April 1, 2022 • 39 mins
After witnessing the impact of a pandemic on the air travel industry, three architects began to reimagine how airports might look if designed with a health environment perspective, through the lens of passenger health and wellness. They submitted their concept to Healthcare Design Magazine's Breaking Through competition, which prompted further conversations with experts across the design industry. The collaboration led to broader ideas of how we might rethink an air traveler’s journeys, the role technology can play in improving air travel efficiency and how different an airport design could look with a blank canvas.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:03):
I'm John Torek. And I'm Danny Sullivan. And
you're listening to Speaking of Design, bringing you
the stories of the engineers and architects who
are transforming
the world one project at a time. Close
your eyes and picture the last time you
visited the airport.
How would you describe that experience?
Today, we'll meet three architects who are reimagining
(00:24):
what the air travel journey could look like.
Their concept
began with a design competition to improve the
health of air travelers during a pandemic.
The conversations they started led to broader ideas
of how we might improve the efficiency and
convenience of air travel in the future.
(00:50):
When you ask somebody, they say, I really
love to travel, but they're rarely talking about
the travel process. They're, of course, talking about
the destination.
They're not talking about how they got to
that destination. That's Tyler Dye, a project designer
in HDR's Arlington, Virginia architecture studio. And it's
something that I think the industry has lost
over the years. I think early on, the
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travel industry was a little bit less mass
transit oriented. It was much more about the
traveler. And we really think that this system
can bring that joy back to travel. And
it's all about travel for you. It's giving
people options. It's It's allowing them to be
the decision makers in their travel process, and
it's giving them an environment to enjoy that
process. Tider's experience
(01:32):
includes designing complex building types, including hospitals,
science laboratories,
and university science facilities.
As an architect, we have the privilege of
shaping
the spaces that everybody occupies during their everyday
lives, and that's really what drives me to
to do what we do. In early twenty
twenty,
Tyler and his colleagues, Sally Lee and Hamed
(01:55):
Ali, began to put their heads together for
an entry in health care design magazines
breaking through design competition.
That's really all about, you know, pushing the
boundaries, breaking the barriers, and really not setting
any limitations on yourself and really asking what
could health care be. At the time, all
conversations
about health were beginning to take on a
(02:16):
singular focus.
February 2020 was the start of a new
world for all of us. I think we
all know COVID was getting ready to start
changing our lives, I think, much more than
any of us ever anticipated.
We didn't know how big of an impact
COVID was gonna have, but we realized that
anything we did was probably gonna have a
major influence. And so that's really how
(02:37):
that idea was born. One of Tyler's colleagues,
Sally Lee, is a project designer with a
background in global commercial design,
higher education facilities,
and science and technology.
She draws a lot of inspiration from her
childhood. I got into architecture
a little bit as sort of like natural
flow of how I live my life. I
(02:57):
grew up in Hong Kong,
and traveled a ton when I was little
and then actually spent a lot of my
childhood in the city of Hong Kong and
then also in Lagos, Nigeria,
and then eventually here in The States. And
so I think that being exposed to a
lot of different countries and a lot of
different cultures was something that really struck me
since I was young, but then also understanding
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the role that architecture plays in culture
and identity of a city and identity of
people. That sort of technical beauty of it
all was something that really attracted me of
just the kind of work that we do
and the impact that it has in the
communities.
The third member of the team, Hamed Ali,
also brings a worldly background,
having grown up in Iran where he earned
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his bachelor of architecture degree from the University
of Tehran.
But Hamed joked that the team discovered another
source of inspiration as they discussed ideas for
the design competition.
I should just make sure that we are
giving some credits to Netflix
too because,
like, at the same time that we start
the conversation, we
show on a Netflix called Pandemic,
(04:00):
and that was one of the biggest trigger
that we start the conversation. Because what we
were hearing on that show and what we're
thinking that how it's gonna impact
the spread of any kind of the pandemic
situation
through the airport and air traveling was,
eye opening for us. And so we had
to pick how we wanted to address that.
And our initial thoughts and where we ended
(04:21):
up going was we wanted to address COVID
through a redesign of the global mass transit
infrastructure
system, and that at its core and its
heart is the airport and the airline industry.
But then as the year went on and
we started getting all the data coming in
from the impacts that the pandemic had on
the aviation industry,
it just really further strengthened that we had
(04:41):
targeted the right piece of architecture
just because of the major hits that the
industry was getting from the disturbances
of decreased travel,
increased anxiety,
and just overall
shaking the entire confidence of the world on
global travel at the time. Although Hamed, Tyler,
and Sally have worked on some of the
architecture world's most complex building types,
(05:03):
they were quick to point out that they
were taking off into a new type of
design. We're not aviation architects by our day
to day. Right? But I think, ultimately, we're
designers. And what's interesting about it is that
as the world is progressing, there's been so
much more sort of cross pollination of ideas.
For example, you know, even the more obvious
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ones are the sort of self serve kiosks
at the airports coming from the health care
industry.
So we there's already starting to see influences
throughout. And so I think as three designers
coming from markets that are outside
of aviation, it brought that fresh perspective that
we're bringing from health care and education,
advanced technology,
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retail, all those components that really start to
have lots of opportunity to create more robust
systems and processes within the aviation industry that
could help make it more resilient within the
future. They titled their entry, one flight away.
The concept to address COVID and future pandemics
through a complete redesign
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and replanning of the global mass transit infrastructure
system, primarily the airport, to consider holistic health
through the traveler's journey. There were two big
problems that we were focusing on. The first
one that the role of the airport as
a travel hub are spreading this pandemic situation,
especially when you look at the global air
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traveling, that one disease from the other side
of the globe can just travel with one
flight to the other side and just spread
so fast that it's gonna be very hard
to contain that spreading. And the other reason
that we focus on the airport and expand
it to the aviation industry or some of
the study that they had about the financial
impact of the aviation industry was mind blowing.
(06:47):
For example, aviation industry was one of the
fastest growing industry pre COVID because the growth
of the middle income families all around the
globe. So the pre COVID, the world traveler
numbers was about 4,720,000,000
travel per year based on the March 2019
study that they had. And they were planning
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that it's gonna generate
a revenue of $581,000,000,000
for the industry. But after COVID impact, that
number not only got to the zero, also
they lost $315,000,000,000
per year.
So this number was just unbelievable, and it
just shows a gap. It shows a problem
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to the whole aviation industry that
the whole system is not designed or is
not ready for the impact of the COVID
or pandemic situation. Their concept was one of
18
shortlisted
to further develop rich detailed submissions for a
health care design magazine jury to review. They
were proud to be named semifinalists,
(07:48):
but they shared a sense that one flight
away wasn't complete. I think all three of
us knew pretty quickly that we didn't think
we were done working on the project. We
felt we had more to give, and that's
really when we realized that if we were
gonna take the project to the next level,
as we mentioned, we are not the aviation
experts. We're designers, but we need to start
bringing in the experts of all the other
fields. So they began talking with colleagues in
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other areas of expertise to widen their perspective.
Together,
they held nine design shreds with experts in
aviation,
interior and material design,
transportation
technology,
economics, and other specialty fields. It allowed us
to stop thinking about the project specifically
and only through a health care lens and
(08:31):
start thinking about the problem a little more
holistically. So when we stop thinking about just
the specific health care solution
and started addressing
a more complete and holistic,
redesign,
of the whole travel system as opposed to
just the airport. They designed the expanded concept
around three main pillars.
One, the use of autonomous systems.
(08:54):
Two, an increased focus
on health and wellness. And three, creating increased
revenue streams. So that's really I I think,
personally, when that shift happened, when we started
thinking about it more broadly, it became more
about restoring that customer confidence and experience. Though
the core problem is still the spread of
disease, the economics behind it, but it grew
(09:15):
to become, more about restoring that customer confidence
and experience,
but then also increasing the resiliency and efficiency
of that system to weather future pandemics much
better. A big component of it was also
the psychology of travel. Because as Tyler mentioned,
one of the pillars that we were analyzing
everything through was the health and wellness component.
