The Wall Street Journal just released a cool video interviewing an architect about designing airports. If you're an aviation geek or just use airports frequently, it's worth a look. I even learned a few things.
Airports are fascinating and complex places
As much as people love to hate airports, the reality is that we all depend on them, and they are incredibly complex enterprises:
- In terms of monetization, airports not only make money from airlines and passenger fees, but also a lot of money from retailers; Airports are essentially shopping centers through which large numbers of air travelers flow every day
- Airports are under constant pressure to expand and accommodate as much capacity as possible, and it can be difficult to balance the existing passenger experience with attempting to improve. That's why so many airports constantly feel like construction zones
- Actual changes and improvements to an airport are challenging and costly because there is not much space to build new airports and airports cannot easily be closed while improvements are made
Architect Breaks explains what goes into airport design
The Wall Street Journal recently published a video about eight minutes long that covers many of the things that go into designing an airport. Chances are, most travelers have never consciously noticed many of these things, but when you point them out to them, it can suddenly click and seem obvious.
I don't want to give away the whole video here, but it covers everything from why check-in counters are increasingly positioned perpendicular to the terminal entrance, to the reasons why airport ceilings are often slanted, to the logic of why the ceiling around security is usually so low, why people walk through retail areas in the airport and not next to it.
If you have time, I would highly recommend watching the video.
Conclusion
There's so much that goes into airport design that most travelers probably don't even notice. It's always cool to learn more from an expert, so I really liked an architect's perspective on airport development.
It's funny, because many of the “improvements” we've seen at airports over the years don't necessarily improve the passenger experience, but rather help airports become more profitable businesses (which is fair enough, in my opinion).
Did anyone like this video about airport design?