I have an unhealthy fascination with airports.
How everyone in them forgets where home is. How paralying the flourescent lights are. How final destinations feel.
Each one of them is different. The airport in Philadelphia, for example, sells political cards. O’Hare has artistic graffiti of the city and an el car simulator. In Buffalo, fake airglossed posters of Niagara Falls make you nauseous. In Seattle, April 2004, there were people on platforms expressing political opinions with cards saying something about how the viewpoints of the person did not necessarily represent the viewpoints of the airport staff.
But like downtown areas, many airports have become streamlined as far as Starbucks and Cinnabon-those kinds of things.
If I could design an airport, every ceiling would be made of glass. You could look up and see the airplanes come and go and even the escalators would play ambient Brian Eno. There would be no lines at all and you could take pictures without people worrying you were some kind of risk to national security. If a plane was late, you could request your favorite band’s videos to play on a giant screen. There would be a room full of swings and trampolines where you could land on cotton clouds.
If I could build my own airport, there would be places to play chess, jumprope and learn how to do cartwheels. There would be chairs that rocked and massaged you and lots of free gum given to every passenger. No planes would ever crash.
(now playing: Michel Polnareff)
December 18th, 2005 at 11:35 pm
You make a great point, American airports are some of the most underachieving architecture and other, comfort, fun, community usefulness around. Watching airplanes take off is as nice as watching fish, and to me that is lovely and peaceful. But it seems like most things about the airport experience and hideous and stressful. everything about them are designed to make a person as uncomfortable as possible. The seats are the height of anti-ergonomic discomfort, half the time they don’t even face the windows when it is a easy possibility. It seems like there is a real hostility to the passengers. Its no way to run a business.
Little things add up too, add in the discomfort and worthless intrusion of the airport security, and the stress, and what should by all rights be a fun place is made a terrible place. Well maybe I am in a crappy mood, sorry. But I like yur ideas on this. And also I like variety and differences.
December 19th, 2005 at 7:08 am
well I think that whenever you have the possibility of death in everyone’s mind, there will be more stress. And I think it is difficult for people to wait sometimes.