(09:36):
And so as we all know, in some
parts of travel, there's a lot of anxiety
and nervousness that comes from just what happens,
like whether there's traffic or whether there's
long lines or large crowds or loud noises
and things like that. So a lot of
it was also analyzing ways in which that
we could start eliminating some of that. Stem
health and wellness is a huge component about
(09:57):
why we're readjusting the airport. So they began
to reexamine each element of the air travel
experience.
When we looked and we examined the way
the airport works nowadays
or currently, it's a system of individual components
that don't really talk to each other. They
aren't really connected. It's all about you have
to make your own way to the airport.
(10:18):
You arrive. You check yourself in. You check
your own luggage. You have to make your
own way through security,
etcetera, etcetera. So the way we saw overall
the inefficiencies is that it's a system of
disparate parts that don't talk to each other.
Some of those elements are outdated.
Many, including several security components, have been add
ons throughout the years. But what if you
(10:40):
started with a blank canvas and discarded any
preconceived notions of the existing air travel experience?
And so that's really where we saw the
opportunity
to
connect those systems through technology because nowadays, I
think we all know everything is connected. Our
phones are connected to our computers, to our
Gmail, to everything. There's no reason with the
technology that exists today that an autonomous system
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that gets you from your house to the
airport isn't connected with the retail experience that
you're gonna experience once you arrive at the
airport. And likewise, there's no reason that the
luggage experience shouldn't
be completely integrated and seamless with that autonomous
system that gets you to or from the
airport. So that's where where we really saw,
I think, the overall efficiencies was just that
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lack of communication
between elements of the system.
So they began this second phase of the
concept by asking a simple question.
When does the passenger's journey begin? When you
are traveling somewhere across the country, how long
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does it take, and what exactly define your
experience when you are traveling as a air
traveler? Because your flight probably gonna be two
hours, and you're gonna have a couple hours
or one hour just waiting in the airport.
But if you look at your watch when
you're leaving your home and then you get,
for example, in your hotel room, there's usually
between six or seven hours. The question was
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that, what's happening in the between those hours?
Is it part of your experience or you
just wanna focus on the time that you
are spending on the airport, on the aircraft?
And we decided that it's actually your experience
start when you're leaving the home. By starting
the passenger journey when you leave your home,
they began looking into how you get to
the airport and how you could begin to
make more efficient use of that time. So
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we were looking at a different method that
you can get from the home to the
airport for a couple of reason. The most
important piece was the experience. We wanna make
sure that this experience for the travel is
gonna be smooth and convenient.
And the second one, we look at that,
what if the airport or the airlines look
at this process as as a new stream
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for the revenue? We know that Uber, Lyft,
or all those, ride sharing app, they're making
million and million dollar of money or just
focus on the people who are going from
the home to the airport. What if aviation
does actually look at that as a new
solution to generate some revenue
and how we can make it a better
experience? How you wanna make sure that going
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to the public transportation is not gonna add
to your anxiety and how we can make
sure that we are providing options for different
type of travelers to get from the home
to the airport. In their research, they found
that some airlines have piloted a service to
bring premium passengers from their homes to the
airport. And I said, what if we expand
this service to everyone and also make sure
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that we are expanding the operation of the
system that we have for the airport behind
the airport as well? For example, what if
we have a sort of the system that
we can start to go through the screening
process for the passenger
when they are actually in their car getting
from the home to the airport.
By screening, I mean, with all this new
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technology that we have through your phone, through
your car, go to the identity verification,
or as the pandemic
taught us that how we can start to
do some biometric scan. For example, they can
have your body temperature
or some basic vitals that they can make
sure that you are in a good health
before getting the airport. The concept would make
better use of your time en route to
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the airport,
thus requiring you to spend less time at
the airport.
But the team recognizes
there could be a multitude of ways to
implement that type of system. One of the
interesting things we talked about was it's gonna
need to be a cooperation
between multiple systems outside outside the airport. Uber
is not gonna be able to do it
all. Lyft's not gonna do it all. So
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it's gonna need to be
in cooperation with multiple things. And one of,
I think, the interesting
things we talked about was what if as
a new revenue stream driver, what if these
shuttles actually belong to an airline? And so
soon as you leave your house, you enter
into the American Airlines transport or the Delta
or whatever it is because that allows then
that airport and that airline to control and
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to start providing service. Whether it's autonomous, it's
gonna be a mix. Especially early on, it's
gonna be a mix of things, I think,
that are gonna combine to
create a system that's efficient
and provide the amount of service that's gonna
be needed to move people from point a
to point b.
The the the nice thing about it being
within the city is that there is the
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need to move masses of people at once
and would be able to eliminate
multiple vehicles being on the road of individuals
going to the airport versus moving them en
masse to the airport and be able to
bypass traffic and other sort of stressors that
could cause delay or sort of headaches. And
so the point that the group of us
were thinking was that if this was something
that was adopted by either the airport or
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the airline itself, it's something that could be
predictable
and have a consistency to it that would
allow for them to readily
analyze what their throughput will be, which then
allows for greater efficiencies
and more consistent predictability within revenue
calculations. If you could begin your check-in the
second you set foot in your Uber or
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autonomous airline shuttle, imagine if that was the
last point where you had to worry about
your luggage.
Everyone think that the luggage is the biggest
dilemma for the operation of the airport and
also for passenger. As a passenger,
it's carrying your luggage everywhere that you're going,
standing in line to check-in, standing in line
to go to the security.
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These are all the fact that's gonna impact
your experience. It's creating that anxiety that you
have to stay in line. You wanna make
sure that you have to have everything packaged
correctly, and you don't have to take it
out. So what we thought, we said, what
if we should start to remove the luggage
for the the passenger experience? When you're home,
you know where you're going, so you just
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have this system, and you just select to
check-in your luggage. And the autonomous system is
gonna come to your place, either a home,
is a hotel, or somewhere in the town,
and pick up the luggage, bring it to
the airport, going through the security, and just
put in the aircraft, and then deliver it
to you either in the destination airport or
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deliver it to you in your the final
destination.
So this whole process is gonna help to
create a better experience for the passenger
and more efficient
system for the airline and airport as well.
This reimagined
ground transportation
could offer additional passenger services
that create new revenue streams for the airport
and airlines as well. These days, we are
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using
different apps, for example, for ordering our food,
ordering our drink through the Starbucks app, through
the, Uber Eats or
DoorDash. So what if you just bring that
experience
to the passenger that are traveling from the
home to airport? Just imagine that you're sitting
in a car and you're going to the
airport, and you can just go ahead and
select the food that you would like to
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have And let's say that I'm gonna go
there in the Terminal A, Gate B, and
your food is gonna be ready for you
to pick up. So you don't have to
go through all those line lines that we
have now on the concession of the airport
or different restaurant that they have. So you
everything is gonna be more con convenient and
consistent for you, and, also, it's gonna be
a new revenue for the airport. We've talked
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about convenience and efficiency,
but we wondered how passengers might feel about
privacy.
Hamid explained that beginning your security screening in
the car would not feel much different than
using technology most of us are already accustomed
to. Today, we use our phone to just
do almost everything. For example, your face recognition,
your iPhone, to open your bank account,
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to access to all the secure information that
you have. So the system and the technology
is there. It's just we never use that
for this sort of experience.
What if we just start to bring that
system into that autonomous vehicle that you have
and you start to go with the basic
identification
identity verification that you have inside the car?
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For example, as soon as you see the
car, they're gonna go through your biometrics. For
example,
scan your face or scan your thumb and
make sure that you are the person that
you're gonna be traveling.
And this is gonna be the first phase
of the security processing, a security checking process
for the whole journey. The process would essentially
change the location of your first security
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screening and use technology to automate it. It
would also open up the possibility of performing
health screenings before you get to the airport,
much like having your temperature taken before visiting
loved ones in a nursing home or taking
a COVID test before entering a new country.
Such a system might help prevent a future
pandemic
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from spreading across the globe. After the pandemic
situation, everywhere you walk, they just start to
build your temperature. They wanna make sure that
you are in a healthy situation.
What if we expand it to the the
time that you actually get in the car
to go to the airport? So if there's
any situation, for example, you have a higher
temperature than normal, they can just notify you
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that you are not actually allowed even get
in the airport boundaries. So we are minimizing
and containing any kind of the future exposure
of the people who have some health issue.
