MR. KOJO NNAMDIFrom WAMU 88.5, at American University in Washington, welcome to "The Kojo Nnamdi Show," connecting your neighborhood with the world. The late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan once described architecture as a political art, reporting our values to the ages. So, 10 years after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, what does our architecture say about the values of Washington?

MR. KOJO NNAMDIImmediately after the attacks, the city began to look and feel different. Old buildings were surrounded by jersey barriers and planters, blocking entire roads and sidewalks. Metal detectors and bag searches became part of the ritual of visiting museums and obscure agencies. Over the last decade, some newer buildings have come to resemble fortresses, but other projects have changed in more subtle ways.

MR. KOJO NNAMDIThey're set back further from the street in parking. They're landscaped of concrete benches and leafy trees, and they use new materials like blast-resistant glass. This hour, we're exploring how 9/11 changed the look of Washington. Joining us in studio is Roger Lewis. He is a regular guest on the program. He's an architect and columnist writing the "Shaping the City" column for The Washington Post.

MR. KOJO NNAMDIRoger is also professor emeritus of architecture at the University of Maryland, College Park. Roger, good to see you again.

MR. ROGER LEWISLikewise. Thank you.

NNAMDIAnd joining us in studio is Robert Peck, commissioner of public buildings at the U.S. General Services Administration, GSA. As the commissioner, Bob Peck oversees the design, construction and management of more than 370 million square feet of government-owned and -leased space, including office buildings and courthouses. Bob Peck, good to have you join us in studio.

MR. ROBERT A. PECKAnd nice to be here, Kojo.

NNAMDI800-433-8850 is our number if you'd like to join the conversation by phone. You can also send us a tweet, @kojoshow, email to kojo@wamu.org, or go to our website, kojoshow.org. Ask a question or make a comment there. Roger, I'll start with you. Washington, D.C., has always known security cordons and jersey barriers.

NNAMDIBut after Sept. 11, security became more of a central focus -- some would say an obsession -- in official Washington. How do you think 9/11 changed D.C.?

LEWISWell, it gets very -- I think anxiety rose substantially. I mean, I think the -- what happened in New York and what happened here -- New York tends to eclipse Washington sometimes as Marc Fisher pointed in an article recently in The Post. I think when people saw what happened at the Pentagon, plus what had happened before 9/11 -- I mean, we had a federal building in Oklahoma City that was attacked in 1995. I think I have the date right.

NNAMDICorrect.

LEWISI think there was already anxiety and apprehension, but I think, certainly, 9/11 sealed the deal. I think people became very nervous and very concerned about security. And so they began to look for ways that they might prevent or lessen risks -- let me put it that way -- that to lessen the risk of being attacked and injured.

LEWISAnd that's -- that drove the train. That began the -- in fact, for the first few years after 9/11, the city really began to look a little bit like it was being fortified against some kind of invasion.

NNAMDIBob Peck, at the top of the show, I did paraphrase the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan. You actually worked for the late senator.

PECKI was going to say that. Right.

NNAMDII guess it's appropriate that you now oversee what those buildings end up looking like. There's an irony there.

PECKThere is an irony. You know, another quote he had -- I was at GSA in the Clinton administration, too, right after the Oklahoma City bombing.

NNAMDIOh, I was going to bring that up, too.

PECKAnd we had a conference, and Sen. Moynihan came and spoke. And he said it's important that we not appear to be a fearful people. And he said it's important that we not allow the terrorist to be the most important influence on public architecture.

PECKAnd, finally, I'll just tell you that I say to people all the time, they -- I had the good fortune to be appointed the commissioner of the public building service, which means our buildings need to be open to the public, who pay for them and expect to be able to use them.

NNAMDII was about to mention that this is your second go around as commissioner. You also held that position during the Clinton administration a few months after the Oklahoma City bombing. Obviously, our sense of threats to the United States have changed since then. How would you compare the culture within the General Services Administration on this issue area, between then and now?

PECKWell, you know, actually, I think -- and I think Roger was saying this in a way, too. We've become more sophisticated about security, and that's all to the good. There was an immediate reaction after the Oklahoma City bombing that, in fact, we thought a truck bomb was the only threat we would face. And so we did throw up a lot of jersey barriers and started setting our buildings back.

PECKObviously, the Sept. 11 attacks were a whole different kind of thing. But we've seen that there are lots of ways you can attack government facilities or nongovernment facilities. The World Trade Center was a private office building mostly. And we've become more sophisticated in how we respond in the way we design in for security and the way we regard the different layers of security that there are.

PECKAnd we focused a lot on trying to make the buildings as open as they can be, while adding a layer of security.

NNAMDI800-433-8850. What do government buildings say about our values and our politics? 800-433-8850. The specific quote from Sen. Moynihan was "Architecture is inescapably a political art for it reports faithfully for ages to come what the political values of a particular age were." What kind of political values do we project with our buildings? Starting with you, Roger.

