Tetris, only different

A game I play: making sense of spaces

Today I was in the Atlanta airport, taking a break from reading my (rather good) book, , I took stock of the meaning of the place “Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport Terminal”

First, airports are about a particular kind of movement. People choose planes over cars or trains because they get you there faster: you get on a plane knowing you don’t like the time spent traveling, because you’re trying to make it go by as fast as possible. Everything in the airport echoes this type of movement.

Also, the airport only uses indirect lighting. Indirect lighting means that people cast no shadows, because there is no specific point from which light emits. This lends to the feeling that you’re not really in space, because you never have to account for the position of your body as it moves – space becomes undifferentiated before the eyes, we see no shadows, only reflections. The security cameras work the same way: indirect surveillance. Inevitably, they never point – I only saw the black semi-globes which suggest observation but never accuse or position anyone as a subject moving in or out of vision.

The space has specific visual cues which subtly differentiate uses. The center of the terminal has tile, the edges carpeting. The center tile creates a walking space that paces travelers with regular intervals, making movement across the space self-directed and measured. The carpeting gestures towards stillness – it makes less noise when walking and describes space in a more linear, less measured way. Carpet has a cultural echo as well, a less cold, more placed feel – few bedrooms have tiling, tile seems more suited for business, more task-oriented and functional than carpet.

Sitting space exists in abundance, but always lacks tables. People sit in chairs arranged next to each other on a bench style, but always separated by arm-rests or other divider. Traveling didn’t always look like this – benches dominated train station seating in particular. A level of exclusivity and feeling of personal independence separates train travel from air-travel, and the seating honors the power of individuals by granting them personal space that, strangely, probably encourages greater density of people actually seated than just benches. Tables cannot be found – they take up too much space and put people uncomfortably face to face in a space that draws in people from places so disparate that their imagined interests rarely coincide in a comfortable conversation. Something about air travel demands individuality, and the space of the waiting area replicates this logic.

Generally: a place not many really consider I suspect, which is perhaps my point. Air travel has an awkward distance I sometimes oppose, but thinking about it alleviates the problem somewhat. Onward to posts about more communication things!