With the concept of moving portions of the
check-in, luggage, and security screening process
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to inside the vehicle bringing you to the
airport, think about how that could change the
design of the airport itself.
Right now when you arrive at an airport,
you're greeted by a long stretch of counters
and kiosks for each airline with space for
long lines to queue as passengers wait to
check-in and check their luggage. That's usually followed
by a space devoted to even longer lines
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to pass through security before you get to
some of the retail and restaurants
where you often encounter another long line. Finally,
you make your way to your gate where
you sit bunched together with other passengers who'll
be on your flight. I think within our
very conceptual
rethinking of it, in some of the ways
that we've designed it is that it's completely
almost brand new, sort of ground up rethinking
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of the airport where it's that central
core, which used to be for people, is
now for product and goods. Right? So there
is that sort of flip that we've broken
people
to be into smaller pools so that we
don't have to have that greater exposure to
larger numbers.
So we sort of inverted the current process
of how the architecture may support what the
inflow of people may look like. So a
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bit of that is taking into the idea
of retail
and that sort of remote warehouse,
remote services.
Potentially, instead of having,
shops peppered throughout the airport, we could have
a consolidated
core and then a distribution
organization.
So it could change the way that even
the architecture is configured.
Although necessary,
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security screening ranks among the passengers' least favorite
parts of the airport experience.
Sally described a new process
that could build upon the screening during your
ride to the airport. The main idea for
security was
very much, again, rooted in those three pillars
that we talked about, The integration of autonomous
systems or other technologies that are already in
existence that could be borrowed by the aviation
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industry to create new efficiencies, as well as
the health and wellness. So I would say
that the major play of it was introducing
the technologies like the micro millimeter scanning, like
the CT scanning that allows for dynamic screening.
I think dynamic screening is the first game
changing piece that allows for there to be
the elimination of those static
points, those single points of screening. So once
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that is eliminated, then you can start playing
into the sort of health and wellness aspect
of it. What is the spacing of of
people that will be safe, right? Six feet
is what we know of for for COVID
nineteen, but what would it be in the
future? So there's a spacing, there's the pacing,
and there's the movement of people. Picture a
security screening that doesn't involve waiting in line,
wondering how long you'll be bunched up next
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to strangers. So with the dynamic screening, I
think something that was interesting is just the
psychology of how people think and how people
behave and how can architecture play a stronger
role in sort of choreographing that. And so
an idea of it is people will be
a lot more willing to say walk ten
minutes than to stand for ten minutes. So
there is that sort of subjective
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bias that we have within our heads of
if you're walking from Concourse A to Concourse
B, you're much more willing to do that
than to stand for a very long time.
Instead, security could occur while you walk down
a hallway or stand on a moving platform
without having to take off your shoes or
unpack your carry on. And so that security
screening process is playing off of that psychology,
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is that if you're moving people in a
dynamic people mover that is full of stimulus
in terms of sites to the outdoors,
maybe art,
very dynamic
screens that are showing different ads. That's something
that could really provide a comfort
and a sort of entertainment of the security
process without having to feel like you're actually
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being formally securely screened. So playing that idea
of movement and dynamism within the security screening
process was something that we played with as
an idea
of how to better that experience and eliminate
those sort of anxiety and stressor points. Spreading
out travelers and reducing anxiety
could improve travelers' health and wellness.
The new technology
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could also provide further health screening as well.
I think that one thing that we were
looking at as well is that within entertainment
and retail industries, there's already this use of
dynamic scanning, as you just mentioned, facial recognition,
and things like that. And even within health
care, there is the element of identifying health
risks as well. There's abnormal heart rates or
(24:33):
higher temperatures or abnormal respiration, things like that.
And even the idea of behaviors as well.
If there's some sort of body language metric
that could be used to
identify people who are about to have a
seizure or about to have a stroke. So
there's a lot of opportunity within the technology
of facial or body
recognition
that sets up a lot safer environments for
(24:54):
people. That redesigned security screening system
also connects to the third pillar of their
design concept,
creating new revenue streams. Because there's this identity
recognition piece of it, there could be a
lot of opportunity
to cater the
ad spaces so that it's not physical storefront
that you would have digital storefront that then
allows for the digital
(25:15):
pieces to be able to flex and change
in a real time
manner to adapt to whoever is passing by
in that moment. And so there is the
adaptability
for the revenue streams to expand beyond the
vendors that are physically within the airport space.
Sally said rethinking what an airport could look
like went beyond new technology.
Her team also looked at the role something
(25:37):
as simple as furniture could play in the
air travel experience.
Harkening to some of our experiences
within workplace design and also health care. Furniture
came to be a piece of sort of
human scaled architecture that could start playing a
stronger role in how we're able
to modulate or reconfigure
(25:58):
aviation spaces so that they can flex to
varying needs. Could they be for,
smaller pods, larger pods? Could they be for
laying down or sitting up? There could be
ways in which the furniture could start to
softly enforce
proper distancing
or even safe distancing
without having to compromise
(26:19):
quality of environment as well as customer comfort.
When thinking about wellness,
they explored some bolder ideas too. We first
started the project looking at the history of
airports and how they came to look the
way that they are. And a major component
of the enclosure is the fumes from the
aircrafts. And so having the aircrafts at a
(26:40):
remote jetway,
it opens up the opportunity to reclaim some
of that outdoor space for the passengers. And
so allowing
the ability to access outdoor space, whether it's
for we could expand it, right, and have
it before, like, a quick run. That could
be a health care component. That could be
fitness classes. You know, that could be how
we spend your layover. But there are opportunities
(27:02):
to provide outdoor space
to not only increase health and wellness, but
could also be a potential expansion of revenue.
The idea of having outdoor recreation space at
an airport
may sound pretty foreign to US flyers,
but there are already trendsetting
airports in other parts of the world. The
(27:22):
main one, obviously, is the one Singapore that
everybody knows as as sort of the pinnacle
poster child of hospitality meets aviation. So there's
a lot of plantings,
waterfalls,
greens, all those sorts of things that provide
for there to be a very peaceful and
relaxing environment.
Some of the airports that were mentioned also
were some of them in Switzerland
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that had the ability to have outdoor spaces
during good weather, that they're able to sit
outside, enjoy a cup of coffee. So the
travel experience starts to
really become one with hospitality,
which when you enter hospitality,
it starts to introduce different service and revenue
streams that come within those types of industries.
So there's a little bit of a twofold
(28:04):
benefit to that. Suddenly, a layover sounds a
lot more appealing
when you're not spending your time waiting in
lines, looking for a restaurant with open seating,
or searching for an outlet to plug in
your phone. The most extreme one that I've
seen that I was flying back from Dominique
Republic to States, and they had the launch
that has a pool on it. So I
(28:24):
saw the people, they were swimming in the
pool.
And I think that was a very cool
experience that you're swimming and look at all
the planes. So if you have a couple
hours you have to spend, I think that's
probably gonna be a very good experience for
you. Many of these ideas related back to
the original design competition
and trying to improve passenger health and wellness.
Just lowered anxiety
(28:45):
as well as just the access to outdoor
fresh air is something that's really nice for
someone who's been cooped up in a metal
tube for several hours. Just nice to stretch
your legs, breathe some fresh air, and just
really relax before your next flight. Offering these
kinds of amenities
could also serve as an attraction for a
city's airport.
In some cases, when airports were able to
(29:06):
provide different types of venues like that that
are almost like attractors,
people will purposefully route their flights to fly
through a certain airport knowing that it provides
certain things. So, again, more revenue for that
airport. So it's, again, there's a little bit
of a twofold play that there could be
a lot of benefits. Brainstorming for the original
design competition
even produced some ideas that look far more
(29:27):
futuristic.
One of our other thoughts, which is maybe
a a three point o of the project,
is the concept of land. And so in
the future, we all understand that urban sprawl
is a concern. There's less space in our
cities. So what would the airport of the
future look like if the major
implication of space really comes down to that
sort of tarmac space of how much runway
(29:49):
an airplane needs to land and take off
as we know it. Who knows what airplanes
will look like in the future? But as
we know it, that's sort of a very
large piece of land. With there being less
land in the future for the airport, could
airports maybe go vertical?
Could they maybe go into some other configuration?
