Settling the Great Barrier Beef

It may not have the historic import of the Boston Tea Party, but a rebellion is brewing these days that literally could change the national landscape. And federal officials are getting an earful.

“Something has to be done about this,” Don Miles, a Seattle architect, thought to himself as he walked by the federal courthouse recently. “We seem to have forgotten all about the fact that the word ‘city’ comes from the word ‘civility.’ ”

What has Miles and other prominent architects so riled is the profusion of those ugly concrete barriers now protecting federal buildings from terrorist attacks. The architects, landscape artists and urban planners leading the charge have no quarrel with the need for increased security. But they argue passionately that an array of alternatives--shrubbery, reinforced benches, street lights, moats, grassy lawns, trees, fountains, raised curbs and even street sculpture--can serve security needs while preserving the majesty of public space. They talk of how the barriers are unsafe, vulnerable to becoming projectiles in a bomb attack. Mostly, they talk about democracy.

“Those barriers are a really terrible metaphor for the moment we’re living in,” said Cathy Simon, an architect in San Francisco. “They send a very unfortunate message to the public about democratic institutions.”

There are even some who argue that the rush to wall public buildings is misguided: Those “Jersey barriers,” so named because they were modeled after the medians on New Jersey’s highways, only contribute to a culture of fear that is more harmful to Americans than to terrorists.

“When you put barriers up, you are identifying places of fear,” said Fred Kent of the New York-based Project for Public Spaces. “Fear isolates places from the public. What we’re working on is how to create a sense of openness.”

Gavin de Becker, a risk assessment analyst in Los Angeles who advises the federal government on security issues, goes even further. Noting that barriers often are the first knee-jerk reaction to attack, he suggests that fear is unhealthy, risk inevitable. In an era when terrorists retool after each escalation of security, he asks: “Do we really want to put barricades around every federal building in response to something that happens once every 250 years?”

Nowhere is the fervor for the artistic restoration of public space greater than in Chicago, where the federal plaza--designed by world-renowned architect Mies van der Rohe and anchored by an Alexander Calder sculpture called “Flamingo”--is considered a masterpiece. So an emissary from the General Services Administration in Washington recently came to the city that produced Frank Lloyd Wright to hear the protests.

For many who attended the session, the essential question was how to provide protection for federal employees and access for the public to a much-used plaza while still honoring the man who made minimalism mainstream.

“Many spoke about looking for a Zen approach,” said Philip Enquist, an urban designer. “What would Mies do? That’s sort of the debate.”

The artists and architects urged respect for simplicity in the square, which hosts everything from farmers markets to political protests. “We all agreed that less is more,” said architect Margaret McCurry.

But at least one Chicago designer, who was not invited to the session, thinks whimsy might help. Peter Exley, an architect whose specialty is designing children’s museums, likes the idea of converting the Jersey barriers into shapes like cows, Ping-Pong tables and couch potatoes watching television. “Chicago has been very lucky because we have a high regard for street furniture,” he said. Noting that the purpose of design is to draw people in and get them excited, he voiced admiration for Main Street in Walt Disney World, where “they have mouse ears on the trash cans.”

At a similar meeting in New York last fall, some architects wondered about the enormous use of public funds on security that is unattractive and potentially ineffective. Los Angeles recently removed the barriers that went up around City Hall after the terrorist attacks last fall. And in Boston, architects came to a consensus last month that the normal elements of a street’s appearance--lampposts, newspaper racks, benches and trees--could be used as part of a security strategy. Combined with some bollards (cylindrical concrete sticks that can be painted and shaped to match a building’s appearance), the whole street scene would deter car bombs while preserving aesthetic integrity. “It’s a way to make security less in-your-face,” said Alex Kreiger, chairman of the department of urban planning and design at Harvard University.

Kreiger, who participated in the meeting, said federal officials were receptive.

“We are trying to strike a balance between security needs and accessibility for the public,” said Ed Feiner, the GSA’s chief architect. “We want to make sure not to separate the American people from their public buildings because then the people who want to terrorize us will have won. It’s a serious philosophical issue.” Federal officials are planning more brainstorming sessions in other cities in the months to come.

