-offices will be used where possible to keep employees dispersed.

In suburban or rural areas the buildings will be single, or at most two-storey structures set in a campus-like area. Whether in a city or in the suburbs all buildings will site their parking lots at a distance from the buildings themselves. Physical barriers--including tank-trap like dry moats and barriers--often disguised as flower pots or tree containers--keep cars from driving across lawns to any location near the building. Controlled entry points to the parking lot are needed. Speed bumps can help reduce the potential for Lebanese Car Bomb attacks; there is anecdotal evidence that even suicide bombers tend to shy away from taking an explosive-laden vehicle across them. Electronic, mechanical or canine security will be used to screen packages and mail. People, and objects they carry in, will continue to undergo similar inspections.

What windows there are in bomb-resistant buildings will be small. They will be made of specially-treated glazing. Blast curtains over the windows and film coatings on the glazing will be used to eliminate the rain of glass that results when a bomb slivers windows. People--and high value targets such as computer centers--will be concentrated toward the center of the building and away from any outside explosions. Critical utilities
systems--electric and gas, for example--will be redundant and the control boxes will be dispersed so that a single blast will not make all systems unusable.

Companies do not have to wait until tomorrow before they acquire new headquarters sites to reduce the dangers. There are improvements that can be made in existing buildings to deter bomb attacks. While not as good as designing buildings against bomb threats from the basement up, such steps are nonetheless valuable.

For instance, barricades on sidewalks can prevent cars from crashing into a building with a high explosive cargo. Closed circuit cameras, monitored 24 hours daily, can record events on the outside of the building and periphery of the building, detering would-be attackers. All trash receptacles, mail boxes or potted plants should be removed from the lobby. Public rrestrooms should be located so that members of the general public who use them have to pass the guard desk, and through metal detectors.

When improving the security of existing buildings against bombs, parking areas--particularly public parking areas--should be moved away from, or from underneath, the building.

All buildings, whether new or retrofitted, need an effective public address system and battery-powered lighting in the stair wells to assist in evacuations. Windows should be designed or retro-fitted with shatter resistant glazing, or at least have film coverings to prevent slivering of the windows and the deadly storm of flying shards that results when a bomb explodes nearby. Weighted blinds and blast curtains are also advisable.

Barriers and a guard station should be located at the entrance to all parking areas. Parking garages beneath buildings are impossible to properly police. Cameras should record the license plate and face of the driver of every vehicle entering and leaving; the recording device itself should be placed away from the building itself and connected to the camera by cable. The guard should be monitoring vehicles to make certain that all vehicles are registered.

In short, it's possible for agencies, companies and individuals to reduce the risk they face from vehicle bombs and other explosive attacks. This is not to say that bombers can't and won't still attack. This is not to suggest that "infernal devices" are soon to be as outdated and anachronistic as the term. What it does say is that bombers will continue to attack the easy targets--the ones that don't change their offices, the ones that continue to lease space in high rise buildings that have curtain walls of glass and a public parking lot on the bottom floor.

Careful planning now will simply displace a future attack to someone else who wasn't clear-headed and forward-thinking. Or, put another way, if a competitor steals a march on you and "hardens his target"--he may well be displacing his attack onto you.

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