Invisible Airports
With all apologies to Italo Calvino and Norman Foster, I've been re-imagining the state of Chep Lap Kok Airport in Hong Kong as part of my studio exercises.
Security is now a lost concept. The impotence of metal detectors and x-ray machines has become such a point of shame that they have been adandoned altogether. Passengers are allowed to carry with them whatever they like, but they must first pass through the flooded terminal. There are no regulations on luggage because nothing survives the passage through this lake. One never quite manages to float their luggage to the other side, the change finds its way out of one's pockets, and passports gets all wrinkled. Passengers no longer worry about forgetting toothbrushes or important documents: nobody wants a water-logged contract anyways. In the water one leaves their possessions, their identity, their worries...
As traffic declined the airport began to fold onto itself. First the legs at the end of the long concourse and eventually the entire body of the airport folded into ever more compact shapes. Forming into a triangle, the airport has forever stranded a set of planes in the zone between the concourses. Connections between terminals must be made by taking a ride on one of these trapped planes. Connections from B terminal to C terminal are most easily made by riding a 747-400 taxi across the Atoll. Passengers wanting to reach terminal A from terminal C are advised to catch a McDonnel Douglas MD80. Terminal transfers and outbound flights are boarded in exactly the same manner. The planes continue to be piloted- not driven- but they never leave the atoll, there are never refreshments, and only occasionally is there on-board entertainment.
The good people who staff this airport have no passports and are citizens of no country. They have nevered touched the soil of any nation and never will. The staff live below the main deck in spaces carved out amongst the maintenance areas and jetways. They work in the many restaurants and hotels above that cater to international travelers captivated by the endless world of travelators. This airport has lost its terminal, its security check, and its ground transportation. It has given up all identity to become an interstitial, connections-only zone. This is a hermetic island, punctured only by what can arrive on a jet and dispensing only what may leave in the same manner.
In the manner of a Klein Bottle, the airport's concourses have punctured through the departures hall and open directly onto the street next to the taxi stand. Curving their way through the airport, these concourses eventually deposit the tenacious traveller in the check-in and shopping zones. Security must be cleared to claim baggage or go shopping. The halls of the terminal have lost their hermetic seal and are now devoid of shopping venues. In the absence of artificial scarcity a complicated network of bartering and marketplaces have evolved in the concourses. The taxi stand has invaded the terminal.
Unrelated: This still makes me happy.
--Posted 10/16/03 02:40AM