The site of your project this semester is the Hartsfield International Airport of Atlanta - a site of in –between, a place between places, a trajectory of passing, a place between land and sky, between worlds and time zones.
Minutes drive from downtown Atlanta, the airport is situated between Interstate 85 and Interstate 75 and I-285. It is also accessible via the MARTA (Metropolitan Atlanta Transit Authority), bus, rail service, limousine, charter services, and shuttle. Comprised of 3750 acres it is situated between two counties, Fulton and Clayton. Also accessible by airplanes, cities, countries the airport is a place of transfer between places. It is a place between states, between lands. It is “…part of a system that is not only national but international”. While the airport is defined by its geography, its physical location, it is also and more importantly defined by time. Atlanta therefore is as closely adjacent to Miami by car as to Barcelona by airplane.
With an internal coordination of baggage and passenger transfer and departure and arrival of massive numbers of people from numerous locations, the airport is a complex living organism comprised of fluctuating patterns of activity. Concourse E at Hartsfield is the largest in the United States and can handle 8,000 arriving passengers per hour. These travelers are distributed through the airport from gate to gate, plane to plane, through security, to baggage claim, to other transportation systems. While this flow of complex movement is carefully coordinated, the uniqueness of this place could be exploited for the creation of a more dramatic experience for the traveler.
This semester you will develop proposals which intervene in an operational manner within this site of in-between, within this urban space of transfer, within this national/international passage. You will slice, splice, cut, remove, insert, rearrange as needed. The procedure will vary from student to student. Through careful analysis you will each develop an operational strategy in order to improve, fix, repair, alter, transform … the space of human flow through this system and the quality of the experience(s). Presently eating and shopping programs populate these passages within the airport. What else could occur here in this space of transfer, delay, pause? You will be expected to define programs for inclusion.
Your strategies (surgeries) will vary as the deficiencies and potentials discovered will vary. Time will be an organizational system at work here. Speed, transition, delay, pause, rhythm, pattern, repetition will play important roles in the development of strategies…
Video, a medium which allows you to map space in time and movement will be exploited throughout the semester as an investigative tool to read the site, in the generative process to develop strategies, in the surgical process to design, and in the representation process to convey the experience provided by your proposal. At the same time you will be expected and encouraged to work in various modes and to fluctuate between 2-d. 3-d, 4-d in order to fully explore and develop specific ways of seeing, understanding and conveying your work.
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