The Wall Street Journal just published a cool video interviewing an architect about how airports are designed. If you’re an aviation geek, or even just a frequent airport user, it’s worth a watch. I even learned a few things.
Airports are fascinating, complex places
As much as people love to hate on airports, the reality is that we’re all reliant on them, and they’re incredibly complex businesses:
- In terms of monetization, airports don’t just make money from airlines and passenger fees, but they also make a lot of money from retailers; airports are essentially shopping malls that funnel a lot of air travelers through them every day
- Airports are under constant pressure to expand and accommodate as much capacity as possible, and it can be hard to balance the existing passenger experience with trying to improve; it’s why so many airports constantly feel like construction zones
- Actually making changes and improvements to an airport is challenging and costly, since there’s not much room to build new airports, and it’s not like airports can just be shut down while improvements are made
Architect breaks explains what goes into airport design
The Wall Street Journal recently released a roughly eight minute video, covering so many of the things that go into designing an airport. Odds are that most travelers have never consciously realized many of these things, but when they’re pointed out, it may suddenly click and seem obvious.
I don’t want to give away the entire video here, but it covers everything from why check-in desks are increasingly arranged perpendicular to the terminal entrance, to why airport ceilings are often slanted, to the logic for the ceiling around security typically being lower, to why people pass through retail areas in the airport, rather than next to them.
If you have the time, I’d highly recommend giving the video a watch.
Bottom line
There’s so much that goes into airport design that most travelers probably don’t even realize. It’s always cool to learn more from an expert, so I really enjoyed an architect’s take on how airports have evolved.
It’s funny, because many of the “improvements” we’ve seen to airports over the years don’t necessarily make the passenger experience better, but rather help airports become more profitable businesses (which is fair enough, I suppose).
Did anyone else enjoy this video about airport design?
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