LEWISWell, it varies from building to building. I'll start with that. I mean, I have always directed, some years ago, my students and subsequently others to looking at the replacement. The federal office building that replaced the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City, if you look at that building, it's a building -- I believe it was completed about in the early 2000s, Bob.

PECKCorrect.

LEWISIt's a building that -- and I happened to be -- I think I was on the GSA...

PECKI think you were a peer reviewer of the design, right.

LEWISA peer reviewer. But it's building -- it's really a quite exceptional building because it has the appropriate defensive measures built into it. But if you look at the building, if you use the building, if you interact with that building in any way, you would never ever feel that this was a building that had been inspired by any kind of fortress mentality. The building is very porous, and it's very, very open -- very open.

PECKIt's a wonderful example. It actually looks more open than the building that got destroyed, has a lot of glass. But inside the glass lobby, there is a wall that's a really nice looking wall, but happens to be a blast barrier. And the building is set back from the street. But the area around it is used as a public plaza. So it doesn't appear to be a no man's land. It's a real public space. And you can do that with some of the security things that we've built in.

LEWISAnd the GSA has actually built a number of courthouses. I've been involved in a couple of those, which likewise, I think, do not look or feel defensive. They -- I mean, you still have to enter and be scanned very quickly.

LEWISBut they've gone -- not only have they made the buildings look welcoming, but even the deployment of the security scanning devices has been integrated more successfully as part of the entry lobby experience than in those early days after 9/11 when -- as I'm sure many people realized, they were just kind of put in, in the most expedient way possible.

NNAMDIWell, don't courthouses present a particular kind of challenges? The court and the legal system need to be open to the public, and yet, they have to have all kinds of security concerns, both in terms of controlling people who happen to be in detention and preventing attacks. How does that all work out in terms of design?

PECKWell, I can tell you how it works out in terms of expense. It makes them pretty expensive buildings. There's that -- there are actually three circulation systems in a federal courthouse, one for the public so that they can appropriately come in and, if they want to, walk into a courtroom and observe a trial, or witnesses, for that matter, come in that way.

PECKThere's a separate circulation system for judges and their staffs because the judges get a lot of threats. And then there's a separate one for the detainees, the prisoners, who have to be handled very differently. In the old days, sometimes in courthouses a judge who had sentenced someone would go down in the same elevator with the man or woman he just sentenced. That wasn't a very good system.

PECKAs I said, it costs some money to build that kind of security into the courthouse. And at the same time, you know, courthouses have always been a public gathering place. So they've all often had a courtyard in front of them. That's why we say courtyard. And there is a -- so we've had the opportunity to make those courtyards both security barriers but, hopefully, nice places for people to be.

PECKNow, I have to say -- and I'm sure someone will call in and say this -- not every one of those has turned out to be a very successful example of public space.

NNAMDII think we have such a caller from John in Bethesda, Md. John, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

JOHNThank you, Kojo. This is more of a lament than a question. But in the Bethesda area, we have this -- we have the National Institutes of Health, just a gorgeous campus. And it used to be open and, really, a beautiful place to jog and to go on walks and even to get to the Medical Center Metro. And then after 9/11, they built the equivalent of a Berlin Wall around, really, a beautiful campus.

JOHNAnd now, this community asset is just completely off limits. You know, I did attend a community meeting, and I understand their reasons for doing such. But it amounts to a tremendous loss to the community.

PECKI'll say it's -- that's not a GSA facility. But I watched that happen, too. I used to run that Thanksgiving Day 10K that went right through NIH. I loved it. It's really important that we ask our security forces and the people who are setting out the design standards for our buildings to balance the need for the public to have access to spaces against security and think clearly about what's necessary to create security and what isn't.

PECKAnd I'll give you one other example. And we're renovating the GSA headquarters at 1800 F Street Northwest. And we've figured out a way that we can put retail on the ground floor of the building, which has been kind of anathema to most of the security people. We had a lot of very hard conversations about what really makes a building safe.

PECKAnd, to some extent, a building looking like a blockhouse makes it a target, and making it a friendlier place we can show actually makes it a little less threatened in certain circumstances.

NNAMDIRoger, indeed, architecture is more than what a building looks like from the street. Isn't also, as Bob apparently was underscoring here, about how people use a building, how they enter, how they leave that building, where they congregate, whether or not you feel welcomed? And it seems that retail is kind of a welcoming sign on a building.

LEWISSure. I mean, I think it's -- you know, for years we've talked about how the FBI building, for example, in Pennsylvania Avenue, would be...

NNAMDIHave we ever done a broadcast without that building coming up?

LEWISI think you and I have mentioned this every show. But there have been many proposals, going back to the '70s, about enhancing that building and really enhancing security probably, but making it part of the cityscape through the addition of retail or the installation of retail activities along the base that -- I mean, right -- there's a building that's certainly looks, to many people, like a fortress.

