Holding Fear

摘要

The airport is a landscape of emotions: hope, expectation, excitement, joy, love, awe, and especially fear. If phobias of flight were once related to the scale of the body, like fear of heights and claustrophobia, today they expand to the global scale, with fear of the Other, terrorist attacks, and the spread of disease. And as fear has changed with time, so have the spaces that have been designed to distract from, disperse, and eliminate it. Whereas in the 1920s waiting areas looked like homey living rooms, replete with fireplaces and portraits of heroic pilots, the designs of today's spacious, minimalist, sleek terminal waiting areas seek to calm nerves through art installations, shops, restaurants, massage services, and diverse sleeping and seating arrangements equipped with power outlets for electronic devices.