So some of our earlier sketches had shown
almost a Ferris wheel of sorts, and so
(30:10):
that kind of was something that I think
is a back burner idea that I would
think the three of us would like to
continue in the future. But the future really
is completely unknown at this point. So given
the trends of what we do see, global
warming, rising sea levels, there could be a
lot of more opportunity to rethink the airport
itself.
(30:31):
Sally, Hamed, and Tyler discussed some big ideas
for how airports and air travel could look
in the future.
The natural question that follows is, where do
you start? I think the purposeful intention for
what we're trying to do is to design
a sort of kit of parts that is
able to be adopted
and adapted
to existing airports, understanding that not every opportunity
(30:54):
we get could be a ground up construction.
It may be a retrofit. It may be
an addition. So coming up with different design
strategies
that could be implemented in a scaled or
varied fashion that would allow for airports of
the present or the future
to be able to adopt these ideas. The
most obvious barrier,
government regulation of air travel and security. We
(31:15):
talked a lot about TSA and the impacts
and just the regulation that this particular industry
has, which we all know is is a
lot and for good reasons. So this is
definitely an industry that tends to be very
slow moving, turning the cruise ship or the
oil tanker, if you will. And we're recognizing
that reality. I think Sally had mentioned that
this is meant to be a a system.
(31:37):
Right? And so I think the first steps
to implementing any of these ideas is to
really break this down
and identify some key, you know, critical components
that may
start to be tested in an airport environment.
We're not gonna sell the whole idea, but
maybe we could sell a particular piece of
this to an airport or an airport operator
that wants to start venturing out a little
(31:58):
bit further and start thinking a little more
progressively and
challenging, you know, what could that travel process
be for their particular airport. TSA and the
federal policies and aviation experts, like, all those
types of people would have to have a
proper buy in to these ideas. But I
guess the optimism of the matter is that
talking to some of our aviation folks who
are obviously in the day to day and
(32:20):
have all the conversations with the people in
the aviation industry, they're optimistic with our ability
to start folding a lot of this in
because it's scalable and could be something that's
implemented in pieces. Perhaps it will be easier
to gain traction
in other parts of the world before seeing
some of the more transformational
ideas in The US. Most of these constraints
(32:40):
are very specific to the industry in The
US. For example, if you look at the
different magazine that talking about the airport and
aviation industry, passenger terminal expo magazine, a lot
of this conversation that we are sharing in
our presentation,
some of them actually started to implement
those in the some market, for example, in
Europe and Asia. As Sally mentioned, they're bringing
(33:00):
the the conversation of the bringing nature to
the airport, which we know that there is
some all this pushback from the airports in
The US. I wanna make sure the security
is a huge deal. So any access from
the outside should be very limited. But we
know that that's not the case for some
markets in the Asia or some markets in
Europe that already have the system that they're
proposed to pick you up from the home
and bring you to the airport, and they
(33:21):
take care of the luggage without you. You
are not even aware of that. So the
market is very different from here in The
United States. But we are hoping that this
conversation and, the overall experience for the passenger
and, also the efficiency and optimization of the
system and also the revenue can be a
good driver
for The US market to start to move
toward that aspect as well. The research for
(33:44):
the one flight away concept began during 2020
in the early days of COVID.
As Sally, Hamed, and Tyler took their first
flights in almost two years late in 2021,
they couldn't help but view their surroundings differently.
I think in our research, we discovered where
the dirtiest places were. And so
that does change how you,
(34:06):
approach those parts of the travel process for
sure.
But, I mean, the the more you see
it, the more you wish you could, you
know, roll your sleeves up and and start,
you know, making change happen. We were curious.
What were the dirtiest places in the airport?
Well, according to different surveys, it was one
was either the touch kiosks where everybody touches
(34:28):
Oh. Or two, the security bins as well
as the boarding gates, the seats.
Those were the the three. They were actually
saying that they are dirtier than the bathrooms
because the bathrooms actually get clean and sanitized
pretty frequently because of them being bathed. But
because they're maybe not so obviously dirty things
that they're not clean and sanitized in the
same manner that the bathroom is not. Like.
(34:49):
I just wanna add here one more thing
that what we learned when we talked to
one of our aviation guys that actually the
dirtiest place is a jet weight
because no one cleans the jet weight forever
because they're so costly, and it's gonna be
a lot of operation impact. But, apparently, the
carpet that you see on the jet way
that you are walking from the gate to
the plane, that's probably the dirtiest place you
(35:11):
can find in the whole area.
So no no five second rule if you
drop a crowd's or something. No. No. Absolutely
not. Let it go.
Let it go forever.
Returning to the air also left them with
more philosophical observations
about the industry.
Having flown a couple times since COVID, I've
(35:32):
been surprised at honestly how little has maybe
that's a bit of a unconscious plug for
our project here. But the solutions,
though, are fine. Just realizing how much, you
know,
systematically has truly changed about the airport, and
and I really haven't seen much. You know,
the solutions are okay. We clean more. We
ask everybody to wear a mask. We x
off every other seat, so we distance. And
(35:54):
though those things are important and are a
good starting point, we've now been doing this
for over a year, coming up on probably
two years. And I think it's a testament
to how slow moving the industry truly is,
but it was a surprise to me of
how little that I've seen has actually changed
about how the airport function. It seemed exactly
the same pre COVID, but everyone has a
mask on. So it means that the industry,
(36:17):
we believe that they didn't
learn the lesson that they used to. Or
in fact, because that lesson needs to be
a lot of significant changes, maybe it takes
longer time to adopt and implement any solution
for the future.
But it seems that we just happy now
that we can just go back again to
the normal, which, quote, unquote, that normal is
(36:38):
very different now. I mean, who knows that
what's gonna happen on the next pandemic situation
or next any kind of the global situation
that we're gonna face and what's gonna be
the impact. It seemed that that lesson is
not learned, and we are hoping that in
the future, there's gonna be more conversation about
that. Just thinking a little bit out of
the box for the whole system to make
(36:58):
sure that we are providing a more resilient
system for the aviation industry. Sally said she
comes away from the project with a recognition
of the role design can play in dealing
with some of society's greatest challenges.
Like many issues that we're currently dealing with,
right, there's climate crisis and social disparity and
all these really major things that clearly show
that it's gonna require holistic,
(37:20):
multidisciplinary
collaboration.
And I think that as a designer, it's
a really exciting time in a way, just
knowing that we're about to enter a new
phase of design where there may be typologies
of architecture that may not yet exist. And
I think that it's understanding
that and rethinking about ways to creatively come
up with solutions and combinations of things that's
(37:40):
really exciting. Perhaps the biggest takeaway is the
importance of learning something from what we've all
gone through
over the last two years
and using that to make a positive impact.
It seems that that pandemic
exposed a lot of holes in the system,
and we are hoping that the people who
have the knowledge and the power and the
controlling the industry, they start to look at
(38:02):
more fundamentally and more holistic
approach to the aviation industry. We wanna make
sure that at the end, any system that
we are providing should be human centered. Make
sure that we are providing a better experience
for all the travelers. I'm gonna actually take
the words of one of our fellow panelists
that we shared the stage with for the
conference, but his words continue to echo in
mine. But he said that it was a
(38:23):
tragic sort of thing that we have to
continue to go through this now, you know,
almost two years later.
But the biggest tragedy would be if we
didn't take something away from this moment, if
we learned no lessons, and if we just
vaccinated ourselves out of this problem, that we
didn't glean from it the opportunities
to make really massive, big change for the
better. And so I think that's the takeaway
(38:43):
for sure
that I had from this entire experience that
there's nothing would teach lessons of this scale
and this magnitude in life and hopefully not
for another many, many years that we learn
another major lesson like this. But I think
that if we don't learn the lesson, that
would be the biggest tragedy.
So I'm hoping that we can continue as
designers
and and shapers of the world, make a
(39:05):
difference and and take advantage
of this terrible moment to make change for
the better.
For more information on this podcast,
visit hdrinc.com/speakingofdesign.
You'll find links to pictures, articles, and more
information about this project.