LEWISAnd it was really intended to be that way. And, I think, that's a building, given its strategic location in the heart of the city, that, in fact, would be improved without compromising security if there were a layer of retail along its perimeter.

PECKAnd here's another issue, which I think I can talk about publicly -- gosh, I hope so -- that there have been -- there has been talk sometimes about moving the FBI headquarters. And sometimes you just have to decide that the function doesn't belong in a major urban setting. We'd all be better off -- it would be terribly costly. I'm not sure we'll ever get there.

PECKBut it would behoove us to find a different place, probably, for the FBI headquarters to be because they need to be out some place where they can be defended a little bit better and use that location for some kind of a function that can be more open to the public.

NNAMDIDon't put that to a vote to people who have to frequent that neighborhood of downtown Washington because, if you did that, it would be gone tomorrow.

LEWISAlthough I should go on record in saying that I, a couple of years ago, did write an article about how one could retrofit that building. I mean, I think they're -- I don't think the FBI building is going to -- FBI is going to leave that building. That building is built -- there's as much underground as there is above ground in that building. It is a very solid building. A lot of people would like to take it down completely.

LEWISI mean, I think the defensibility issue has to -- you have to get into what the real threats are. And whether -- threat assessment is part of the design thinking that goes into coming up with building configurations. I mean, I think the FBI building could be transformed and be a suitable place for the FBI to hang out and have all of the thousands who work there actually feel secure. Part of the problem is the eye of the beholder problem.

LEWISThere are many -- I remember going up to Providence where the judges in that historic federal courthouse in Providence, R.I., a courthouse that was right cheek-by-jowl next to streets that were public streets and where there was no way to create what's called a -- adequate standoff distance from the street to the facade of the building. And they were very nervous, very, very nervous, the judges about being vulnerable.

LEWISThere was really nothing -- you know, we went up -- GSA spent a day there with them, and we concluded at the end of the day that, you know, we could put up some bollards to keep cars from getting -- or trucks right up to the facade. But there was no way to prevent a dedicated, technologically well-equipped terrorist from doing damage. And we basically said, you know, there's a risk -- there's a level of risk beyond which you can't eliminate, you...

PECKThat's really important. You talked about threat assessments. So we need to think about, A, what's -- what are the real threats we have? What are the bad guys? And there are bad guys out there. What are they thinking about doing? And, second, what can we realistically counter without so impairing our function that we can't operate?

PECKAnd then, third, when you do that balance, you decide to assume certain risks, as we all do certain days and every day in a lot of our activities. It's just we're playing for very high stakes when we talk about what risks we're assuming.

NNAMDIGot to take a very short break. When we come back, we will continue this conversation on Architecture & Security: The Legacy of 9/11 on Government Buildings. But you can still call us at 800-433-8850. In your view, have we struck the right balance between security and openness? 800-433-8850 or go to our website, kojoshow.org. Join the conversation there. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.

NNAMDIWelcome back to our conversation about architecture and security in the wake of 9/11 and looking specifically at government buildings. We're talking with Robert Peck -- he is commissioner of public buildings at the U.S. General Services Administration, GSA -- and our regular guest, Roger Lewis, architect and the "Shaping the City" columnist for The Washington Post, professor emeritus of architecture at the University of Maryland, College Park.

NNAMDII want to go directly to the phones, gentlemen, and talk with James on Capitol Hill because he is going to mention a building that I wanted to talk about. James, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

JAMESYeah, in light of what they were talking about, the great new designs of the building in Oklahoma City, making it look attractive but so secure, I wanted to ask, what happened with the ATF headquarters in New York and Florida Avenue in D.C.? Where, here, you have a corner of the city that was, you know, a lot of effort going into sort of beautification and making it a livable, walkable place.

JAMESAnd then up goes the ATF headquarters, which is about as uninviting and foreboding at the sight as one can imagine. It's sort of oversized for the lot. There's nothing about it that's open in area. It's sort of this modern fortress sunk right in the middle of the city.

NNAMDIRoger, you were privy to the design competition for this building.

LEWISWell, I had a -- I have to be careful here. I -- 'cause we're insiders on this one. I was involved in the design competition and wrote the site design guidelines for GSA on that project. The building was -- I should tell everybody the building was designed by a well-known architect, Moshe Safdie, who also recently designed the U.S. Institute of Peace. I think Safdie as -- he's very talented, very smart guy.

LEWISSome of his projects have been good, and some have been less than good. I share a lot of the concerns. I think the building has the problems that the caller has cited. I think there are -- I think there were other ways to design the building. We saw one or two during the competition.

LEWISAnd I can only -- I will -- I do remember, though, in talking during the design guideline writing stage with ATF officials, they were extremely concerned about their being a high-value target. I mean, this gets back to, you know, ATF -- the people who work at ATF probably have a different feeling and perception about the threats, let's say, than people who were working at the Department of Agriculture.

