99% Invisible - 99% Invisible-32- Design for Airports

Episode Date: July 28, 2011

When I spoke with Allison Arieff about the design of airports, she said to me, if all airports simply played Brian Eno’s album Ambient 1: Music for Airports over the speakers, every airport would be better. I say this to … Continue reading →

We get support from UC Davis, a globally ranked university, working to solve the world's most pressing problems in food, energy, health, education, and the environment. UC Davis researchers collaborate and innovate in California and around the globe to find transformational solutions. It's all part of the university's mission to promote quality of life for all living things. Find out more at 21stCentry.ucdavis.edu. This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars. that no language on earth has ever produced the expression as pretty as an airport. Airports are ugly, some very ugly. Some attain a degree of ugliness that can only be the result of a special effort. This ugliness arises because airports are full of people who are tired,

cross, and have just discovered that their luggage has landed in Mamanck. Mamanck airport is the only exception of this otherwise infallible rule, and architects have on the whole try to reflect this in their designs. From Douglas Adams, the long dark tea time of the saw. I think so many airports were not designed for the things that they have to do right now, and so it is all fixing as you go. There wasn't some great master plan, so. So when it comes to the ugliness and general dysfunction of airports.

They're a little bit off the hook? A little bit off the hook, but there's plenty of room for improvement. When I spoke with Alison Ariaf about the design of airports, she said to me, if all airports simply played Brian Eno's album music for airports over the speakers, every airport would be better. My name is Alison Ariath and I read about design and sustainability for the New York Times. I say this to serve not only as an introduction to Alison Ariath, but also so that you'll

know that she is someone whose judgment is perfectly true. An architect I spoke to you said nothing is more quickly obsolete than an airport building. Like the technology is changing so fast. And the thing that all airports are still trying to catch up to now, the thing that forced airports to change the most the fastest was 9-11. Security screening has come to dominate all aspects of airport design, but we're going to focus on just two effects.

The first is that because the unpredictability and time required to go through security, you no longer doodle on what is called the land side of the airport. Land side is basically the curb appeal part of the airport. Parking is still considered land side. The ticketing area is still considered landside. The wonderful lines that you have to wait in to TSA, which are also changing by the way. Most airports, of course, have had to make room for those lines, so all of that is landside. So once you wind yourself through the pleasant experience that is security, you are on the airside.

The people responsible for building airports really kind of followed the bus station model where it was like a holding pen. We just got you here as long as we put you on Amtrak or put you on Greyhound and airports were sort of on that model too because the assumption was you were just passing through. Now the assumption is that you are absolutely not just passing through. The assumption is that you are going to be staying a while. So newer airports are designed with that in mind. And a good example of this new thinking described in a recent New York Times article by Ariav is the new T2 terminal designed by Gensler Architects at San Francisco International Airport. T2 is the new terminal for American Airlines and Virgin America at San Francisco International Airport.

And it's one of the first terminals to be designed to post 9-11. The last terminal constructed before T2 at SFO was the International Terminal that opened in December of 2000. It still feels pretty new, but you can tell right away that the trajectory of airport design was going in a very different direction in the year 2000 than what is prioritized today. Seven Cisco's main international terminal, for example, is all about the ticketing area you walk in. It's just this massive amount of space. It's open and airy and actually pretty wonderful to experience, but in the new world of TSA, all that building doesn't

make any sense. If you actually sit and think about it, you realize that all the exciting stuff is on the land side. You're eating, you're shopping, etc. All that happens before security. In the new T2, all the good stuff is saved post-security because, as we all know, everyone's just rushing to their plane and they don't want to linger at all. So while there is a very generous, well-designed ticketing area, they've given way more square footage, like thousands and thousands of square feet, to what's called the airside, which is where the planes actually come into the gate. What's also different about T2 is that they're really incorporating the security procedures

in the design from the get-go. When you look at security now, it often looks like the TSA just set up shop yesterday with retractable barriers and then it spits you out to a couple of folding chairs to put on your shoes and that stole your laptop. The new T2 actually has what they call a recompose zone which is like a lounge for putting your clothes back on after you get to TSA with you know some sculpture and lots of natural light and skylights and and once you are at that spot putting your shoes in your belt and you're jewelry and whatever else back on you can see everything that you're about to enter into retail gates

seating all that sort of stuff. I never give them much thought to shops or restaurants and airports but the thing I need not want what I need when I travel is it a place to plug in my phone or laptop and probably both. There are many, many more banks about Lens, because again, you think even back to pre-9-11, which is now just about 10 years ago, the ubiquity of personal technology was not, you know, there were walkmans, right? They didn't need to get plugged in. Now everyone's got something at every age,

every sort of traveling segment. So of course, older airports don't have enough. I was in a hair recently sitting on the floor next to this businessman, and we were huddled like hobos around this single outlet in this three gate area. 12 plus 12 leveling, one six stop. According to area, human factor studies shows that passengers want to stay within 250 feet

of their gate, and T2 at SFO addresses this anxiety. If you're buying a paper, grabbing a coffee, sitting down at the restaurant, all of the gates are visible all the time because of the open floor plan. What I heard a lot in talking to many, many architects about airports is that at the top of the list is letting people feel the control of their experience and having a sense of where they're going. And really sort of designing so that all of the anxiety that comes naturally with that whole process now is alleviated to the greatest extent. And so a good sort of environments designer who can really into it where people's hang- are going to be. It's key to a successful project. The noble goal is to try to design a way all airport anxieties no matter how experienced

the traveler. But who knows, in 10 years I could be redoing the story and contrasting T2 against some new super airport that solves all the problems of usage that T2 failed to anticipate. There's no place to park my jetpack, fail. For anything complex, perfect design is a moving target. But odds are your luggage will still be in Mermatsk. 99% invisible was produced this week by me Roman Mars was support from lunar, making a difference with creativity.

It's a project of KALW, 91.7 local public radio and San Francisco, the American Institute of Architects in San Francisco, and the Center for Architecture and Design. You can keep up with Alison Ariaf at the opinionator blog of the New York Times, and I should mention that the Douglas Adams quote with the top of the show was read by Francesca Panetta, who's the producer and creator of the Hackney podcast, which is consistently stunning and amazing and you should subscribe, although it does have a dearth of Francesca Panetta's voice in it. You've probably heard more of her here and you'll ever hear on the Hackney podcast.

Thank you, Fran. To find out more and get all kinds of links, go to the website at 99personinvisible.org.