From: John Young
To: design-l
Subject: Re: venturi and koolhaas
Date: 2002.04.18 11:29
Steve challenges:
how is one to be really "naughty" these days?
1. Publish the architectural security measures for federal buildings, or if you have them send to me and I will do it. Currently those measures are available only to design firms which agreed to non-disclosure, even though the public would benefit from knowing how to protect themselves and their buildings as effectively as their government.
2. Publish the confidential findings of architectural security and safety weaknesses of the World Trade Center Towers at these stages:
2.1 During design
2.2 During construction
2.3 After construction
2.4 Before the 1993 bombing.
2.5 The first year after the 1993 bombing
2.6 Just before the 2001 attack
2.7 After the 2001 attack
This information is under the control of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, consultants it hired for the various stages listed above, and its insurers, much of which is being withheld from current investigators and building safety officials evaluating WTC and other disasters though that information could be used to enhance security and safety of other high-rise and non-high-rise buildings now occupied by tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of people.
3. Publish, or send to me, confidential and classified reports on bombings and collapses of governmental and non-governmental buildings which are being withheld from the public because it is claimed the public cannot handle the information responsibly. Some portions of these reports have been published and some include recommendations that the public receive more information about threats to them and their buildings increase public awareness of threats well known to professionals. Some investigators argue that withholding of information from the public has led to a belief that threats are minimal, episodic and unpredictable when that is not true.
4. Insist that schools of design and design publications place building protection alongside aesthetic design in importance, to advocate that name and nobody designers become informed about the matter and blend it into premier design requirements, and not merely rely upon security specialists as if another contemptible nuisance like ADA, preservation, affirmative action and public participation. Recall the example of Viollet le Duc whose reputation was built first on urgently needed fortresses, then follow-up urban defenses, then historic versions of these, never forgetting that that peaceful aesthetic pleasures could be wiped out before you came awake from aesthetic narcotic: "oh nothing like that will ever happen here, we're too civilized, yes, perhaps over there but not here."
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