Terminality Part 3/3
See also: Terminality 1/3 and Terminality 2/3 and a design project derived from these ideas: RELAMINATE.
Occupation of the terminal is divided into two modes: inflected and vectorial. The high level programatic zones of Check-In Hall and Customs & Immigration are primarily vectorial, whereas the Departures Lounge and Arrivals Hall are both mostly inflected. Current airports are designed to neatly separate the vectorial and inflected zones through the establishment of a sterile zone. On the departure track the sterile zone encapsulates the inflected space and upon arrival it contains the vectorial space.
Around the boundary of the current sterile zone collect intensities of disfunction. Articulated to passengers as two gates, one in (security check) and one out (customs/immigration), the sterile zone is defined passively by the existence of airport offices, mechanicals, and other pouche. This is the security definition of the castle: a single defended entrance and impenetrable walls all around. As a result of its limited articulation, the portals into and out of the sterile zone are always the most cluttered parts of the terminal.
The differences between inbound and outbound security necessitate separate security procedures for travel in each direction. Until fairly recently there were no security checks when entering a terminal. Before 2001 there were no checks before boarding the airplane itself. If one draws a timeline of security activity it becomes clear that outbound security is increasing to the point that one imagines a future where outbound security procedures achieve parity with inbound procedures. To gain access to the sterile zone, then, is to temporarily immigrate to nowhere.
Effectively this reduces security to a check point, a fence, a flattened boundary that must be engaged when traveling in either direction. Unified security procedures free passengers from the need to satisfy unique requirements when entering and exiting the sterile zone. They further erase the need for distinction between inbound and outbound. In the new airport you are either a citizen of nowhere or you are not.
With the secure volume condensed into a thin line, the specific footprints that once defined the terminal are eradicated and the vectorial and inflected spaces begin to intermingle. Spatial bottlenecks that enable current sterile zones to be clearly and forcefully drawn on the plan of the terminal are no longer required. Volume becomes line in a switch from passive, voluminous security-- like a castle-- to active, thin security in the manner of a trench. The latter is defined by its constant defense at numerous points as opposed to a passive boundary with only one aperture requiring defense. The new environment of the terminal is one of encampments. Positions are taken up, topography utilized as defensive measure, and territories continually redefined.
Mobility of programmatic elements has often proved more ridiculous than useful in past experiments (one thinks of the ornamental wheels on office furniture in the 90s) and is thus abandoned in favor of dispersion. Definitive programmatic blocks (shopping here, check in there, food court over yonder) are fragmented and dispersed in order to satisfy the liquidity that the airport's program requires and digital signage and a new conception of security enable.
The terminal ceases to be a collection of discrete zones that can be drawn onto a plan and becomes instead a cloud of points. A regular network of generic stations transform their function when becoming occupied by retail, food, security, or airline personnel. The presence of a staff person performing their given set of tasks paints the immediate area around them as a temporary zone dedicated to their function. This migration is dominated by the security line.
Movement of the security boundary forms the leading edge of a wave behind which the non-critical aspects of the terminal fill in. When security abandons their temporary camp to retreat or advance, retail and food venues adjust to occupy the newly dis-embattled territory. They are made rubble widows that mingle among the traces of encampment and boundary definition to make anew this deserted place.
Within the terminal the boundary between City and Nowhere is made visible and apparent not as a termination of one and the beginning of the other but as a continuum upon which an arbitrary line has been drawn. The airport is not The Other as it has been so often portrayed, but simply a part of our territory we have not yet claimed. If we occupy Nowhere we do so as explorers, not diplomats. In the new airport Nowhere is exposed as what it really is: the last frontier, a purely manmade frontier, the part of our lands we have yet to settle, let alone understand.
FINITO
We would have liked to include images to illustrate these points, but we're as busy as you are so that's not likely to happen for some time.
--Posted 11/18/03 02:45AM