If you like what you heard, be sure
(39:26):
to rate us or leave feedback on iTunes,
Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm John Torek. And I'm Danny Sullivan. And
you're listening to Speaking of Design, bringing you
the stories of the engineers and architects who
are transforming
the world one project at a time. Close
your eyes and picture the last time you
visited the airport.
How would you describe that experience?
Today, we'll meet three architects who are reimagining
(00:24):
what the air travel journey could look like.
Their concept
began with a design competition to improve the
health of air travelers during a pandemic.
The conversations they started led to broader ideas
of how we might improve the efficiency and
convenience of air travel in the future.
(00:50):
When you ask somebody, they say, I really
love to travel, but they're rarely talking about
the travel process. They're, of course, talking about
the destination.
They're not talking about how they got to
that destination. That's Tyler Dye, a project designer
in HDR's Arlington, Virginia architecture studio. And it's
something that I think the industry has lost
over the years. I think early on, the
(01:11):
travel industry was a little bit less mass
transit oriented. It was much more about the
traveler. And we really think that this system
can bring that joy back to travel. And
it's all about travel for you. It's giving
people options. It's It's allowing them to be
the decision makers in their travel process, and
it's giving them an environment to enjoy that
process. Tider's experience
(01:32):
includes designing complex building types, including hospitals,
science laboratories,
and university science facilities.
As an architect, we have the privilege of
shaping
the spaces that everybody occupies during their everyday
lives, and that's really what drives me to
to do what we do. In early twenty
twenty,
Tyler and his colleagues, Sally Lee and Hamed
(01:55):
Ali, began to put their heads together for
an entry in health care design magazines
breaking through design competition.
That's really all about, you know, pushing the
boundaries, breaking the barriers, and really not setting
any limitations on yourself and really asking what
could health care be. At the time, all
conversations
about health were beginning to take on a
(02:16):
singular focus.
February 2020 was the start of a new
world for all of us. I think we
all know COVID was getting ready to start
changing our lives, I think, much more than
any of us ever anticipated.
We didn't know how big of an impact
COVID was gonna have, but we realized that
anything we did was probably gonna have a
major influence. And so that's really how
(02:37):
that idea was born. One of Tyler's colleagues,
Sally Lee, is a project designer with a
background in global commercial design,
higher education facilities,
and science and technology.
She draws a lot of inspiration from her
childhood. I got into architecture
a little bit as sort of like natural
flow of how I live my life. I
(02:57):
grew up in Hong Kong,
and traveled a ton when I was little
and then actually spent a lot of my
childhood in the city of Hong Kong and
then also in Lagos, Nigeria,
and then eventually here in The States. And
so I think that being exposed to a
lot of different countries and a lot of
different cultures was something that really struck me
since I was young, but then also understanding
(03:18):
the role that architecture plays in culture
and identity of a city and identity of
people. That sort of technical beauty of it
all was something that really attracted me of
just the kind of work that we do
and the impact that it has in the
communities.
The third member of the team, Hamed Ali,
also brings a worldly background,
having grown up in Iran where he earned
(03:39):
his bachelor of architecture degree from the University
of Tehran.
But Hamed joked that the team discovered another
source of inspiration as they discussed ideas for
the design competition.
I should just make sure that we are
giving some credits to Netflix
too because,
like, at the same time that we start
the conversation, we
show on a Netflix called Pandemic,
(04:00):
and that was one of the biggest trigger
that we start the conversation. Because what we
were hearing on that show and what we're
thinking that how it's gonna impact
the spread of any kind of the pandemic
situation
through the airport and air traveling was,
eye opening for us. And so we had
to pick how we wanted to address that.
And our initial thoughts and where we ended
(04:21):
up going was we wanted to address COVID
through a redesign of the global mass transit
infrastructure
system, and that at its core and its
heart is the airport and the airline industry.
But then as the year went on and
we started getting all the data coming in
from the impacts that the pandemic had on
the aviation industry,
it just really further strengthened that we had
(04:41):
targeted the right piece of architecture
just because of the major hits that the
industry was getting from the disturbances
of decreased travel,
increased anxiety,
and just overall
shaking the entire confidence of the world on
global travel at the time. Although Hamed, Tyler,
and Sally have worked on some of the
architecture world's most complex building types,
(05:03):
they were quick to point out that they
were taking off into a new type of
design. We're not aviation architects by our day
to day. Right? But I think, ultimately, we're
designers. And what's interesting about it is that
as the world is progressing, there's been so
much more sort of cross pollination of ideas.
For example, you know, even the more obvious
(05:23):
ones are the sort of self serve kiosks
at the airports coming from the health care
industry.
So we there's already starting to see influences
throughout. And so I think as three designers
coming from markets that are outside
of aviation, it brought that fresh perspective that
we're bringing from health care and education,
advanced technology,
(05:45):
retail, all those components that really start to
have lots of opportunity to create more robust
systems and processes within the aviation industry that
could help make it more resilient within the
future. They titled their entry, one flight away.
The concept to address COVID and future pandemics
through a complete redesign
(06:05):
and replanning of the global mass transit infrastructure
system, primarily the airport, to consider holistic health
through the traveler's journey. There were two big
problems that we were focusing on. The first
one that the role of the airport as
a travel hub are spreading this pandemic situation,
especially when you look at the global air
(06:25):
traveling, that one disease from the other side
of the globe can just travel with one
flight to the other side and just spread
so fast that it's gonna be very hard
to contain that spreading. And the other reason
that we focus on the airport and expand
it to the aviation industry or some of
the study that they had about the financial
impact of the aviation industry was mind blowing.
(06:47):
For example, aviation industry was one of the
fastest growing industry pre COVID because the growth
of the middle income families all around the
globe. So the pre COVID, the world traveler
numbers was about 4,720,000,000
travel per year based on the March 2019
study that they had. And they were planning
(07:07):
that it's gonna generate
a revenue of $581,000,000,000
for the industry. But after COVID impact, that
number not only got to the zero, also
they lost $315,000,000,000
per year.
So this number was just unbelievable, and it
just shows a gap. It shows a problem
(07:27):
to the whole aviation industry that
the whole system is not designed or is
not ready for the impact of the COVID
or pandemic situation. Their concept was one of
18
shortlisted
to further develop rich detailed submissions for a
health care design magazine jury to review. They
were proud to be named semifinalists,
(07:48):
but they shared a sense that one flight
away wasn't complete. I think all three of
us knew pretty quickly that we didn't think
we were done working on the project. We
felt we had more to give, and that's
really when we realized that if we were
gonna take the project to the next level,
as we mentioned, we are not the aviation
experts. We're designers, but we need to start
bringing in the experts of all the other
fields. So they began talking with colleagues in
(08:11):
other areas of expertise to widen their perspective.
Together,
they held nine design shreds with experts in
aviation,
interior and material design,
transportation
technology,
economics, and other specialty fields. It allowed us
to stop thinking about the project specifically
and only through a health care lens and
(08:31):
start thinking about the problem a little more
holistically. So when we stop thinking about just
the specific health care solution
and started addressing
a more complete and holistic,
redesign,
of the whole travel system as opposed to
just the airport. They designed the expanded concept
around three main pillars.
One, the use of autonomous systems.
(08:54):
Two, an increased focus
on health and wellness. And three, creating increased
revenue streams. So that's really I I think,
personally, when that shift happened, when we started
thinking about it more broadly, it became more
about restoring that customer confidence and experience. Though
the core problem is still the spread of
disease, the economics behind it, but it grew
(09:15):
to become, more about restoring that customer confidence
and experience,
but then also increasing the resiliency and efficiency
of that system to weather future pandemics much
better. A big component of it was also
the psychology of travel. Because as Tyler mentioned,
one of the pillars that we were analyzing
everything through was the health and wellness component.
(09:36):
And so as we all know, in some
parts of travel, there's a lot of anxiety
and nervousness that comes from just what happens,
like whether there's traffic or whether there's
long lines or large crowds or loud noises
and things like that. So a lot of
it was also analyzing ways in which that
we could start eliminating some of that. Stem
health and wellness is a huge component about
(09:57):
why we're readjusting the airport. So they began
to reexamine each element of the air travel
experience.
When we looked and we examined the way
the airport works nowadays
or currently, it's a system of individual components
that don't really talk to each other. They
aren't really connected. It's all about you have
to make your own way to the airport.
