Looking through the PowerPoint showcasing NADAAA’s pre-schematic designs for the suicide barriers a couple weeks ago made me think of one of the first projects I ever reported on for Landscape Architecture, a corporate garden in Downtown Silver Spring, Maryland. At the time this landscape was constructed, the neighborhood was very much in transition, so the landscape architect was asked to provide a place that would feel public during the day but could be secured at night. When I interviewed the landscape architect about the project in the summer of 2008, he proudly explained how he had addressed this challenge by designing a “welcoming” fence. The chic black fence he designed had no horizontal components, only vertical bars and this allowed it to be somewhat more transparent than your average fence, he explained. The photographs here show the fence is in fact more transparent than your typical fence when viewed straight on in elevation (Figure 2). The problem is, when you are walking on one of the pathways parallel to the fence, you will rarely look at the fence straight on. As soon as you start to look at the fence at an angle, its transparency lessens (Figure 3), to the point that when you are walking right next to it, the fence may as well be a wall (Figure 4). Needless to say, the people I interviewed around the space did not find it welcoming. Many did not realize the garden was open to the public, and it is not very well used. (Continues with imagery after the jump.)
Figure 1: One of NADAAA's pre-schematic designs for a suicide barrier at Cornell that uses metal pickets.
Image Credit: Cornell University and The City of Ithaca Means Restriction Pre-Schematic Proposals, NADAAA
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