PECKRight. They do. And I was going to say, and not to be totally glib, you should've seen the first design. There was an early design, before Moshe Safdie got involved, that ATF had worked with an architect. And it really did look like a blockhouse. So I have to admit that, while I share a lot of your concerns, I keep thinking, boy, we actually got it to look a lot more open than it would have otherwise.

PECKIronically, Moshe Safdie designed a very similar building in Springfield, Mass., a new federal courthouse that's quite a bit more open. And what happened here in part is that because ATF really, really is a threatened agency -- they're very, very unpopular in parts of America -- we had a requirement that there be certain ratio of glass to solid wall, a small ratio of glass to solid wall to really help determine that design.

PECKCan I just make one more pitch, though? However, you will note than on First Street, we do have ground floor retail. And so, again, it's across from the new Metro station. There was some attempt to make it at least live as a part of the city, even though, I agree, it doesn't -- it's just the most friendly building.

NNAMDII was just there two days ago. As the commissioner of public buildings, you meet with architects and planners and set the parameters of what projects should look like and how they function. Can you talk a little bit about your instructions and guidelines and how they may have changed in the past 10 years?

PECKYeah, they -- well, actually, since -- after Oklahoma City, President Clinton established an interagency security committee, and they started working on standards. And they've been revised several times over the years. So there is a set of government-wide standards for buildings, at least, that are off of military reservations that requires that -- with certain trade-offs.

PECKThey have a setback from the street if you can get it. If you can't, you try to strengthen the structure and the windows in other ways. So we have blast standards that the buildings have to meet. We have certain standards for access to the building by vehicles and by pedestrians. And those are given to architects as part of their brief for a building. And they -- as I said, they've evolved. They've become a lot more flexible.

PECKOne time, we had this very rigid setback. A building had to be 80 or 100 feet back from the street, all the way around, which made it hard to find any urban site. And we've said, now, we recognize that, for existing buildings, you can't do that, one, number two, that there are other ways to protect a building. And so we've become a little more flexible.

NNAMDIWhat are some of the features of the ATF building that our caller James was referring to, Roger, that he and others would find objectionable?

LEWISWell, I think, overall -- I think the overall imagery of the building and this kind of extended, curved -- I don't know what to call it. It's not really a loggia. It's a kind of, you know, the...

PECKBig set of columns...

LEWIS...this perimeter, kind of an extended pergola that wraps around, made of very large concrete elements. I mean, I think that there are -- I think that element, which is essentially ornamental...

PECKI was going to say -- can I say that's not even a security element.

LEWISYeah, that's not -- not at all.

PECKIt's ironic.

LEWISIt's an -- but it looks defensive. It look -- I mean, it's -- and I would -- from an architectural point of view as a designer, I would say that a lot of it has to do with the scale and the proportions of that element. And instead of it looking like something that is porous and light and airy and invites you to not only walk through it but to occupy it, doesn't do that.

LEWISIt really -- it looks like something that you would erect to stop the tanks or to stop vehicles, which, as Bob says, is not its purpose. I think there were a few decisions that were made by the architect that were probably inappropriate, that give it that feeling and that look that kind of overwhelms the fact that there's some porous retail at its base.

PECKBut, you know, the other thing I'll say is, I remember looking at the design -- and James is absolutely right. It's the gateway to NoMa, which is becoming a very, very lively area, pretty wonderfully, by the way.

NNAMDIYep, yep.

PECKAt the time, we thought it -- that the site was really just a gateway to the city that people would see coming down the hill on New York Avenue, and I think we failed to consider how much NoMa might actually turn into a great part of the city.

NNAMDIJames, thank you very much for your call. You, too, can call us at 800-433-8850. What do government buildings say about our values and our politics? Here is Linda in Woodbridge, Va. Linda, I'm having trouble connecting with you. I'll put you on hold and get back to your call later on. In the meantime, you can send us an email to kojo@wamu.org. Or send us a tweet, @kojoshow.

NNAMDIOr you can simply go to our website, kojoshow.org, and join the conversation there. There's another building that I would like to talk about, Roger. And I think that's the -- in Alexandria, the U.S. Patent and Trade Office. Talk about that.

LEWISWell, that's another one. I'm glad you brought that up because that's another project where a different strategy, a different set of requirements and strategy to meet those requirements was implemented. Again, I have to disclose, I was on the design review board. I still am on the design review board in Alexandria dealing with Carlyle, which where the PTO is located.

LEWISThat was -- in that project, it was decided that they did not want underground parking garages below the office buildings, the five office buildings in which the PTO staff are housed because a parking garage was considered a potentially bad idea. Vehicles could -- some vehicle could get in there with -- loaded with explosives, explode, weaken the structure, actually collapse the buildings.

LEWISI mean, there was -- this was partly, I think, a response to what had happened in New York at the World Trade Center before 9/11. So what happened was that there are five office buildings and then all the parking, instead of being underground, we built two more buildings, two parking garages, which are totally above grade.

