I'm John Torek. And I'm Danny Sullivan. And you're listening to Speaking of Design, bringing you the stories of the engineers and architects who are transforming the world one project at a time. Close your eyes and picture the last time you visited the airport. How would you describe that experience? Today, we'll meet three architects who are reimagining what the air travel journey could look like.
Their concept began with a design competition to improve the health of air travelers during a pandemic. The conversations they started led to broader ideas of how we might improve the efficiency and convenience of air travel in the future. When you ask somebody, they say, I really love to travel, but they're rarely talking about the travel process. They're, of course, talking about the destination. They're not talking about how they got to that destination. That's Tyler Dye, a project designer
in HDR's Arlington, Virginia architecture studio. And it's something that I think the industry has lost over the years. I think early on, the travel industry was a little bit less mass transit oriented. It was much more about the traveler. And we really think that this system can bring that joy back to travel. And it's all about travel for you. It's giving people options. It's It's allowing them to be the decision makers in their travel process, and it's giving them an environment to enjoy that
process. Tider's experience includes designing complex building types, including hospitals, science laboratories, and university science facilities. As an architect, we have the privilege of shaping the spaces that everybody occupies during their everyday lives, and that's really what drives me to
to do what we do. In early twenty twenty, Tyler and his colleagues, Sally Lee and Hamed Ali, began to put their heads together for an entry in health care design magazines breaking through design competition. That's really all about, you know, pushing the boundaries, breaking the barriers, and really not setting any limitations on yourself and really asking what could health care be. At the time, all conversations about health were beginning to take on a singular focus.
February 2020 was the start of a new world for all of us. I think we all know COVID was getting ready to start changing our lives, I think, much more than any of us ever anticipated. We didn't know how big of an impact COVID was gonna have, but we realized that anything we did was probably gonna have a major influence. And so that's really how
that idea was born. One of Tyler's colleagues, Sally Lee, is a project designer with a background in global commercial design, higher education facilities, and science and technology. She draws a lot of inspiration from her childhood. I got into architecture a little bit as sort of like natural flow of how I live my life. I grew up in Hong Kong, and traveled a ton when I was little and then actually spent a lot of my childhood in the city of Hong Kong and then also in Lagos, Nigeria,
and then eventually here in The States. And so I think that being exposed to a lot of different countries and a lot of different cultures was something that really struck me since I was young, but then also understanding the role that architecture plays in culture and identity of a city and identity of people. That sort of technical beauty of it all was something that really attracted me of just the kind of work that we do and the impact that it has in the communities.
The third member of the team, Hamed Ali, also brings a worldly background, having grown up in Iran where he earned his bachelor of architecture degree from the University of Tehran. But Hamed joked that the team discovered another source of inspiration as they discussed ideas for the design competition.
I should just make sure that we are giving some credits to Netflix too because, like, at the same time that we start the conversation, we show on a Netflix called Pandemic, and that was one of the biggest trigger that we start the conversation. Because what we were hearing on that show and what we're thinking that how it's gonna impact the spread of any kind of the pandemic situation through the airport and air traveling was,
eye opening for us. And so we had to pick how we wanted to address that. And our initial thoughts and where we ended up going was we wanted to address COVID through a redesign of the global mass transit infrastructure system, and that at its core and its heart is the airport and the airline industry.
But then as the year went on and we started getting all the data coming in from the impacts that the pandemic had on the aviation industry, it just really further strengthened that we had targeted the right piece of architecture just because of the major hits that the industry was getting from the disturbances of decreased travel, increased anxiety, and just overall shaking the entire confidence of the world on
global travel at the time. Although Hamed, Tyler, and Sally have worked on some of the architecture world's most complex building types, they were quick to point out that they were taking off into a new type of design. We're not aviation architects by our day to day. Right? But I think, ultimately, we're designers. And what's interesting about it is that as the world is progressing, there's been so much more sort of cross pollination of ideas.
