Un-professional handbooks: graphic standards and crime prevention through environmental design

Like other professions, such as law and medicine, architects rely on technical publications to do our jobs. Thus, we frequently turn to volumes such as Architectural Graphic Standards, which is authored by The American Institute of Architects (AIA). Promoted by its publisher, Wiley, as “the architect’s Bible since 1932,” the $260 handbook is presented as “the written authority for architects.” Nevertheless, not all of the information presented in Graphic Standards is unbiased, or even that technically sound. It was therefore with quite a bit of interest that I discovered, while recently leafing through my twelfth edition in search of a framing detail, that it contains a short article on “Crime Preventions through Environmental Design” (CPTED). Included in the third chapter on “Building Resiliency,” alongside “Sustainability,” “Good Practices in Resilience-Based Architectural Designs,” and “Lifecycle Considerations in Resiliency-Based Designs,” CPTED is a bit like architecture’s “Bro...