LEWISBut then we camouflaged the parking because under the guidelines that were written for Carlyle, parking was supposed to all be underground. But if it was going to be above ground, then we had -- they had to find a way to mask it, to camouflage it. And what happened was that on the streetscape overlooked by these garages, there's actually a layer of offices, 25 feet deep.

LEWISThere's a -- it looks like row houses from the street that line the exterior of those garages. So if you're driving around or walking around that part of Alexandria, you might not even notice or see that there are these -- I think they're five- or six-story parking garages next to -- that flank this PTO complex, which otherwise surrounds a very nice public garden, Delany garden.

LEWISSo this was a case where, again, another specific security requirement -- no underground parking below where people are working. The solution was to build above great garages, but then camouflage them.

PECKAnd, Kojo, that's a great example of something, I think, you alluded to before, that we've also learned that if you're trying to keep vehicles away from a building, you don't have to just put up Jersey barriers and bollards, that a bench that's structurally strengthened and enough...

NNAMDIBig tree.

PECKAnd trees. Exactly right. Trees of certain -- you know, if they've got a certain caliper, a certain diameter, they work just as well as any other barrier. And so you can make a nice plaza and defend it at the same time.

NNAMDII'm glad you brought that up because these are the kinds of changes that aren't that either visible or obvious when you look from the outside. Bob, when you look at plans for a new building, what design aspects do you look for that might be not so obvious to a person walking by on the street?

PECKWell, there -- first of all, there's the whole structural aspect of the building. One of the things that we learned from Oklahoma City -- and, by the way, something that we had known from our West Coast construction where we care about seismic standards and maybe, well, a little bit more here although we...

NNAMDIAfter -- week before last, yes.

PECKAlthough our earthquake was within what we anticipated in the seismic zone. But we -- there are certain things in the structure of a building that we don't do anymore to make sure that if one part of the building is attacked, it won't take down the entire part of the building. We locate certain functions out, say, child care centers. We have 110 of them in the GSA system. They're located very carefully now.

PECKWe keep them away from where a building might be easily attacked. And so that's another way in which we've done some things you might not see otherwise.

PECKAnd, as Roger noted, we've designed in a lot more the places in where -- which people enter buildings. One of the things -- by the way, it's a hassle, we all know, to go into a building and be searched. One of the things that we can do is, where there are regular visitors or employees to a building, they can go in one entrance and have another entrance for other people who have to be screened.

PECKAnd, by the way, nothing wrong with creating a waiting area if there's going to be a line, so people don't feel like we don't care about the fact that we're spending their time.

LEWISOne of the other things that you alluded to is that part of making security less obvious, less conspicuous 'cause security measures, I should say -- has to do, really, with the streetscapes and the landscapes, as well as the buildings themselves.

LEWISI mean, I think one of the prime examples that people may not even be aware of is the Washington Monument grounds for -- I'm sure many people remember how awful that place looked for a number of years surrounded by Jersey barriers. And it was really kind of ugly -- is the word that comes to mind.

LEWISAnd now when you walk around or drive by there, you don't even -- you don't see what has happened, which is that landscape architect Laurie Olin was commissioned to -- by the National Park Service. He has designed a system, a network of curving paths with low retaining walls and sized into that low hill, which allows pedestrians to move around. You can walk and bike, but a vehicle cannot.

LEWISBecause of the way these are configured, a vehicle cannot get to the monument. I mean, the whole purpose of it, from a security point of view, was to prevent any vehicle from approaching the base of the monument and, again, threatening the monument.

NNAMDIYou mentioned earlier the kind of blast that you can anticipate in buildings. And, as I was reading about new government buildings and design, I became familiar with a new kind of job description, Bob. Apparently, building designers now employ blast consultants, people whose job it is to figure out which parts of a structure would be vulnerable to an explosive device.

PECKRight. There are ballistics experts, blast consultants. We've done some tests. The Army Corps of Engineers have done tests so that we know how much a building needs to be strengthened. And it's important because if you're talking about a blast -- and I'll come back in a second to noting that that's not our only threat.

NNAMDISure.

PECKBut blast travel -- generally, they travel in straight lines. There are certain things about the pressure that a blast creates on the facade of a building that tell us how to design. They also tell us, by the way, that not every facade of every building needs to be defended the same way, just like we now know with green architecture that some facades face the sun and some don't. You need to design those differently.

PECKSo we've learned a lot from that, too. But we do -- when we hire architects, we require that they have some consultants with them so that they can follow our standards. And we ask them to be creative about challenging us on what we've asked them to do and see if there are better ways to do it.

NNAMDIThis email we got from Kara, "I remember as a high school student in the fall of 2011, (sic) riding by with a car full of teenagers past the Pentagon..." -- I guess this was 2001.

PECK2001, that's right.

NNAMDI"...riding past the Pentagon on Jefferson Davis Highway, seeing an armed military officer atop of a huge tank."

PECKWell, it was a Humvee with a .50 caliber. That's correct.