For example, you know, even the more obvious ones are the sort of self serve kiosks at the airports coming from the health care industry. So we there's already starting to see influences
throughout. And so I think as three designers coming from markets that are outside of aviation, it brought that fresh perspective that we're bringing from health care and education, advanced technology, retail, all those components that really start to have lots of opportunity to create more robust systems and processes within the aviation industry that could help make it more resilient within the future. They titled their entry, one flight away.
The concept to address COVID and future pandemics through a complete redesign and replanning of the global mass transit infrastructure system, primarily the airport, to consider holistic health through the traveler's journey. There were two big
problems that we were focusing on. The first one that the role of the airport as a travel hub are spreading this pandemic situation, especially when you look at the global air traveling, that one disease from the other side of the globe can just travel with one flight to the other side and just spread so fast that it's gonna be very hard
to contain that spreading. And the other reason that we focus on the airport and expand it to the aviation industry or some of the study that they had about the financial impact of the aviation industry was mind blowing. For example, aviation industry was one of the fastest growing industry pre COVID because the growth of the middle income families all around the globe. So the pre COVID, the world traveler numbers was about 4,720,000,000 travel per year based on the March 2019
study that they had. And they were planning that it's gonna generate a revenue of $581,000,000,000 for the industry. But after COVID impact, that number not only got to the zero, also they lost $315,000,000,000 per year. So this number was just unbelievable, and it just shows a gap. It shows a problem to the whole aviation industry that the whole system is not designed or is not ready for the impact of the COVID
or pandemic situation. Their concept was one of 18 shortlisted to further develop rich detailed submissions for a health care design magazine jury to review. They were proud to be named semifinalists, but they shared a sense that one flight away wasn't complete. I think all three of us knew pretty quickly that we didn't think
we were done working on the project. We felt we had more to give, and that's really when we realized that if we were gonna take the project to the next level, as we mentioned, we are not the aviation experts. We're designers, but we need to start bringing in the experts of all the other fields. So they began talking with colleagues in other areas of expertise to widen their perspective.
Together, they held nine design shreds with experts in aviation, interior and material design, transportation technology, economics, and other specialty fields. It allowed us to stop thinking about the project specifically and only through a health care lens and start thinking about the problem a little more holistically. So when we stop thinking about just the specific health care solution and started addressing a more complete and holistic, redesign, of the whole travel system as opposed to
just the airport. They designed the expanded concept around three main pillars. One, the use of autonomous systems. Two, an increased focus on health and wellness. And three, creating increased revenue streams. So that's really I I think, personally, when that shift happened, when we started thinking about it more broadly, it became more
about restoring that customer confidence and experience. Though the core problem is still the spread of disease, the economics behind it, but it grew to become, more about restoring that customer confidence and experience, but then also increasing the resiliency and efficiency of that system to weather future pandemics much better. A big component of it was also
the psychology of travel. Because as Tyler mentioned, one of the pillars that we were analyzing everything through was the health and wellness component. And so as we all know, in some parts of travel, there's a lot of anxiety and nervousness that comes from just what happens, like whether there's traffic or whether there's long lines or large crowds or loud noises and things like that. So a lot of it was also analyzing ways in which that
we could start eliminating some of that. Stem health and wellness is a huge component about why we're readjusting the airport. So they began to reexamine each element of the air travel experience. When we looked and we examined the way the airport works nowadays or currently, it's a system of individual components that don't really talk to each other. They aren't really connected. It's all about you have to make your own way to the airport. You arrive. You check yourself in. You check
your own luggage. You have to make your own way through security, etcetera, etcetera. So the way we saw overall the inefficiencies is that it's a system of disparate parts that don't talk to each other. Some of those elements are outdated. Many, including several security components, have been add ons throughout the years. But what if you started with a blank canvas and discarded any preconceived notions of the existing air travel experience?
And so that's really where we saw the opportunity to connect those systems through technology because nowadays, I think we all know everything is connected. Our phones are connected to our computers, to our Gmail, to everything. There's no reason with the technology that exists today that an autonomous system that gets you from your house to the airport isn't connected with the retail experience that you're gonna experience once you arrive at the
airport. And likewise, there's no reason that the luggage experience shouldn't be completely integrated and seamless with that autonomous system that gets you to or from the airport. So that's where where we really saw, I think, the overall efficiencies was just that lack of communication between elements of the system. So they began this second phase of the concept by asking a simple question.