(10:18):
You arrive. You check yourself in. You check
your own luggage. You have to make your
own way through security,
etcetera, etcetera. So the way we saw overall
the inefficiencies is that it's a system of
disparate parts that don't talk to each other.
Some of those elements are outdated.
Many, including several security components, have been add
ons throughout the years. But what if you
(10:40):
started with a blank canvas and discarded any
preconceived notions of the existing air travel experience?
And so that's really where we saw the
opportunity
to
connect those systems through technology because nowadays, I
think we all know everything is connected. Our
phones are connected to our computers, to our
Gmail, to everything. There's no reason with the
technology that exists today that an autonomous system
(11:03):
that gets you from your house to the
airport isn't connected with the retail experience that
you're gonna experience once you arrive at the
airport. And likewise, there's no reason that the
luggage experience shouldn't
be completely integrated and seamless with that autonomous
system that gets you to or from the
airport. So that's where where we really saw,
I think, the overall efficiencies was just that
(11:24):
lack of communication
between elements of the system.
So they began this second phase of the
concept by asking a simple question.
When does the passenger's journey begin? When you
are traveling somewhere across the country, how long
(11:45):
does it take, and what exactly define your
experience when you are traveling as a air
traveler? Because your flight probably gonna be two
hours, and you're gonna have a couple hours
or one hour just waiting in the airport.
But if you look at your watch when
you're leaving your home and then you get,
for example, in your hotel room, there's usually
between six or seven hours. The question was
(12:05):
that, what's happening in the between those hours?
Is it part of your experience or you
just wanna focus on the time that you
are spending on the airport, on the aircraft?
And we decided that it's actually your experience
start when you're leaving the home. By starting
the passenger journey when you leave your home,
they began looking into how you get to
the airport and how you could begin to
make more efficient use of that time. So
(12:27):
we were looking at a different method that
you can get from the home to the
airport for a couple of reason. The most
important piece was the experience. We wanna make
sure that this experience for the travel is
gonna be smooth and convenient.
And the second one, we look at that,
what if the airport or the airlines look
at this process as as a new stream
(12:48):
for the revenue? We know that Uber, Lyft,
or all those, ride sharing app, they're making
million and million dollar of money or just
focus on the people who are going from
the home to the airport. What if aviation
does actually look at that as a new
solution to generate some revenue
and how we can make it a better
experience? How you wanna make sure that going
(13:09):
to the public transportation is not gonna add
to your anxiety and how we can make
sure that we are providing options for different
type of travelers to get from the home
to the airport. In their research, they found
that some airlines have piloted a service to
bring premium passengers from their homes to the
airport. And I said, what if we expand
this service to everyone and also make sure
(13:30):
that we are expanding the operation of the
system that we have for the airport behind
the airport as well? For example, what if
we have a sort of the system that
we can start to go through the screening
process for the passenger
when they are actually in their car getting
from the home to the airport.
By screening, I mean, with all this new
(13:51):
technology that we have through your phone, through
your car, go to the identity verification,
or as the pandemic
taught us that how we can start to
do some biometric scan. For example, they can
have your body temperature
or some basic vitals that they can make
sure that you are in a good health
before getting the airport. The concept would make
better use of your time en route to
(14:12):
the airport,
thus requiring you to spend less time at
the airport.
But the team recognizes
there could be a multitude of ways to
implement that type of system. One of the
interesting things we talked about was it's gonna
need to be a cooperation
between multiple systems outside outside the airport. Uber
is not gonna be able to do it
all. Lyft's not gonna do it all. So
(14:33):
it's gonna need to be
in cooperation with multiple things. And one of,
I think, the interesting
things we talked about was what if as
a new revenue stream driver, what if these
shuttles actually belong to an airline? And so
soon as you leave your house, you enter
into the American Airlines transport or the Delta
or whatever it is because that allows then
that airport and that airline to control and
(14:56):
to start providing service. Whether it's autonomous, it's
gonna be a mix. Especially early on, it's
gonna be a mix of things, I think,
that are gonna combine to
create a system that's efficient
and provide the amount of service that's gonna
be needed to move people from point a
to point b.
The the the nice thing about it being
within the city is that there is the
(15:17):
need to move masses of people at once
and would be able to eliminate
multiple vehicles being on the road of individuals
going to the airport versus moving them en
masse to the airport and be able to
bypass traffic and other sort of stressors that
could cause delay or sort of headaches. And
so the point that the group of us
were thinking was that if this was something
that was adopted by either the airport or
(15:39):
the airline itself, it's something that could be
predictable
and have a consistency to it that would
allow for them to readily
analyze what their throughput will be, which then
allows for greater efficiencies
and more consistent predictability within revenue
calculations. If you could begin your check-in the
second you set foot in your Uber or
(16:00):
autonomous airline shuttle, imagine if that was the
last point where you had to worry about
your luggage.
Everyone think that the luggage is the biggest
dilemma for the operation of the airport and
also for passenger. As a passenger,
it's carrying your luggage everywhere that you're going,
standing in line to check-in, standing in line
to go to the security.
(16:21):
These are all the fact that's gonna impact
your experience. It's creating that anxiety that you
have to stay in line. You wanna make
sure that you have to have everything packaged
correctly, and you don't have to take it
out. So what we thought, we said, what
if we should start to remove the luggage
for the the passenger experience? When you're home,
you know where you're going, so you just
(16:41):
have this system, and you just select to
check-in your luggage. And the autonomous system is
gonna come to your place, either a home,
is a hotel, or somewhere in the town,
and pick up the luggage, bring it to
the airport, going through the security, and just
put in the aircraft, and then deliver it
to you either in the destination airport or
(17:01):
deliver it to you in your the final
destination.
So this whole process is gonna help to
create a better experience for the passenger
and more efficient
system for the airline and airport as well.
This reimagined
ground transportation
could offer additional passenger services
that create new revenue streams for the airport
and airlines as well. These days, we are
(17:23):
using
different apps, for example, for ordering our food,
ordering our drink through the Starbucks app, through
the, Uber Eats or
DoorDash. So what if you just bring that
experience
to the passenger that are traveling from the
home to airport? Just imagine that you're sitting
in a car and you're going to the
airport, and you can just go ahead and
select the food that you would like to
(17:44):
have And let's say that I'm gonna go
there in the Terminal A, Gate B, and
your food is gonna be ready for you
to pick up. So you don't have to
go through all those line lines that we
have now on the concession of the airport
or different restaurant that they have. So you
everything is gonna be more con convenient and
consistent for you, and, also, it's gonna be
a new revenue for the airport. We've talked
(18:06):
about convenience and efficiency,
but we wondered how passengers might feel about
privacy.
Hamid explained that beginning your security screening in
the car would not feel much different than
using technology most of us are already accustomed
to. Today, we use our phone to just
do almost everything. For example, your face recognition,
your iPhone, to open your bank account,
(18:27):
to access to all the secure information that
you have. So the system and the technology
is there. It's just we never use that
for this sort of experience.
What if we just start to bring that
system into that autonomous vehicle that you have
and you start to go with the basic
identification
identity verification that you have inside the car?
(18:49):
For example, as soon as you see the
car, they're gonna go through your biometrics. For
example,
scan your face or scan your thumb and
make sure that you are the person that
you're gonna be traveling.
And this is gonna be the first phase
of the security processing, a security checking process
for the whole journey. The process would essentially
change the location of your first security
(19:09):
screening and use technology to automate it. It
would also open up the possibility of performing
health screenings before you get to the airport,
much like having your temperature taken before visiting
loved ones in a nursing home or taking
a COVID test before entering a new country.
Such a system might help prevent a future
pandemic
(19:30):
from spreading across the globe. After the pandemic
situation, everywhere you walk, they just start to
build your temperature. They wanna make sure that
you are in a healthy situation.
What if we expand it to the the
time that you actually get in the car
to go to the airport? So if there's
any situation, for example, you have a higher
temperature than normal, they can just notify you
(19:51):
that you are not actually allowed even get
in the airport boundaries. So we are minimizing
and containing any kind of the future exposure
of the people who have some health issue.
With the concept of moving portions of the
check-in, luggage, and security screening process
(20:14):
to inside the vehicle bringing you to the
airport, think about how that could change the
design of the airport itself.
