Preventing Suicide With Architecture

In 2003, in two separate incidents, two students at New York University committed suicide inside the tall atrium of the university's main library by jumping from its open, inward-facing balconies. Officials responded to the tragedies by installing Plexiglas barriers around the edges of the balconies. In 2009, another student climbed over those barriers to make another deadly leap. Now, the university is hoping a new cage-like installation of fencing along these balconies will finally stop people from killing themselves inside this building.

You can surely understand the reasons officials are not referring to the new fencing as a suicide barrier. But that's what it is. And many other places are building or considering similar projects to prevent recurring suicides.