One irony of the digital age is that even as the Internet has allowed us to triumph over distance, it has also created the desire for travel. Be it to consummate a business deal or explore a new amorous prospect, we are more than ever compelled to get up and go. Some of this newfound mobility is taken up by trains, some by cars but more often than not by airplanes. According to The Economist, air travel has doubled since 2000, inevitably making the airport something of a new phenomenon.
More than a simple facility helping passengers ticket and get on a plane, today's airports are small cities, catering to the global traveler who must remain connected at all hours. The more expansive of them house chain stores, restaurants, high end fashion shops, massage parlors, museums and much more. Ralph Nader, the onetime presidential candidate, likened them to malls where among "the blizzard of commercialism you have to search hard to even find basic airport information."
Indeed, airports have so ballooned in size they have become entities unto themselves, cutting passengers off from important experiences before and after. Security needs since 2001 have not helped, of course, adding to the problem by not only consuming more space but, perhaps more importantly, by so thoroughly infusing in us a sense of anxiety that all we want to do is get on a plane and vanish.
Jetways of the late '50s and '60s, those tubes that directly link planes to terminals, may have started the isolation, compelling the designer George Nelson to note that the modern airport is characterized by what he termed "encapsulation," a method engineered to dial in an environment removed from the one outside. And this for a variety of economic and psychological reasons, none of which are meant to redeem in the passenger a positive sense of self.
At airports such as Pullman-Moscow, the terminal is more important than ever. Being modest in size, they can restore to travel the dignity of arriving and departing, of providing the space through which meaningful greetings and well wishes can be exchanged and remembered. Unlike the LAXes and Sea-Tacs, they are fundamentally linked to the communities next to which they sit, paid and managed by them, making them true ambassadors of values and work advanced in those communities.
They should stand as extensions of our classrooms, science centers, expressions of social communion, love of landscape. They should accommodate spaces that foster learning - encouraging teachers to bring students for a lesson in aerodynamics - or friendship - inviting friends to share a meal and a conversation against a picturesque backdrop.
None of these attributes are available at the Pullman-Moscow Airport, and it is incumbent upon us to see to it they are in the next iteration of ideas. Plans for a new facility may still be in their embryonic stage but with the current realignment of the runways underway, we will soon inevitably need a new building.
The current one must either be thoroughly reinvented or completely scratched. It says nothing of the daily experiences and the creative endeavors afoot nearby in our labs, art studios, culinary establishments. It doesn't even have a decent coffee vending machine, let alone a cafe befitting of our Northwest coffee reputation, or a food venue from which to enjoy the last few moments before boarding a flight and from which to view the stunning hills across the way. A duller and more banal building there isn't, as if intentionally engineered to kill the last bit of joy one naturally and effortlessly brings to the love of flying. We must do better, but first we need to speak up.
Ayad Rahmani has been with Washington State University since 1997 and is an associate professor in the School of Design and Construction.
