When an airport gate is a different kind of gate: a much needed delight in Austin, Texas

(Greetings from a darkening November. I have several substantial posts in the pipeline concerning the election.  I’ve been sharing thoughts across social media and my Patreon. Yet for today, on a weekend, I wanted to share something lighter and perhaps inspiring, while it is still fresh in mind.  This is a true story about a delightful thing with no politics.  If you’re in the mood, enjoy.  Then look to my next posts.)

Sometimes public art surprises and delights me.  I needed some of that this week,  without knowing it, and maybe you do, too.  I will tell you about one such experience I had the other night.

I was walking through the Austin, Texas airport after a conference where I’d presented three times. I was tired, the hour was late, and my flight was delayed, possibly breaking a connection, so I was in a dour mood.  After the customary pains of the security line, I was looking for my gate.  Stomping along, I scanned the gate signs hung on terminal walls: 16, 15, 14, infinity sign, 13, 12…. hang on, was that an infinity sign?

I did a double take and circled back. Yes it was an infinity sign. Surely that was a cute emblem for an airport restaurant, right?  No, the sign was precisely the same size and format as the others, situated right in the terminal’s sequence.  Was Rod Serling standing nearby, about to narrate? Confused and curious, I stepped back in the corridor to study the gate behind the sign.

The gate area at first glance looked like other gates – signs, seats, people resting – but differed in other ways:

Now my curiosity took over and I had to figure out what was going on.  I plunked down my bags and investigated, starting with the big itinerary display on the left.

At first glance it looked like any other such board, listing departures or arrivals, with airlines, gates, times, and status for each flight.  And yet, on closer inspection, Nashville and Dallas weren’t shown:

(If that’s hard to read, here’s a closeup of one chunk of the board:)

Ah. Realization dawned on my worn-out mind. These were imaginary locations from fiction and folklore.  A Wrinkle in Time, Arthurian legend, Dune, Terry Pratchett, The Little Prince, Nineteen Eighty-Four… this gate was a kind of elaborate, physical fanfiction, an art installation!

I couldn’t help grinning and decided to document the experience.  I looked up and saw the ceiling was an active part of the installation, with panels set askew, plus a big object hanging overhead:

Infinity signs stood for the sheer expansiveness and invention of the human mind, plus our endless sense of escape. Do you see the black grill under that box? It’s a speaker.  Every so often a voice would speak from it, updating the crowd on various flights, their requirements, their status.

Shifting to the gate’s external wall, I found this panel showing the status of the currently served flight:

I liked the added details for the destination.  I also wondered if there was a database behind this whole project, or if these were flat text/HTML files.

To the left of that panel was… well, a flier would have expected a door to a jetbridge or corridor leading to the actual plane. Instead, there was a much more fanciful gate:

The light behind the doors was bright indeed.  And no, the doors didn’t open – I tested them, pulling on the doorknobs.

On one door panel was this sign, possibly installed for safety and/or legal purposes:

To the door’s left, mounted on the wall, was another artifact. It looked like something from the late nineteenth century and offered to print you a ticket, or to create a digital one:

Alas, the interface was frozen when I got there. The printer wasn’t printing and the virtual ticket’s QR code took me to a broken image.  But I could still see the last virtual ticket it had created:

(By the way, from a design perspective, that is much, much better layout than the tickets printed by United et al.)

I stepped back from the walls to consider the gate’s center. This was filled with actual gate furniture, seats which a good number of people were using very practically.  I couldn’t tell how many were enjoying the art or just plunked themselves down to rest.

There were also some nice ottomans and small wooden tables, some of which was set into chairs at unusual angles:

The red material (pleather?) contained text worked into its surface, but the uncolored writing was both hard to make out and difficult to photograph.

More furniture appeared against the back wall, and this time it was even more creative:

Yes, that rack of seats gradually and literally fades into the wall.

Curious, I walked out of the gate to see if there was something on the other side of that wall, and sure enough there was:

The human legs to the right were not part of the installation.  The half-trashcan was.

You can see the other half of that disappearing row of seats appear, although the window didn’t include a door for use to enter.

Mounted on the wall of that hidden space, that kind of alleyway, was a gesture towards bibliography:

Returning to the gate itself I found something I’d missed, a small stand with an explanatory note:

(The warning about food and drink didn’t stop some folks.) The QR code takes you to this simple, clear WordPress web page. I found more information on Zweig’s website.

My friend Alan Levine pointed out a video by the designer which helpfully includes some of the audio I failed to capture, along with other people interacting with the installation:

I doff my virtual hat to Janet Zweig. This is an impressive and delightful project which gives travelers in grueling airports a blissful escape.

I hope you enjoyed this.  Coming up: posts on other subjects.