Right now when you arrive at an airport,
you're greeted by a long stretch of counters
and kiosks for each airline with space for
long lines to queue as passengers wait to
check-in and check their luggage. That's usually followed
by a space devoted to even longer lines
(20:36):
to pass through security before you get to
some of the retail and restaurants
where you often encounter another long line. Finally,
you make your way to your gate where
you sit bunched together with other passengers who'll
be on your flight. I think within our
very conceptual
rethinking of it, in some of the ways
that we've designed it is that it's completely
almost brand new, sort of ground up rethinking
(20:59):
of the airport where it's that central
core, which used to be for people, is
now for product and goods. Right? So there
is that sort of flip that we've broken
people
to be into smaller pools so that we
don't have to have that greater exposure to
larger numbers.
So we sort of inverted the current process
of how the architecture may support what the
inflow of people may look like. So a
(21:21):
bit of that is taking into the idea
of retail
and that sort of remote warehouse,
remote services.
Potentially, instead of having,
shops peppered throughout the airport, we could have
a consolidated
core and then a distribution
organization.
So it could change the way that even
the architecture is configured.
Although necessary,
(21:43):
security screening ranks among the passengers' least favorite
parts of the airport experience.
Sally described a new process
that could build upon the screening during your
ride to the airport. The main idea for
security was
very much, again, rooted in those three pillars
that we talked about, The integration of autonomous
systems or other technologies that are already in
existence that could be borrowed by the aviation
(22:05):
industry to create new efficiencies, as well as
the health and wellness. So I would say
that the major play of it was introducing
the technologies like the micro millimeter scanning, like
the CT scanning that allows for dynamic screening.
I think dynamic screening is the first game
changing piece that allows for there to be
the elimination of those static
points, those single points of screening. So once
(22:26):
that is eliminated, then you can start playing
into the sort of health and wellness aspect
of it. What is the spacing of of
people that will be safe, right? Six feet
is what we know of for for COVID
nineteen, but what would it be in the
future? So there's a spacing, there's the pacing,
and there's the movement of people. Picture a
security screening that doesn't involve waiting in line,
wondering how long you'll be bunched up next
(22:48):
to strangers. So with the dynamic screening, I
think something that was interesting is just the
psychology of how people think and how people
behave and how can architecture play a stronger
role in sort of choreographing that. And so
an idea of it is people will be
a lot more willing to say walk ten
minutes than to stand for ten minutes. So
there is that sort of subjective
(23:09):
bias that we have within our heads of
if you're walking from Concourse A to Concourse
B, you're much more willing to do that
than to stand for a very long time.
Instead, security could occur while you walk down
a hallway or stand on a moving platform
without having to take off your shoes or
unpack your carry on. And so that security
screening process is playing off of that psychology,
(23:31):
is that if you're moving people in a
dynamic people mover that is full of stimulus
in terms of sites to the outdoors,
maybe art,
very dynamic
screens that are showing different ads. That's something
that could really provide a comfort
and a sort of entertainment of the security
process without having to feel like you're actually
(23:52):
being formally securely screened. So playing that idea
of movement and dynamism within the security screening
process was something that we played with as
an idea
of how to better that experience and eliminate
those sort of anxiety and stressor points. Spreading
out travelers and reducing anxiety
could improve travelers' health and wellness.
The new technology
(24:13):
could also provide further health screening as well.
I think that one thing that we were
looking at as well is that within entertainment
and retail industries, there's already this use of
dynamic scanning, as you just mentioned, facial recognition,
and things like that. And even within health
care, there is the element of identifying health
risks as well. There's abnormal heart rates or
(24:33):
higher temperatures or abnormal respiration, things like that.
And even the idea of behaviors as well.
If there's some sort of body language metric
that could be used to
identify people who are about to have a
seizure or about to have a stroke. So
there's a lot of opportunity within the technology
of facial or body
recognition
that sets up a lot safer environments for
(24:54):
people. That redesigned security screening system
also connects to the third pillar of their
design concept,
creating new revenue streams. Because there's this identity
recognition piece of it, there could be a
lot of opportunity
to cater the
ad spaces so that it's not physical storefront
that you would have digital storefront that then
allows for the digital
(25:15):
pieces to be able to flex and change
in a real time
manner to adapt to whoever is passing by
in that moment. And so there is the
adaptability
for the revenue streams to expand beyond the
vendors that are physically within the airport space.
Sally said rethinking what an airport could look
like went beyond new technology.
Her team also looked at the role something
(25:37):
as simple as furniture could play in the
air travel experience.
Harkening to some of our experiences
within workplace design and also health care. Furniture
came to be a piece of sort of
human scaled architecture that could start playing a
stronger role in how we're able
to modulate or reconfigure
(25:58):
aviation spaces so that they can flex to
varying needs. Could they be for,
smaller pods, larger pods? Could they be for
laying down or sitting up? There could be
ways in which the furniture could start to
softly enforce
proper distancing
or even safe distancing
without having to compromise
(26:19):
quality of environment as well as customer comfort.
When thinking about wellness,
they explored some bolder ideas too. We first
started the project looking at the history of
airports and how they came to look the
way that they are. And a major component
of the enclosure is the fumes from the
aircrafts. And so having the aircrafts at a
(26:40):
remote jetway,
it opens up the opportunity to reclaim some
of that outdoor space for the passengers. And
so allowing
the ability to access outdoor space, whether it's
for we could expand it, right, and have
it before, like, a quick run. That could
be a health care component. That could be
fitness classes. You know, that could be how
we spend your layover. But there are opportunities
(27:02):
to provide outdoor space
to not only increase health and wellness, but
could also be a potential expansion of revenue.
The idea of having outdoor recreation space at
an airport
may sound pretty foreign to US flyers,
but there are already trendsetting
airports in other parts of the world. The
(27:22):
main one, obviously, is the one Singapore that
everybody knows as as sort of the pinnacle
poster child of hospitality meets aviation. So there's
a lot of plantings,
waterfalls,
greens, all those sorts of things that provide
for there to be a very peaceful and
relaxing environment.
Some of the airports that were mentioned also
were some of them in Switzerland
(27:42):
that had the ability to have outdoor spaces
during good weather, that they're able to sit
outside, enjoy a cup of coffee. So the
travel experience starts to
really become one with hospitality,
which when you enter hospitality,
it starts to introduce different service and revenue
streams that come within those types of industries.
So there's a little bit of a twofold
(28:04):
benefit to that. Suddenly, a layover sounds a
lot more appealing
when you're not spending your time waiting in
lines, looking for a restaurant with open seating,
or searching for an outlet to plug in
your phone. The most extreme one that I've
seen that I was flying back from Dominique
Republic to States, and they had the launch
that has a pool on it. So I
(28:24):
saw the people, they were swimming in the
pool.
And I think that was a very cool
experience that you're swimming and look at all
the planes. So if you have a couple
hours you have to spend, I think that's
probably gonna be a very good experience for
you. Many of these ideas related back to
the original design competition
and trying to improve passenger health and wellness.
Just lowered anxiety
(28:45):
as well as just the access to outdoor
fresh air is something that's really nice for
someone who's been cooped up in a metal
tube for several hours. Just nice to stretch
your legs, breathe some fresh air, and just
really relax before your next flight. Offering these
kinds of amenities
could also serve as an attraction for a
city's airport.
In some cases, when airports were able to
(29:06):
provide different types of venues like that that
are almost like attractors,
people will purposefully route their flights to fly
through a certain airport knowing that it provides
certain things. So, again, more revenue for that
airport. So it's, again, there's a little bit
of a twofold play that there could be
a lot of benefits. Brainstorming for the original
design competition
even produced some ideas that look far more
(29:27):
futuristic.
One of our other thoughts, which is maybe
a a three point o of the project,
is the concept of land. And so in
the future, we all understand that urban sprawl
is a concern. There's less space in our
cities. So what would the airport of the
future look like if the major
implication of space really comes down to that
sort of tarmac space of how much runway
(29:49):
an airplane needs to land and take off
as we know it. Who knows what airplanes
will look like in the future? But as
we know it, that's sort of a very
large piece of land. With there being less
land in the future for the airport, could
airports maybe go vertical?
