In Depth

The Architect: How to Design a Secure Facility

Imagine being able to layer security into your building the way you do the plumbing or wiring. Genzyme's Dave Kent doesn't have to imagine it-he got to do it.

By Scott Berinato

Patel says not only do architects "go ballistic" when you want to tack up surveillance after the fact (they are, after all, in the business of aesthetics), but they'll make you buy specialized conduit to match color schemes, or they'll demand you find a way to hide itto do what Kent designed in from the start. At any rate, Patel says, "it always ends up costing more." Genzyme understands that. Continuous Professional Pressure.

Kent walks me by the spot where an access point will separate Genzyme from the public. To go back and retrofit the building for this, Brailsford says, "would be a nightmare and expensive [see "Hidden Strengths," Page 44]. Dave has standards for entrance and egress, standard door hardware. Adding an access point later doesn't make sense." Genzyme understands that also. Continuous Professional Pressure.

Of course there is glass down here too. "Glass is the building's signature," Kent says, extraneously. "It's everything." Down here, the glass is terrific, huge windowpanes that allow the outside world and the inside world to commingle. Almost.

Thinking fairly standardly, Kent wanted to put a safety film on the inside of the glass down here, which would make it shatter gracefully during events he'd rather not talk about. (In fact, he wanted a polycarbonate glass with an even higher security rating, but the lesser glass had already been specified and ordered, so he compromised.) Or as he put it to the architectswho were apoplectic at the film suggestionhe was trying to stop this glass from ever becoming a thousand shard missiles.

The architects made Kentor thought they made Kentdance for them. He had to show them mockup panes with the film on them. He had to take them to other sites that use the film to prove it wouldn't change the overall aesthetic of the glass. He had to build a case for the film.

"We didn't position it this way," he recalls, "but leaving the glass there without the film was something we weren't going to accept."

And Genzyme understands that too. The film is going on the glass. Continuous Professional Pressure.

Other stories by Scott Berinato

• Email
• Print
• Comments
• Digg This
• SlashDot

• Security Design and Architecture: Hidden Strengths
• 19 Ways to Build Physical Security into a Data Center
• Secure Facilities: Lessons from the SCIFs