Deemed to be the homogenized “spaces of circulation, consumption, and communication”, airports around the world appear to be almost indistinguishable in their dissolution of identity. Despite technological changes in air travel, the typology of the airport has remained consistently ordinary.
In the European Cultural Center’s biennial exhibition, students from North Carolina State University’s College of Design worked alongside Curtis Fentress, Ana-Maria Drughi, and Joshua Stephens of Fentress Architects to propose innovative concepts for reshaping air travel. PLANE—SITE’s latest film from their series of short videos of the Time-Space-Existence exhibition showcases this design collaboration.
Responding to the prompt of redesigning the normative airport, five teams integrated advanced transportation technologies in relation to their location’s culture, geography, and economy in different cities around the world. Instead of simply being a transportation hub, the airport was considered to be a vital urban site of connection and exchange to discover the full potential of its purpose in an increasingly networked world.
Tackling issues related to sustainability, ecology, building technology, and social justice, each concept was actualized with a series of architectural models and video renderings. For example, some students disregarded the flat urban landscape typology that is typically associated with buildings, to create a tall tower densely located in the heart of the city. Others, for instance, explored the possibilities of bridging the gap between the stark poverty and wealth in the country of Brazil.
Professor, Wayne Place, who coordinated the Global Thinking studio states,
[The projects] are all dramatically different from each other. They each express a powerful vision for what’s possible in the future – and because they were freed to do that kind of thinking, the work they produced was really inspiring. We brought the students to the Biennale because it’s the Olympics for architects.
Explore all of the videos in the Time-Space-Existence series here on ArchDaily.
News via: PLANE—SITE