Derek K. Miller - Penmachine words music comment - Vancouver, Canada

"Situation Terminal" (via Philip Greenspun) laments the generally lousy state of modern airport design. Author Paul Goldberger writes that:

Airports are essentially machines for processing people, airplanes, automobiles, cargo, and luggage—all of which move in different ways, and which need to be connected at certain points and separated by rigid security at others.

The problem, he notes, is that in most current facilities are:

....an efficient layout for airport operations, as long as you don't consider passenger pleasure to be a part of airport operations.

I don't have a lot of experience with airports around the world—I've never been to the new terminals in China and Europe that Goldberger profiles as rare successful airport architecture—but I think Vancouver's YVR does a surprisingly decent job of it.

While many Vancouverites continue to complain about the "Airport Improvement Fee," instituted in the early '90s when the Canadian government leased the facility to the Vancouver Airport Authority, the money from that fee has transformed what was a small, drab, concrete slab during my childhood into a much larger, more interesting, well-lit, and beautiful space.

One thing I do find puzzling at YVR: most of the huge collection of Northwest Coast native art is well displayed, but it's in the international arrivals area. That's the one part of the facility where people are moving as fast as they can to get off their planes, through Customs, and out—where they'll spend little to no time looking at the artwork. There's a lot less of that stuff in the departure areas, which is where passengers are sometimes waiting around for hours, and where they might find some use looking at the art. Weird.

Labels: airport, vancouver

Check out this beautiful set of pictures of city lights from Doc Searls. He took them while flying on a commercial jet up the U.S. East Coast:

It's a shame that we waste so much energy radiating light out into space, but it's pretty.

Labels: airport, art, canon, docsearls, environment, flickr, photography

I've been having unusual, interesting dreams this week. All of them have been about transportation problems.

Last night it was a strange chase by a Customs agent/bounty hunter who followed my companions and me across the border from the U.S. into Canada. The night before, I was running around an airport, late for a plane, with stuff spilling out of my luggage (by the way, earlier that day, in real life, I'd taken my parents to their flight). A day before that, I was struggling to get aboard a ferry. And Thursday night I was in a crowded van crawling through huge crowds on a muggy street, maybe in New Orleans.

I'm sure this all has something to do with fighting cancer—a way for my brain to try to resolve the frustrations of surgeries and radiation and chemotherapy going on and on and on. Anyone have further analysis?

Labels: airport, cancer, psychology, travel