Architect Designs to prevent Terrorist Attacks in Hotels and Malls in Kenya.
The recent terrorist attack at Dusit D2 hotel in Nairobi, Kenya can be prevented to some extent using architectural design that incorporates security features within it.
From investigations, we saw that the terrorists visited the hotel several weeks before to study it, meaning that they also visited other hotels and decided to choose the one that was easier to do a successful attack .
From the experience gained from the recent hotel bombings in Mogadishu, the terrorists rammed cars into the hotels and exploded them.
This means that the architectural design for the landscape for 5 start hotels should include vehicular barriers to prevent such a style of attack. The ground floor walling should also be done in reinforced concrete, like the architectural design for security in bank safes, where its not easy to penetrate through.
The Dusit D2 architectural floor plan layout also makes it easy for terrorists to perambulate from room to room due to a central type of circulation.
This central type of circulation in the architectural floor layout is similar to the Westgate Mall one, hence making it conducive to the terrorists in operation.
A more open architectural floor layout design would make it quite hard for the terrorists to move from room to room.
The terrorist attack at a hotel in India was also aided by such architectural floor plan layout.
https://edition.cnn.com/2013/09/18/world/asia/mumbai-terror-attacks/index.html
Also, such closed out architectural floor layouts require that the ventilation be done mechanically using Air Conditioners. This can be a double edged sword in that the police can use the air conditioning to pass in sleeping gas as a rescue mechanism or the terrorists can use the same method to hurt innocent people. The solution for this is to ensure all 5 star hotels get as much natural ventilation as possible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_theater_hostage_crisis
This shows that among other terrorist prevention method, architectural intervention in 5 star hotels and malls, if designed well, can thwart the chances of terror attack and go a long way in saving human life in case of attack. These methods can also be incorporated in the architectural building designs of any type of building such as office block, residential apartment, hospital etc to prevent all sorts of crime, from petty burglary to high level crime.
Having extensively studied the works of American Architect Oscar Newman on defensible space theory, which guided my university degree thesis, the principals therein can be used to come up with architectural designs that make it harder for terrorists to carry out their attacks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defensible_space_theory
Architect Francis Gichuhi Kamau.
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info@a4architect.com
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