Resting pods at Lisbon airport. Traveling by train or by air remain my favorite modes of transportation, and this despite that I am scared to death to fly. Ironically, I love to see airplanes land and take off and during my wait time at most airports, I am an avid flaneur.
I stress the word most, as US airports often seem outdated and tired, and unable to cope with the exponential desire for travelers to enjoy their pre-flight time in the concourses and main halls. Of course there are recent welcome renovations at Los Angeles, La Guardia, and Newark airports.
Hands down, most cutting-edge airports are now found in the Asia-Pacific region, and those serving Hong Kong and Singapore are high on my list as perpetual favorites. The contemporaneity of Asian airports is a response to the growth in the Pacific Rim and impressive airports have been completed there over the past decades. Terminal sizes, new materials, common sense efficiency and high-level service, daring aesthetics with often sophisticated and expressionistic structures, all with a focus on premium passenger experiences are features that, for me, are rarely matched elsewhere. This is why Asian airports receive high rankings and awards year after year.
My regard for most Asian airports is also because they represent the ideal of ‘non-spaces.’ A term coined by French anthropologist Marc Augé who writes in Non-Places: An Introduction to Supermodernity that key spaces, such as “ubiquitous airports, hotels, and motorways filled with anonymous individuals” will become the places—or non-spaces—of our 21st century.
Airports represent those places par excellence. They accommodate seamless interchanges between landing, customs, retrieving luggage, renting a car, hailing a taxi, taking a bus or zipping by high-speed trains to another metropolitan city. Or, more in line with Augé’s concept, passengers spend time lounging, snacking, dining, looking at TV, reading or working, shopping in endless malls with ubiquitous luxury shops and duty-free stores, enjoying branches of city museums, retreating into a chapel, taking advantage of nursing rooms, dog areas, restrooms and showers, or booking a hotel room when a trip demands an overnight stay.
Lisbon airport
During a layover from Washington DC to Berlin, at the Lisbon airport I discovered a number of forms that protruded from the second floor overlooking the main shopping atrium. From the ground floor where I was standing, they seemed like expansive bay windows created by large glass panes—most often located at a corner of the room—with sides defined by wooden floor to ceiling louvers. Cantilevering from a slanted circular wall that enclosed the atrium’s second floor, the bay windows were either organized as single pods or formed a series of adjacent spaces (Image 1).
Resting pods
Unsure of the true nature of those spaces—I had not seen anything similar at other airports—and given that I had time at hand, I decided to take the escalator up to satisfy my curiosity. As I approached the second floor, I was greeted by a sign that said Premium Lounges. My initial disappointment was that I would be unable to access the pod spaces as they would be tied to the Exclusive Lounges access pass.
Upon exiting the escalator, lo and behold I found that to my right and left-hand sides were generous and well lit space-age-style corridors that were accessible to any passenger who wanted to walk around the atrium. The corridor took the shape of an oval and was defined by slanted walls on both sides, and to my joy, gave access to the rooms that drew my curiosity.
The corridor expanded intermediately into what I came to recognize as public, yet private spaces for travelers to sleep or relax during layovers or delays. The resting areas came in various forms and sizes and offered distinct degrees of privacy (Image 2 and 3). At times, there was even a larger room dedicated to a kids play space with ample toys and slides, and bean bag seating for parents supervising their kids.
Not only did each of the pods protruded over the atrium, but they were designed as an extension from the public corridor. This was achieved through a slight encroachment on the corridor which created a large entrance to the pods. The absence of doors or any other physical barrier between room and corridor, allowed a welcome and easy accessibility. Inside each space, one found two pairs of comfortable connecting lounge chairs oriented towards the atrium, thus giving passengers a view towards the inner courtyard, yet allowing enough privacy from viewers below. Although the lounge chairs did not have armrests, they allowed a well-deserved nap between flights, which I did for an hour! Like the famous chaise longue of Le Corbusier, there was no place to set one’s arms except by folding them on one’s torso. Not very comfy, I may say!
Materials
The materials used to define the pods was consistent and done with great elegance. First, the orientation of each bow window was slightly skewed from the atrium wall, thus offering views like in an urban context—not simply facing the opposite side but providing diagonal views which extended the interior space. Floor to ceiling glass panels allowed full views to the hustle and bustle of the atrium, while the horizontal wood slats gave a sense of privacy almost like a Mashrabiya—a protruding oriel window found in Islamic architecture. This analogy might well be legitimate as a clin d’oeil to a spatial legacy dating back from the Muslim’s conquest of the Iberian Peninsula centuries ago.
The historic Mashrabiya provided “an area in which women could peer out and see the activities below while remaining invisible.” Perhaps a farfetched analogy, but I found many degrees of privacy when standing, sitting, and laying down that reminded me of Islamic window treatments.
Construction
Two items of notice. First, the construction of the space of the bay window. Tubular structural steel columns spanned between floor and ceiling, and for the typical room did not exceed a total of four. Painted in black and approximately three and a half inches in diameter, they were the only elements in space that gave verticality. They also held a cylindrical light fixture that illuminated floor and ceiling.
Second, the horizontal wood slats had a ratio of one thickness to two and a half wide, and were set in regular intervals of double the thickness of the slats, and held by a separate structure. Equally, the columns holding the horizontal slats are positioned on the axis of their width.
While the glass panels are sealed at the floor and ceiling, they are positioned inside the room creating a depth between glass panels and wooden slats; slats which are on the outside of the room. The glass offers some sound insulation but seem mainly to offer scale and unobstructed vistas down and across the atrium. The slats are treated as ‘skin’ allowing natural ventilation to flow through the space (Image 5).
Noteworthy is the following detail that caught my attention (Image 6). The bottom and top wooden slats seen from the room provide the idea of a baseboard, and below the ceiling act as a cornice, thus giving some degree of enclosure rather than having the slats be flush with the floor and ceiling. This particular detail might seem minor but just imagine how the space of the room would be different if the treatment was flush with the floor and ceiling. What amazed me in the overall attention given to detailing was how much depth the architect brought through a fine calibration of materials and connections to define the room, and this within the mere inches between the structure of the bay window, glass, wooden slats, and entrance sequence.
Finally, a comment on the treatment and materials used for the floor and ceiling. A dark color carpet extended from wall to wall and was similar to the one found in the circular corridor. It is non-descript yet gave depth to the floor, while the rich wooden treatment of the ceiling, through what seems birch panels, gave a hue that expanded the height of the room.
Conclusion
Similar to the blog on the light tower in Berlin, there were many surprises that await if one is both curious and knows how to observe the environment. Too often, our eyes and mind are focused on catering to what is in front of us, and sadly too often we only register what is pushed to the forefront with consumption strategies. If one can scan through that noise, we can be surprised by what seems at first different and often mundane. Often, one’s curiosity is rewarded, and it is free!