the segregated airport

been spending a lot of time on and in airports lately. and however it may sound familiar or even outdated, i also feel that airports are more and more becoming like cities.

subject: automated walkways.

case: tokyo narita airport

narita, tokyo's major airport, is laidout in a rather classic spoke system. the different gate areas are all located on the ends of longer piers, connecting at the central arrivals hall. unlike for example atlanta, where all terminals are linear and situated parallel to each other, connected through a underground rail, tokyo narita is small enough to be walkable. still there are automated walkways. the longest one does make sense, being over 150 meters, but the smaller ones, only extending to about twenty feet, are simply put absurd. 

for one, they create horizontal barriers in an already horizontal space. many airports have the uncomfortable tendency to appear as extremely long, horizontal and monotonous. boring. automated walkways not only divide up the already segregated spaces, they also tend to cluster facilities and passengers at their beginnings (or ends). like the highway in the city, the exits are where the urban craziness appears, however at a high price.

but where the city is often able to offer a wide array of niche facilities away from the highway exits and crossings, in places where land is cheaper and more abundant, the airport has no room to offer to those often interesting businesses. we are forever condemned to the same franchises in airports. mcdonalds, starbucks and duty-free shops will cluster at the entrances of the walkways like jack-in-the-box, home depot and gas stations will.

the gentrification of the airport is not a result of programmatic reason, dependent on financial factors, but much more a result of the spatial lay-out of the circulation spaces.

written over the pacific #3

a very interesting proposal for an airport of the 21st century can be seen here.

_md417* 1 km/h drive thru airport by miklos deri

personal glorification in the aught's

just remembered being on a flight from chicago to la, when i got into talking with the lady sitting next to me. we talked a bit, laughed at each others jokes and so on, and got to the inevitable gestures of social behaviour: so what's the reason for your visit to la? (think the 'security' officer at your local airport, but than less paranoid)

i explained my sci-arc study plans, explained about delft and architecture and the whole ram-bam. next was her turn. she told me she had a documentary film production company in chicago. nothing special, going to la for movie production people is like going to the toilet for you and me. the best part however, was that it was no ordinary documentaries she made.

whenever somebody contacted her to make a documentary, it would be about somebody else.

say you are filthy rich, and think your better half/best friend/father/mother(/pet for i don't know who's sake), really deserves a nice tribute video for his/her/its birthday/graduation/first teeth/..., al you have to do is contact the nice lady's company and they do the rest. they hunt down old high school loves, interview the subject's favourite college professor or car salesman, all to turn it into a nice video, to be given to the person in question.

nice...?

personal glorification is not new. it's been around since the year zero. roman emperors liked to have their face everywhere, have their own temples erected or even name a wall after themselves. cut to the twentieth century, we had mr. hitler trying to turn berlin into one major ejaculation of personal ass-kissing, stalin tried to do it, but got destalinized after his death, and of course we have the body of chairman mao (is it one, two, three or four of them?) on tian'anmen square, with long lines of people paying their last respect, even thirty years after his passing.

and so now we have personal glorification on a slightly smaller and less lethal level. i haven't tried it, but google-ing for 'one-person shrine' or 'ass-kissing through video' and you might just find the chicago-based company.

written over the pacific #1

oh, the lady was flying to la to interview benicio del toro, who was - yes i'm not kidding - the high-school sweetheart of the person subject in the video (a google-hotshot).

and if you want to read more about people with power or money trying to glorify theirselves, try reading 'the edifice complex' by deyan sudjic.

of course i don't want to blow up this plane - i think religious violence is for retards.

short as possible summary of all the 'security' measures i had to face flying from beijing to la through tokyo.

1. check-in luggage control: have to open everything, take it out of my bag. chinese people don't care about the number of illegal dvd-copies, knock-off super-a class counterfeit bags and fake converse shoes you pack, as long as there's a seal on your bag that says 'security checked'.

2. check-in interview: 'why are you going to the states?' 'where has your baggage been?' and so on and so on.

3. passport control. back in the days, when this was just it....

4. first security check - for american flights only. friend i was traveling with had to hand in all her liquid stuff, mascara and make-up, while the old lady in front of me was allowed to take hers with her, together with her pliers and scissors. summary executions seem less random. laptop x-rayed seperately.

5. second security check, at the gate - 'please step out of the line sir' sure, whatever, not that i have any choice... they take my carry-on bag apart, metal detect me, and check my shoes. i want to meet the first person that can pack anything in the soles of a converse that is not durt picked up from the street...

add. passengers also have to fill in a customs form leaving the country. xeroxing the one you have to fill in upon entering is apparently beyond beijings grasp.

6. in tokyo: security check in the transfer area. laptop not removed from my bag, nobody asked for it.

7. after the gate, another hauling of the bag, and surprise: again no bomb in my bag!

8. standing in line for us customs for an hour, and when its my turn, the customs guys needs to take a number two because he 'takes this medicine for his stomach which makes him go number two multiple times a day'.

whatever.

written over the pacific #2

Dutch homes, American homes

what is considered wrong or even fascist in the netherlands, according to 'educated' architects and architecture students, is the hot stuff in the states. yes, i'm talking about 'new tradition', 'regional historialism' or 'modern traditionalism'. in the netherlands, it looks like this.

people love it. we dutch tried to counter the 'debilization' of home owners by filling up subdivision like ypenburg by over-designed homes, that make all the magazines but apparently still don't really work.

  

and in the states, they build it like this.

is it still our job to decide what's hot or not? or should we really be servants to the people's wishes?

read this: designing america (wall street journal, oct. 6)

urban wasteland & natural refuge - a journey through time and space

you can say what you want about Los Angeles, but one thing is true. the amount of asphalt, roads and highways do allow you to go anyplace in a reasonable amount of time. Compared to the Netherlands, where a trip from Rotterdam to Amsterdam (about 55 miles) feels like an eternity, driving around in LA feels like a short ride.

You never leave the city. driving around for 3 hours and only seeing houses, parking garages and strip malls is possible. and then you haven't seen the same place twice.

another admirable feature of LA is the possibility, thanks to all that asphalt, to go from a crazy urban wasteland to rugged, untouched nature. a few months ago I had a conversation with a guy that had lived in Los Angeles for more than ten years, and lives in Amsterdam now. we agreed on the nice things of Amsterdam, but what he really liked LA for was exactly this almost schizophrenic quality of the city of angels.

man has tried to civilize and 'asphaltize' Los Angeles for more than two hundred years, but places where he has failed to do so are plentiful. and finally, man has realized that these places need to be cherished, be cleaned and be left alone. don't see it as a defeat, see it as a reckoning of our own boundaries.

can you imagine?

>> 40 minutes >>