It’s interesting that despite having a very similar function, an air terminal looks and feels drastically different from a train station. The former is impersonal (I’d even say dehumanizing), artificial, large but empty. The latter, on the other hand, feels vibrant, crowded, human.

Consider the visual imagery associated with an airport, and that of a train station. When I think of a train station, I see an old platform, rusty steel beams. The platform is crowded, people interact with each other. There is steam. It’s dark and the golden, point lights suffice barely to illuminate the absolutely necessary parts of the platform. The train–the machine–is a prominent part of the scene, it is right there, close to all the passengers. An airport, on the other hand, is made up of long well-lit corridors with conveyor belts that push people along. It’s sunny and bright out, yet the artificial light indoors makes the passengers feel lethargic, purposeless. Nobody interacts with anyone else. The airplanes, although much bigger than the train, aren’t as majestic because they are all far away and by the time of their tour-de-force (the take off) they are only small points on the horizon to the observer at the terminal.

There are many reasons for this difference, the most important ones being structure (physical attributes and constraints), location, and what I’d call cultural and technological maturity. An airport is usually large because it has to accommodate the physical requirements of the gates; this necessitates conveyor belts, and creates the void. The train station can be much smaller because all it requires is enough platform space for all the simultaneously arriving and departing trains. The airport is most often on the outskirts of the city, and its sole purpose is to be a terminal for airplanes. This single purpose makes it impersonal and monotonous. A train station, usually in the center of the city, is usually a hub for other public transportation–people with diverse purposes mingle in one place (which makes it more crowded and increases interaction, as well as allows for more diverse retail areas).

Finally–and this is probably the reason why these two places have such different visual connotations–the trains have been with us (and thus have been part of our culture) for much longer and represent an element of nostalgia (mature, more “human”, reliable and powerful steam technology, as opposed to prone-to-failure and difficult to grasp technology of air transportation).

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 18th, 2010 at 07:31 and is filed under art, retrospective. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.