Prioritizing Design as a School Security Solution

Roosevelt Middle School - Mahlum Architects w/Robertson/Sherwood/Architects

The American Institute of Architects recently launched an initiative to promote the role design can play in improving school safety, specifically in response to the spate of school shootings in recent years. This initiative is proceeding on a variety of fronts, including efforts to help state and local school officials access information and funding in support of expertise focused upon the design of safe and secure schools. 

The fact school shootings regularly fill our news cycle is beyond heartbreaking. The immediate, reflexive, and necessary responses may improve safeguards but in the process they too often transform once open places dedicated to education into less-than-welcoming fortresses or bunkers. Our schools risk becoming victimized twice by the perpetrators of violence—directly in the most tragic of instances but also indirectly as society comes to grips with the repercussions for all. To the extent anything can be done to ensure school safety, we can hope informed, skillful design will contribute toward practical, cost-effective solutions that help preserve the innocence, wonder, and joy for learning all children deserve. 

AIA’s Committee on Architecture for Education knows it is possible for vulnerable schools to remain open and positive learning environments while also enhancing safety and security. This is the power of good design. A safe school is one that allows administrators to have physical control over the environment. It is a place where students, parents, and staff can go and not be concerned by outside or internal threats. Measures intended to deter school violence needn’t be ever-present in the minds of those protected by them. 

AIA’s initiative includes collecting signatures from its members for a petition intended to prioritize design as an integral part of the solution to curbing school violence. Once it collects 50,000 signatures, the AIA will deliver the petition to elected officials across the country at all levels of government. While the written appeal is short on specifics, it does serve to emphasize the profession’s commitment to helping address an intractable issue charged with politics and emotion. It comes from a uniquely qualified perspective, one focused upon enhancing the physical attributes of our school buildings and campuses so that they may be the safe, supportive, and life-affirming places for learning everyone wants them to be. 

I’ve signed the AIA petition and encourage you to do so as well. Here is its wording, which you’ll also find on the petition website: 

“Power of Design” Petition on School Safety:

Architects protect the health, safety and welfare of building occupants. It is fundamental to what we do. We routinely address the social, psychological, economic, and environmental factors when designing a building, especially schools. 

Over the course of almost two decades, architects have worked with school communities across the country in response to repeated acts of deadly violence targeting students and educators. In so doing, our profession has proven that innovative architectural design solutions must keep learners and learning central to the decision-making process for designing safe schools. Therefore, we ask you to make this a core value of your decision-making when considering how to design new schools or when renovating existing ones. Furthermore, we ask you to remember that schools are intended to be communities. They should be planned without sacrificing the inherent positive qualities of the school environments we all desire for our children. This is especially important to value because there is no one-size-fits-all design solution to school safety. School design must adapt to differing and evolving community concerns, support student health and safety, and create productive learning environments. 

As architects and citizens of your community, we call on you to understand that the power of architecture and design to address this issue is real. While it can’t prevent school violence, it can help safeguard students and teachers while keeping schools positive places of learning and growth. To that end, we stand ready to partner with you.