NNAMDI"The tank was camouflaged to match the bricks of the overpass, which it sat under. The gun was always in the hand of the guard and looked like a machine gun. We would joke about not speeding. Otherwise, we'd be taken down. This was before the road was moved further away from the building grounds. And there is no longer an armed guard to attack."

PECKThat's exactly right. And you'll see around the -- you'll see on the White House grounds now, for example, there are still places on East Street, for example, where we have temporary -- the Secret Service Uniformed Division have temporary guard posts. And, you know, I think at some point, we'll either decide one way or another what to do with East Street. And we'll do something permanent.

PECKBut that's what -- you know, that's what these kinds of security measures allow you to do. For a long time, they did have a soldier stationed in a Humvee with a machine gun. And then they moved the road out from the Pentagon, so they took that threat away. Now, you know, again, I wanted to say, Kojo, there are certain -- we need to think about the fact that defending a building at its entrance is our security of last resort.

PECKOur first security, if you think about it, are the troops in Afghanistan. The second layer is, maybe even more important, is intelligence agencies who tell us what's going on because you really want to stop things long before they get to a building. For air defense, we -- obviously, Sept. 11 was about airplanes crashing into buildings. We still depend on the security measures at airports and air cover. We don't defend our buildings against them directly.

PECKAnd then there are threats like truck bombs and people walking in with a pistol or a rifle, in which we do defend at the point of entry of the building.

NNAMDIGot to take a short break. When we come back, we'll continue our conversation on Architecture & Security: The Legacy of 9/11 on Government Buildings. You can send us a tweet, @kojoshow, email to kojo@wamu.org. Simply go to our website, kojoshow.org. Join the conversation or call us, 800-433-8850. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.

NNAMDIWelcome back to our conversation on security and buildings in Washington, government buildings in the wake of 9/11. Our guest, Robert Peck, is commissioner of public buildings at the U.S. General Services Administration, where he oversees the design, construction and management of more than 370 million square feet of government-owned and -leased space, including office buildings and courthouses.

NNAMDIAnd our regular guest, Roger Lewis, is an architect. He writes the "Shaping the City" column for The Washington Post. He's also professor emeritus of architecture at the University of Maryland, College Park. A lot of what we see in buildings, Roger, are designed to improve security. A lot, also, is conceivably designed to impress us that security is being improved.

LEWISWell, I think there's no question. I think all the security measures, certainly if you ask security consultants, will tell you are necessary and effective. You know, we'll never know -- given that in 10 years we have not had a bomb attack in a Washington building, we -- it's -- there's no way for us to know whether that's effective defensive deterrence versus simply a lack of offensive capability or opportunity on the part of people who would attack us.

LEWISThere's no way to know that. I do think -- I have long felt that many of the measures taken, not just in buildings and architectural design, but elsewhere, are in part of interest to people because they do provide comfort. They're -- some of it probably, in effect, is -- serves as placebos more than really stopping a dedicated, skillful terrorist. I mean, I -- and we know from history that almost any defensive system can be defeated.

LEWISAlmost any defense you can mount, someone who's motivated enough, particularly people who are willing to kill themselves, motivated enough can defeat these systems. So what we're doing is, in part, to actually lessen risk, but also it is to provide some psychological comfort.

NNAMDIBob Peck, I read in an interview where you said the most challenging building project in the GSA system is new border posts. Why is that?

PECKWell, there -- first of all, I always -- I just love the border stations or land ports of entry as we call them. They're an interesting architectural type. I would say they're a sort of a combination a highway toll booth and a jail. And we tell the architects that they are a welcome sign to America. You know, I always say, so welcome to the United States. Please get out of the car. Put your hands up on the hood.

PECKBut they have this amazing function. The people, the men and women in the customs and border protection organization are simultaneously looking for drugs, guns, terrorists, searching cars. People are amazingly -- I have been in a number of these. They're ingenious about how they hide things. And yet the real purpose here is to maintain the commercial border of the United States, maintain our system of immigration and access.

PECKAnd so they're very, very difficult. On the Southern border in particular, of course, there are serious threats. Every once in a while you go to a border station, there is a bullet hole. If there is a height on the other side of the border, they sometimes take pot shots. So they're very challenging. But we have maintained in GSA, with the Customs and Border Protection folks, that they're going to be as good-looking as they can be.

PECKBut they -- but it's -- really, this is something where you -- I guess what I'm thinking, mostly -- in an office building, you see people walk in and out. You know, we're all familiar with the office buildings. At a border station, it's like watching a huge machine. There are cars going, people going, you know, shift changes of the guards. It's a pretty amazing -- pretty amazing place.

NNAMDIBack to the telephones. We'll start with Bill in Washington, D.C. Bill, your turn. Go ahead, please.

MR. BILL SALISBURYHello. My name is Bill Salisbury, (sp?) and I have a master's degree in urban planning. And I was just curious. I've heard you talk a lot about the design of individual buildings, but you also spoke about not anticipating certain neighborhoods to become as popular as they have been. And I'm curious.

