Designing resilience: How architecture strengthens defense infrastructure

28/05/2026

Building resilient infrastructure for a changing defense landscape

Across the Nordic region, defense infrastructure is rising fast on the agenda. Investment is increasing, timelines are tighter, and expectations are higher. Today, facilities need to do more than meet a technical brief. They must support security, enable efficient operations, and deliver environmental performance that holds up long after construction is complete.

This is why resilient infrastructure depends on more than strong buildings or technical systems alone. It is shaped through strategic architecture and design, from the overall site plan to the way people, vehicles, safety zones, and landscape elements work together. Resilience is both physical and operational, defined early through informed planning and a clear long-term view.

This article is based on an interview with Birgitte Nagel, Senior Landscape Architect at AFRY Architects.

Drawing on AFRY Architects’ extensive experience in the defense sector, including multiple completed and ongoing projects, she shares how a site-wide design perspective helps create secure, functional, and long-lasting solutions.

Birgitte Nagel: "Landscape architecture is an important part in developing a secure site."

Resilient infrastructure starts with the whole site

Birgitte’s perspective begins with the landscape, not as a backdrop, but as the framework for the full site.

For defense projects, designing the best infrastructure means looking beyond individual buildings and understanding how the entire site works together. Early involvement is important because decisions about layout, access, movement, and future development create the structure that later design choices depend on.

As Birgitte explains:

Landscape input for a defense project is essentially creating an overview of the entire site area, often in the form of a masterplan, ensuring that buildings and other key components are located appropriately on site, making sure that the project will be successful in the long term.

Defense sites are rarely static. Needs change, technologies evolve, and operational patterns shift, which is why flexibility is a core part of resilient infrastructure. A strong masterplan makes it possible to adapt as requirements develop, without losing coherence or performance.

Security-by-design goes hand in hand with technical systems

Security in defense infrastructure is often associated with systems, barriers, and control points. Those elements are essential, but they are most effective when the physical environment is designed to support them.

This is where security-by-design plays a key role. Through landscape architecture and site planning, AFRY Architects helps shape safer environments from the start, ensuring that protection, control, and movement are considered as part of the site’s overall structure.

Birgitte puts it this way:

Landscape architecture is an important part in developing a secure site. We have an overall perspective of the entire site and have various ways of shaping the landscape in a way that supports safety measures.

In practice, that can include:

Shaping terrain with grass mounds to reduce visibility
Using landforms to improve protection in case of an accident at a production facility
Choosing planting that supports safety zone requirements and fire safety standards
Planning access routes and entry points to strengthen control and efficiency

These are practical design choices, but they are also strategic ones. When architecture and technical systems are planned together, the result is a more robust and resilient facility.

Operational flow is a design task, not just a logistics task

A resilient defense site must not only be secure; it must also function efficiently in daily use. Movement, access, and operational flow cannot be left to chance.

Birgitte describes this as one of the central tasks in the design process.

Our job is to understand the spaces and flows, for example how staff and visitors move between safety zones, gates, and buildings by foot, on bikes, in cars, and in trucks. This is a complex system which is constantly being adjusted throughout the design phase.

This planning work supports several client priorities at once:

Safe and efficient daily operations
Clear separation between different site functions
Better coordination between buildings, access routes, and outdoor areas
Flexibility as project needs change during design and delivery

To design facilities that are both secure and operationally efficient, the project team needs a clear understanding of each site component and close communication across disciplines. In defense projects, architecture, landscape, engineering, fire safety, logistics, and regulation must all work together. When these disciplines align early, clients get a stronger foundation for long-term performance.

Environmental sustainability is part of long-term resilience

In defense projects, resilience is often discussed in terms of safety and durability. But long-term resilience also has an environmental dimension. Defense sites are often highly technical, yet they exist within a wider social and environmental context, making sustainability and biodiversity important parts of the conversation.

For Birgitte, this is a core part of the landscape architect’s role. A site should not only perform well now, it should also support environmental and sustainable outcomes over time. As she explains, “The landscape is developed to work long term and to ensure environmental and sustainable outcomes for the area including improving local biodiversity, which is why we always try to understand the project, the site, the client’s, and the team’s requirements and parameters as well as possible.”

This long-term view helps clients make better decisions from the start. By understanding local authority requirements, state regulations, the site, the brief, and the operational needs, landscape architects can guide projects in ways that support both project success and long-term site quality.

She notes that AFRY Architects can help ensure “that the site is developed in a biodiverse manner with appropriate planting and if base analysis is made at the beginning of a project, we can also make sure that we increase biodiversity, even though new buildings are taking up existing green space.”

Key considerations include:

Long-term site usability and site viability
Adaptability as design driver
Responsible use of the land
Improving the environmental quality of the site
Design choices that support maintenance and durability

For defense clients, this is not a secondary issue. It is part of future-proofing. A site that balances security, operation, and environmental performance is better positioned to stay relevant and effective over time.

Birgitte Nagel works as Landscape Architect in Denmark.

Architecture as a strategic asset for resilient infrastructure

Resilient infrastructure is not only about strength. It is about readiness, clarity, and the ability to perform under changing conditions. In defense projects, architecture plays a central role in making that possible.

Birgitte’s perspective shows that landscape architecture is much more than site layout. It is a strategic tool for organizing complexity, improving safety, supporting operational flow, and creating environmental value over time.

That is the opportunity AFRY Architects brings to the defense sector. By combining design thinking with technical expertise and multidisciplinary collaboration, AFRY helps clients create defense facilities that are secure, effective, adaptable, and built for the long term.

What clients value most

At the center of every defense project is the client’s need for confidence. They need to know that the site will meet operational requirements, support safety, and stay within financial targets.

Birgitte summarizes it simply: clients want “a project which meet their requirements and preferably surpasses it while staying within the set financial targets.”

That is why resilient infrastructure must be practical as well as strategic. It must solve real site challenges, support long-term use, and create a clear path from concept to delivery.