If it seems odd that the GSA, often thought of as the principal supplier of paper clips and metal desks to government bureaucrats, is inviting proposals to enhance the aesthetics of public space, don’t tell Feiner.

Since 1981, he has endeavored to remind politicians and bureaucrats alike that the federal government has an obligation--after decades of building boring utilitarian structures--to leave a legacy of landmarks.

“These are public buildings, which represent to most citizens their government,” said Feiner, whose 20 years in Washington have not lessened a Bronx accent. “They should not look like schlock.”

So began the GSA’s design excellence program, which over the years has enlisted some of the nation’s top architects to create distinguished public buildings: The new courthouse in Boston, Manhattan’s Foley Square, even the federal building in Oklahoma City that replaced the Alfred P. Murrah building owe their designs to the government’s increased awareness about the importance of aesthetics.

To be sure, tighter security is a necessity. Buildings are being set back farther from the street. Glass has been designed to not splinter. Structure is being studied to ensure that if buildings are hit, they will stand long enough for employees to escape. (The World Trade Center stood for an hour, allowing those below the crash site to escape. Most of the 168 killed in Oklahoma City, by contrast, died in the building’s collapse.)

But even before the latest wave of protests against the Jersey barriers, architects were being asked to balance security measures with beauty. At a federal courthouse planned in Miami, for instance, designers are expanding a nearby park so that the building will be surrounded by an arboretum and by earth sculptures created by Maya Lin, who designed the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington.

Efforts also are underway to mask the aesthetically challenged legacy of an earlier generation of federal buildings, those utilitarian edifices that resemble Soviet architecture at its most Stalinesque. First Impressions (because every government program needs a name) already has achieved what many feared was impossible: the removal of Jersey barriers, these in Colorado.

At the 35-year-old Byron G. Rogers Federal Courthouse in Denver, where Oklahoma City bomber Timothy J. McVeigh was tried, planners put shrubbery and trees around the exterior plaza, planted grass and put park benches in strategic locations--what the GSA called a $1.65-million face lift. The renovation won kudos from local newspapers and the public. “The first day when we opened up we saw a young couple lounging around on the grass,” said regional GSA director Paul Proudy. “A week later we saw an older couple on a bench, and we knew we had a hit.”

And not a moment too soon, according to Marice Chael, a Miami urban planner. “We shouldn’t flaunt our paranoia,” she said. “There are more elegant ways to deal with issues of security. There is nothing worse in the eyes of the public than to think they’re not welcome.”

Patti Gallagher, director of the National Capital Planning Commission, agrees. And she has an $800,000 budget approved by Congress to research the options. In a report last fall, the commission issued a “kit of parts”--a display of alternatives to barriers that it hopes schools, municipal buildings, hospitals and other public places across the country will adopt. By July, the commission hopes to issue recommendations for what it calls the “monument core” in Washington.

The nation’s capital is uniquely reactive to attack and fond of barriers. After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941, sandbags went up around the White House. After a 1983 bombing near the Senate chambers, concrete sewer pipes were placed outside the Capitol. After a plane crashed into the south side of the White House in 1994, federal officials closed Pennsylvania Avenue to vehicular traffic. And after the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania four years ago, a ring of concrete barriers went up around the Washington Monument, still there Feb. 22 when, on George Washington’s 270th birthday, the monument was reopened to the public after a $10.5-million renovation.

“Everyone agrees the way things look is criminal,” Gallagher said. “We were funded to prepare this plan, to make specific recommendations for removing those ugly barriers.”

If the Jerseys actually are removed in Washington, given its history, it will be a major victory for the urban planners and architects who so despite them.

One trend working in their favor is an increased fascination with public art. Chicago asked artists to create sculptures of cows for display on its famed Michigan Avenue in the summer of 1999. New York is putting public art in Central Park, including a 50-foot tree made of stainless steel.

All of which prompts Bernard Zyscovich, a Miami architect, to wonder if art could not be part of the solution to increased security needs. “In Miami, we could create them as alligators. The visual result could be very provocative.”