MR. BILL SALISBURYThe unique city planning that must go on in the federal capital and their interrelationships with the broader master plan and the folks at GSA who are designing the building...

PECKThat's -- boy, I'm glad you raised that. I'm only an architectural planner wannabe. But we have, in the federal government, so much inventory in downtown Washington that we can alone either stultify the downtown or help bring it to life.

PECKSo, if I can, I'd, you know -- just take the Federal Triangle, an area which, in and of itself, was kind of an urban renewal project of the 1920s but, unfortunately, took out a very vibrant part of the city and beautiful architectural ensemble, I still think. And yet, because of so much security, it's a challenge to do what, I think, many of us would love to do, which is to have concerts in the courtyards, in the parks of the Federal Triangle and put retail in there.

PECKAlthough we're trying to revitalize, by the way, the old post office building, which is in the middle of it, it's a real challenge. And it's as important an issue in security and design as the individual building designs.

PECKOne possibility I'll just put out there that we've worked on with the National Capital Planning Commission is the possibility that we take a precinct approach to buildings, which is to say that maybe when somebody is cleared through a certain part of the Federal Triangle, they don't have to be cleared separately for every building.

PECKOr we could take trucks off of certain streets so that we wouldn't have to worry about that particular threat on some of those streets.

LEWISThere's also the issue of what I would call jurisdictional fragmentation. So you have the architect of the Capitol. You have the -- you have an area of the city that's under the control and management of the Congress. And the architect of the Capitol has dominion over that area, which is not something the city has any control over, that is the city of Washington in the District of Columbia. You have the National Park Service. They have their territory.

PECKThe Mall.

PECKYou have GSA -- I mean, I -- in other words, I wouldn't call it divided government. We have a unified government. But, in fact, it's fragmented.

NNAMDIHere's what Monica in Silver Spring calls it, by way of email. "I was just struck by the comment from one of your guests regarding the ATF headquarters on New York Avenue that, in planning the building's design, they did not realize the way in which NoMa would change. This comment is a perfect example of how better communication is needed during the planning and design process."

NNAMDI"Hundreds of people had attended hundreds of planning meetings over many years regarding the plans for NoMa and the area around Sursum Corda. To have planned such a massive project, as the ATF building, in a downtown location and not realize the proposed changes ahead for the surrounding blocks appears to me to be a case of really bad interaction with the community and local government."

PECKOkay. I should -- well, I'll defend myself a little bit.

NNAMDIPlease do.

PECKWe -- of course, every -- there were a lot of plans for NoMa. And, in fact, when we built the building, we knew that there were plans to put the new Metro station in as a response to what we hoped would happen in the neighborhood. What I really meant was that I think we might have sited the building differently. I think we might have taken a different street frontage, for example, as the front door of the project, had we thought a little bit more about how NoMa was going to turn around.

PECKWe in GSA now have some of our employees in an office building right across the street from NoMa, and I just kind of think that that whole, what Roger was describing, that pergola, whatever it is, on the New York Avenue side, perhaps we should have turned the plaza around a different way or faced it a different way. But the project began before I think all the plans in NoMa started to mesh.

PECKBut we do -- and I will say this. We do work as hard as we can with the District of Columbia, which has, by the way, a terrific Office of Planning, and the National Capital Planning Commission when we do our federal work. And we're very cognizant of, as I said, of what we can do to either help make the city vibrant or not.

NNAMDIYou just made Harriet Tregoning very happy. Here is...

PECKYes, I -- she's a friend. I have to...

NNAMDIHere is Joel in Washington, D.C. Joel, you're on the air. Go ahead, please. Hi, Joel, are you there?

JOELOh, sorry. I didn't hear that you were addressing me. Yes. I'm interested in a comment on the design of our recent embassies constructed primarily in Africa after the bombing in Nairobi in 1998. The one in Nairobi, the new consulate down in Cape Town, these are really forbidding structures. They're secure, but they're out of town. We no longer have the reading rooms that are there. And aren't they compromising the diplomatic mission?

NNAMDIJoel, you may have been speaking with Nina, who emailed us to say, "Who within the federal government is responsible for the design of U.S. embassies overseas? They are so often ugly, unwelcoming fortresses, even those designed well before 9/11 or the bombing of our embassy in Nairobi. The architecture seems to send exactly the wrong message about our values."

NNAMDI"I've seen lots of examples, but the latest I visited was the U.S. Embassy in The Hague, the Netherlands, a breathtakingly ugly building with an out-of-scale design and temporary-looking, but clearly permanent security features affecting daily pedestrian and vehicle traffic in peculiar and annoying ways. Is there any hope for better designs of our embassies? Who's in charge?"