Could they maybe go into some other configuration?
So some of our earlier sketches had shown
almost a Ferris wheel of sorts, and so
(30:10):
that kind of was something that I think
is a back burner idea that I would
think the three of us would like to
continue in the future. But the future really
is completely unknown at this point. So given
the trends of what we do see, global
warming, rising sea levels, there could be a
lot of more opportunity to rethink the airport
itself.
(30:31):
Sally, Hamed, and Tyler discussed some big ideas
for how airports and air travel could look
in the future.
The natural question that follows is, where do
you start? I think the purposeful intention for
what we're trying to do is to design
a sort of kit of parts that is
able to be adopted
and adapted
to existing airports, understanding that not every opportunity
(30:54):
we get could be a ground up construction.
It may be a retrofit. It may be
an addition. So coming up with different design
strategies
that could be implemented in a scaled or
varied fashion that would allow for airports of
the present or the future
to be able to adopt these ideas. The
most obvious barrier,
government regulation of air travel and security. We
(31:15):
talked a lot about TSA and the impacts
and just the regulation that this particular industry
has, which we all know is is a
lot and for good reasons. So this is
definitely an industry that tends to be very
slow moving, turning the cruise ship or the
oil tanker, if you will. And we're recognizing
that reality. I think Sally had mentioned that
this is meant to be a a system.
(31:37):
Right? And so I think the first steps
to implementing any of these ideas is to
really break this down
and identify some key, you know, critical components
that may
start to be tested in an airport environment.
We're not gonna sell the whole idea, but
maybe we could sell a particular piece of
this to an airport or an airport operator
that wants to start venturing out a little
(31:58):
bit further and start thinking a little more
progressively and
challenging, you know, what could that travel process
be for their particular airport. TSA and the
federal policies and aviation experts, like, all those
types of people would have to have a
proper buy in to these ideas. But I
guess the optimism of the matter is that
talking to some of our aviation folks who
are obviously in the day to day and
(32:20):
have all the conversations with the people in
the aviation industry, they're optimistic with our ability
to start folding a lot of this in
because it's scalable and could be something that's
implemented in pieces. Perhaps it will be easier
to gain traction
in other parts of the world before seeing
some of the more transformational
ideas in The US. Most of these constraints
(32:40):
are very specific to the industry in The
US. For example, if you look at the
different magazine that talking about the airport and
aviation industry, passenger terminal expo magazine, a lot
of this conversation that we are sharing in
our presentation,
some of them actually started to implement
those in the some market, for example, in
Europe and Asia. As Sally mentioned, they're bringing
(33:00):
the the conversation of the bringing nature to
the airport, which we know that there is
some all this pushback from the airports in
The US. I wanna make sure the security
is a huge deal. So any access from
the outside should be very limited. But we
know that that's not the case for some
markets in the Asia or some markets in
Europe that already have the system that they're
proposed to pick you up from the home
and bring you to the airport, and they
(33:21):
take care of the luggage without you. You
are not even aware of that. So the
market is very different from here in The
United States. But we are hoping that this
conversation and, the overall experience for the passenger
and, also the efficiency and optimization of the
system and also the revenue can be a
good driver
for The US market to start to move
toward that aspect as well. The research for
(33:44):
the one flight away concept began during 2020
in the early days of COVID.
As Sally, Hamed, and Tyler took their first
flights in almost two years late in 2021,
they couldn't help but view their surroundings differently.
I think in our research, we discovered where
the dirtiest places were. And so
that does change how you,
(34:06):
approach those parts of the travel process for
sure.
But, I mean, the the more you see
it, the more you wish you could, you
know, roll your sleeves up and and start,
you know, making change happen. We were curious.
What were the dirtiest places in the airport?
Well, according to different surveys, it was one
was either the touch kiosks where everybody touches
(34:28):
Oh. Or two, the security bins as well
as the boarding gates, the seats.
Those were the the three. They were actually
saying that they are dirtier than the bathrooms
because the bathrooms actually get clean and sanitized
pretty frequently because of them being bathed. But
because they're maybe not so obviously dirty things
that they're not clean and sanitized in the
same manner that the bathroom is not. Like.
(34:49):
I just wanna add here one more thing
that what we learned when we talked to
one of our aviation guys that actually the
dirtiest place is a jet weight
because no one cleans the jet weight forever
because they're so costly, and it's gonna be
a lot of operation impact. But, apparently, the
carpet that you see on the jet way
that you are walking from the gate to
the plane, that's probably the dirtiest place you
(35:11):
can find in the whole area.
So no no five second rule if you
drop a crowd's or something. No. No. Absolutely
not. Let it go.
Let it go forever.
Returning to the air also left them with
more philosophical observations
about the industry.
Having flown a couple times since COVID, I've
(35:32):
been surprised at honestly how little has maybe
that's a bit of a unconscious plug for
our project here. But the solutions,
though, are fine. Just realizing how much, you
know,
systematically has truly changed about the airport, and
and I really haven't seen much. You know,
the solutions are okay. We clean more. We
ask everybody to wear a mask. We x
off every other seat, so we distance. And
(35:54):
though those things are important and are a
good starting point, we've now been doing this
for over a year, coming up on probably
two years. And I think it's a testament
to how slow moving the industry truly is,
but it was a surprise to me of
how little that I've seen has actually changed
about how the airport function. It seemed exactly
the same pre COVID, but everyone has a
mask on. So it means that the industry,
(36:17):
we believe that they didn't
learn the lesson that they used to. Or
in fact, because that lesson needs to be
a lot of significant changes, maybe it takes
longer time to adopt and implement any solution
for the future.
But it seems that we just happy now
that we can just go back again to
the normal, which, quote, unquote, that normal is
(36:38):
very different now. I mean, who knows that
what's gonna happen on the next pandemic situation
or next any kind of the global situation
that we're gonna face and what's gonna be
the impact. It seemed that that lesson is
not learned, and we are hoping that in
the future, there's gonna be more conversation about
that. Just thinking a little bit out of
the box for the whole system to make
(36:58):
sure that we are providing a more resilient
system for the aviation industry. Sally said she
comes away from the project with a recognition
of the role design can play in dealing
with some of society's greatest challenges.
Like many issues that we're currently dealing with,
right, there's climate crisis and social disparity and
all these really major things that clearly show
that it's gonna require holistic,
(37:20):
multidisciplinary
collaboration.
And I think that as a designer, it's
a really exciting time in a way, just
knowing that we're about to enter a new
phase of design where there may be typologies
of architecture that may not yet exist. And
I think that it's understanding
that and rethinking about ways to creatively come
up with solutions and combinations of things that's
(37:40):
really exciting. Perhaps the biggest takeaway is the
importance of learning something from what we've all
gone through
over the last two years
and using that to make a positive impact.
It seems that that pandemic
exposed a lot of holes in the system,
and we are hoping that the people who
have the knowledge and the power and the
controlling the industry, they start to look at
(38:02):
more fundamentally and more holistic
approach to the aviation industry. We wanna make
sure that at the end, any system that
we are providing should be human centered. Make
sure that we are providing a better experience
for all the travelers. I'm gonna actually take
the words of one of our fellow panelists
that we shared the stage with for the
conference, but his words continue to echo in
mine. But he said that it was a
(38:23):
tragic sort of thing that we have to
continue to go through this now, you know,
almost two years later.
But the biggest tragedy would be if we
didn't take something away from this moment, if
we learned no lessons, and if we just
vaccinated ourselves out of this problem, that we
didn't glean from it the opportunities
to make really massive, big change for the
better. And so I think that's the takeaway
(38:43):
for sure
that I had from this entire experience that
there's nothing would teach lessons of this scale
and this magnitude in life and hopefully not
for another many, many years that we learn
another major lesson like this. But I think
that if we don't learn the lesson, that
would be the biggest tragedy.
So I'm hoping that we can continue as
designers
and and shapers of the world, make a
(39:05):
difference and and take advantage
of this terrible moment to make change for
the better.
For more information on this podcast,
visit hdrinc.com/speakingofdesign.
You'll find links to pictures, articles, and more
information about this project.
If you like what you heard, be sure
(39:26):
to rate us or leave feedback on iTunes,
Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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