1. Sandy Hook Elementary Shooting
By Tyler Holdren & Ian Jackson

2. The Sandy Hook Shooting at Sandy Hook
Elementary School took place on December 4,
2012. This event has again raised the question of
how schools can become safer places for students.
A majority of the attention has been on gun control,
which has often caused an overlooking of other
means of addressing this problem. Architecture is a
lens through which this issue can be looked at, and
the idea of surveillance being omnipresent in
institutions through means of architecture can
create more controlled spaces.

4. Castles
During the medieval ages, warfare and weapons
began evolving and becoming more deadly.
Architecture responded to this by developing
ways to help defend and create a safe place for
people and their kingdom. In most situations a
castle is broken up into three parts: the building
itself, a moat (with or without a drawbridge),
and a surrounding village or town.

5. Three concentric circles
Windsor Castle, England,
11th century

6. Windsor
Fundamentally, castles were based off of concentric
circles of defense. The defenses attackers would come
into contact with in order were the open zone/village, the
thick outer wall, a surrounding moat, a thick inner wall,
and lastly the main castle structure. An example of this is
the Windsor Castle in the English county of Berkshire.
Fitting the requirements of a typical Motte and Bailey
Castle design, the Windsor Castle is placed atop a steep
cliff far above the ground setting itself apart from the
bank of the Thames River. Below the cliff where the castle
resided was a small village. The cliffs allowed for residents
of the castle to survey the land from above for potential
attackers.

7. Egeskov Castle, Denmark,
16th century
Moat and Drawbridge

8. Egeskov
Although most castles did not have a moat, the
castles that did, had an extra line of defense. Moats
made the use of siege equipment difficult due to
the separation of the attackers from the castle.
Undermining and or digging tunnels under a
fortification with a moat were very difficult if not
impossible. An example of a castle with a moat is
the Egeskov castle. This castle implements the
concept of a moat in its design, having it completely
surrounded only allowing access to the castle only
through means of a drawbridge.

9. Edinburgh Castle, Scotland, 12th Century

10. Edinburgh
Although a village doesn’t act as a direct defense in
terms of the castle, it can be considered a zone that
can be patrolled, observed and creates distance
between the neighboring area and the castle’s
perimeter. An example of this would be the
Edinburgh Castle in Scotland. This castle is placed
atop a hill overlooking its surround village (now a
large city). The village itself creates a physical
barrier of protection around the castle that can be
guarded, patrolled, and surveyed for enemies.

11. Panopticon, N/A, 18th century

12. Panopticon
The main idea of the Panopticon was to give guards
the ability to observe all the inmates in prison
without them knowing whether they were being
observed or not. This design makes the presence of
being watched all the time a constant concern of
the inmates, hopefully making them a better citizen
if and when they were released from prison. The
building’s design consisted of a central observation
post where the guard was able to view all prison
cells within the structure as they were positioned in
a circle around the perimeter of the institution.

13. Eastern State Penitentiary,
Pennsylvania, 1829

14. Eastern State Penitentiary
Similarly to the Panopticon’s central viewing tower, the
Eastern State Penitentiary used a central tower to keep
watch over jail cells, which extended outwards in a radial
pattern from the center. Although it used this same idea
it was not implemented in the best manner. Due to the
fact that the cells faced away from the central viewing
tower, the guards were unable to see inside the jail cells,
unlike the jail cells in the proposed Panopticon where
inmates were viewed twenty four seven. This meant that
prisoners were still able to create weapons and
communicate without being scene.

15. Yonkers Public Housing
Project, New York, 1996

16. Yonkers Public Housing Project
Initially, Yonkers was a segregated, high-crime area
where public housing was very dense. The
architect, Oscar Newman wanted to eliminate all
public areas and instead assign to individual
families for private use. Corridors, fire stairs,
elevators, and lobbies would all be removed. Each
family was assigned a front yard and rear yard that
was defined by a fence. The proposed plan for
these yards was that eventually families would have
space immediately outside of their houses that they
would identify with.

17. Clason Point Project,
New York City, 1996

18. Clason Point Project
In his second project, Newman attempted to again change the
structure in Clason Point, located in South Bronx, New York
City. Clason Point suffered from a 30 percent vacancy rate,
which allowed drugs, gang violence, and prostitution to take
place in these spaces. To combat this, again areas were
subdivided among residents by use of fences and
transforming large public spaces into smaller private spaces.
The common areas between buildings where criminal activity
occurred were transformed into areas where children would
play after school and congregate. Benches and small gardens
were also introduced into these spaces. The increased use of
these common spaces by residents of the community pushed
criminal activity out of the area.

19. Pruitt-Igoe, Missouri, 1996

20. Pruitt-Igoe
Newman’s last project was a public housing high rise, Pruitt-Igoe, in St. Louis
Missouri. Similar to the previous two cases this area was ridden with crime
and vandalism. Though the density of the space was not very high, residents
were elevated above eleven stories. The architect wanted the ground floor to
be completely open and act as a space that was available to residents for
community activities but over time the community room became dirty as
glass bottles and trash littered the floor. Vandalism was spewed on the walls
and the room was completely disregarded. This happened because no one
felt that this collective space was his or her personal space, it was just the
community space. As a result residents tended to disassociate themselves as
responsible for it and the space became anonymous. This was also seen in the
hallways and corridors. The rooms in the high rise were well-managed and
kept clean, but the hallways remained littered. This juxtaposition was another
example of how spaces that were assigned to an individual or small group of
individuals stayed clean and maintained. This forced Newman once again to
designate specific areas to families in an effort to force them to identify with
their own space.

21. Conclusion
In summation, the concepts and ideas presented by
medieval castles, prisons, and residential urban
housing provide a multitude of solutions to
increasing the safety of schools today. Many times
the media looks through a less informative lens
instead of looking at what is most obvious. Looking
at these architectural precedents will undoubtedly
provide information for present architects on how
to build in a way that keeps students safer when
attending school. In the future we hope that
architects are able to become more aware of this
and build accordingly.