PECKYes, there is. Okay. There is good news 'cause I've shared those concerns over the years, and so have, I think, a number of people in the State Department, which builds these embassies. And -- by the way, they have a -- they have some terrific people working on it, at least now. In 1983, you may recall the embassy in Beirut was destroyed.

NNAMDIRight.

PECKAnd the State Department created their own security standards, which required that their embassies also have setbacks. And it had the ironic security effect of while moving the embassies out of downtowns is when an ambassador once said to us, now I have to travel in an armed convoy for 20 minutes from my embassy to the ministry of foreign affairs. And the bigger threat is that I'm going to get ambushed. I was better off downtown.

PECKThe State Department, just within the last year, has issued a set of standards and started a design excellence program modeled on the GSA program, I'm proud to say. They're reconsidering their location standards. And they, too, are trying to figure out how their buildings can once again reflect -- as Sen. Moynihan once said that federal architecture should -- the dignity, enterprise, vigor and stability of the American government.

NNAMDIHow does that sound to you, Joel?

JOELIt addresses my concerns. But, unfortunately, the existing buildings are going to be there and have to be used.

PECKIt may be too late for those buildings, which I -- those embassies in Africa, which I haven't seen.

LEWISYeah, I -- I mean, I think that -- I think, again, we should acknowledge that in many, many countries, of course, U.S. embassies are high-value targets for people who want to do us harm. And I think -- so it's understandable that, again, if I were an official in the State Department, I might be -- I might have a slightly more intense level of concern about security for diplomats than if I'm putting an additional Department of Agriculture here in Washington.

PECKThe concern with embassies is that if the -- as one friend in the State Department once said, is if a federal building in America is attacked, the police will come to our aid. In some countries, it's the police who are attacking. And so they really need to be able to stand on their own.

PECKHowever, I think they recognize that they can -- that the design of an American embassy, particularly considering the way some people perceive us in the world, if it looks off-putting, it doesn't -- it may have to be a little off-putting. But if it looks off-putting, that in itself impairs our diplomatic relations.

NNAMDIWhich gets back to the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan's statement. Roger, after the attack, security officials began to assess our existing buildings, how safe they were, whether they needed additional renovations or changes. One of the more interesting examples you point out was the Washington Monument, wasn't it?

LEWISYes, yes. Well, I think the -- there was fear that some crazy might, as I mentioned earlier, drive some vehicle across the lawn, across the grounds and explode a very large bomb at the base of the monument and potentially threaten the monument's structural integrity. And they -- the Park Service has successfully dealt with that.

LEWISAlthough there's been a recent competition to redesign the grounds once more of the Washington Monument, this was not sponsored by the Park Service. No. I think the grounds of the Washington Monument are just fine the way they are now because I think the strategy, done by a very talented landscape architect, is minimally intrusive -- visually and functionally -- and does the job.

LEWISYou can't -- you will not get a truck or vehicle laden with explosives up to the Washington Monument. I think...

PECKI just have to say, I do wish my friends in the Park Service would remove that little building they've stuck on the outside. There has to be a better way to screen vehicles, but...

LEWISOh, yes. Well, they're -- do you remember there was -- things -- at one point, they wanted to build a tunnel. I should have -- I think that -- they -- fortunately, that got killed. But one of the early proposals to deal -- this was in the early 2000s -- to deal with the Washington Monument's security was, let's have people go into a tunnel and walk underground to some below-grade reception area and enter the monument that way.

LEWISIt was probably -- you know, certainly, one of the 10 all-time worst ideas. There's others. We could do a program, by the way, on bad Washington design ideas, and that would be one of them.

NNAMDII'm afraid we're almost out of time, but this email we got. "At great expense, the FCC building got a security retrofit that consisted of a ring of bollards along the street. Of course, very little would keep you from driving a truck bomb into the building's garage. Do these bollards serve any purpose, other than to make somebody feel like they did something? Wouldn't we have been better served if the money had been spent upgrading first responders?"

LEWISWell, bollards -- I mean, bollards are -- of course, they will stop most vehicles, although I've always -- one can imagine designing a vehicle in which it hits the bollard, and something up on the top keeps going and impacts the building. I mean, what they presumably do, just -- for example, when you -- if you drive into the Ronald Reagan building, you don't get in that garage until you've stopped, you've been inspected by a guard, they look under your car. I mean, I think...

PECKThose are the pop-up policies.

LEWISYeah, yeah.

PECKBut I do think that, you know, there is something to be said here. Some of the bollards -- we really need to think about them. Some of them don't add as much security as they might, and they've just become something we think we need.

NNAMDIRobert Peck is commissioner of public buildings at the U.S. General Services Administration, GSA. Thank you so much for joining us.

PECKThank you for having me.

NNAMDIRoger Lewis is an architect and columnist writing the "Shaping the City" column for The Washington Post. He's also professor emeritus of architecture at the University of Maryland, College Park. Roger, always a pleasure.

LEWISLikewise. Thank you. Thank you.

PECKThank you.

NNAMDIAnd thank you all for listening. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.