ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how airport infrastructure in general, and the passenger terminal specifically, operate not merely as functional nodes in a system of transportation, but also as a form of soft power to project and reinforce national status. Beginning with early airfields, I consider how architects have adjusted this built form in response to functional and technical requirements such as innovations in aircraft design, threats to security, and ground transportation networks. I also illustrate how architects incorporate spectacular elements to create globally recognizable terminal buildings and how they design the interior in order to encourage passenger spending. After a brief overview of airport development and the types of land tracts they are built upon, I discuss the varied challenges that architects face in designing air terminals. Like many contemporary elements of the built landscape, these transportation systems evoke an aesthetic of smooth circulation that often obscures a range of uneven processes of development and mobility. I then look at the ways that air terminal circulation has changed to amplify consumption around the ‘captive audience’ of the air traveler. Finally, because airports are imbricated so thoroughly with a country’s image, I examine why some protest movements choose to interrupt the airport’s flows as a means to demonstrate against the state.
