Design teams face the monumental task of simultaneously honoring the victims and moving into the future—building both for the survivors and the generations who come after a shooting.  On the one hand, these schools are hallowed ground. On the other, kids need to be kids in classrooms and cafeterias and shouldn’t be constantly reminded of the trauma. Above all, students and their families need to feel secure— but not so secure that it overwhelms children’s daily sense of normalcy. Whether they like it or not, architects are branching out beyond the realm of planning and design and are entering national discussions about school safety.

While America is no stranger to school shootings, the killings at Columbine High School in Colorado and Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, stand out. The 1999 incident at Columbine—in which two students murdered 12 of their classmates and a teacher—was the first school massacre that played out on television in real time. The image of those teenagers, hands in the air as they ran from their school,  is seared in many adult minds. Thirteen years later, the Sandy Hook massacre—the second deadliest U.S. school shooting after the 2007 killings at Virginia Tech—took the lives of particularly helpless victims: 20 children, ages 6 and 7. Both Columbine and Sandy Hook have become synonyms for gun violence at American schools. Politicians talk about preventing another Columbine or Sandy Hook, as do parents and teachers when they discuss lockdown drills.

But the Columbine and Sandy Hook communities have taken different approaches to rebuilding their schools and commemorating  those who were lost. The latter  intends to construct a new structure from the ground-up; the former has, over the years, gradually weaved its tragic history into the daily life of the institution. Yet both schools illustrate how architecture and design can begin the process of healing.

In late October, nearly two years after the shooting and once officials decided to demolish the building where the murders occurred, Newtown broke ground on a new elementary school serving children in prekindergarten through grade four. This school will sit on the same property as its predecessor, but it won’t overlap the original footprint; instead, it is set off to the side. Patricia Llodra, who heads Newtown’s government board, doesn’t want the school or the land on which the original building stood to be a memorial. "It wasn’t appropriate to have a formal memorial at an elementary school,"explained Llodra, who’s lived in the community since 1970 and once taught in Sandy Hook’s original building. "We want to create a safe, welcoming, and transparent place for students and staff, and that isn’t consistent with creating open, public space." A special commission is tasked with determining the best way to formally commemorate those lost, though it hasn’t yet reached any conclusions as to what it will entail.  (The official memorial for Columbine didn’t open until eight years after the incident).

The state of Connecticut set aside $50 million to build the new Sandy Hook school. After receiving 17 design proposals, Newtown selected the New Haven-based Svigals + Partners—an architecture firm known for designing university buildings and medical research labs in New England, as well as high-end residences, including in the early '90s, Rolling Stones musician Keith Richards’s Connecticut home.