When does the passenger's journey begin? When you are traveling somewhere across the country, how long does it take, and what exactly define your experience when you are traveling as a air traveler? Because your flight probably gonna be two hours, and you're gonna have a couple hours or one hour just waiting in the airport. But if you look at your watch when you're leaving your home and then you get, for example, in your hotel room, there's usually
between six or seven hours. The question was that, what's happening in the between those hours? Is it part of your experience or you just wanna focus on the time that you are spending on the airport, on the aircraft? And we decided that it's actually your experience start when you're leaving the home. By starting the passenger journey when you leave your home, they began looking into how you get to the airport and how you could begin to
make more efficient use of that time. So we were looking at a different method that you can get from the home to the airport for a couple of reason. The most important piece was the experience. We wanna make sure that this experience for the travel is gonna be smooth and convenient. And the second one, we look at that, what if the airport or the airlines look at this process as as a new stream
for the revenue? We know that Uber, Lyft, or all those, ride sharing app, they're making million and million dollar of money or just focus on the people who are going from the home to the airport. What if aviation does actually look at that as a new solution to generate some revenue and how we can make it a better
experience? How you wanna make sure that going to the public transportation is not gonna add to your anxiety and how we can make sure that we are providing options for different type of travelers to get from the home to the airport. In their research, they found that some airlines have piloted a service to bring premium passengers from their homes to the
airport. And I said, what if we expand this service to everyone and also make sure that we are expanding the operation of the system that we have for the airport behind the airport as well? For example, what if we have a sort of the system that we can start to go through the screening process for the passenger when they are actually in their car getting from the home to the airport.
By screening, I mean, with all this new technology that we have through your phone, through your car, go to the identity verification, or as the pandemic taught us that how we can start to do some biometric scan. For example, they can have your body temperature or some basic vitals that they can make sure that you are in a good health before getting the airport. The concept would make better use of your time en route to the airport, thus requiring you to spend less time at the airport.
But the team recognizes there could be a multitude of ways to implement that type of system. One of the interesting things we talked about was it's gonna need to be a cooperation between multiple systems outside outside the airport. Uber is not gonna be able to do it all. Lyft's not gonna do it all. So it's gonna need to be in cooperation with multiple things. And one of, I think, the interesting things we talked about was what if as a new revenue stream driver, what if these
shuttles actually belong to an airline? And so soon as you leave your house, you enter into the American Airlines transport or the Delta or whatever it is because that allows then that airport and that airline to control and to start providing service. Whether it's autonomous, it's
gonna be a mix. Especially early on, it's gonna be a mix of things, I think, that are gonna combine to create a system that's efficient and provide the amount of service that's gonna be needed to move people from point a to point b. The the the nice thing about it being within the city is that there is the need to move masses of people at once and would be able to eliminate multiple vehicles being on the road of individuals going to the airport versus moving them en
masse to the airport and be able to bypass traffic and other sort of stressors that
could cause delay or sort of headaches. And so the point that the group of us were thinking was that if this was something that was adopted by either the airport or the airline itself, it's something that could be predictable and have a consistency to it that would allow for them to readily analyze what their throughput will be, which then allows for greater efficiencies and more consistent predictability within revenue
calculations. If you could begin your check-in the second you set foot in your Uber or autonomous airline shuttle, imagine if that was the last point where you had to worry about your luggage. Everyone think that the luggage is the biggest dilemma for the operation of the airport and also for passenger. As a passenger, it's carrying your luggage everywhere that you're going, standing in line to check-in, standing in line to go to the security. These are all the fact that's gonna impact
your experience. It's creating that anxiety that you have to stay in line. You wanna make sure that you have to have everything packaged correctly, and you don't have to take it out. So what we thought, we said, what if we should start to remove the luggage for the the passenger experience? When you're home, you know where you're going, so you just have this system, and you just select to
check-in your luggage. And the autonomous system is gonna come to your place, either a home, is a hotel, or somewhere in the town, and pick up the luggage, bring it to the airport, going through the security, and just put in the aircraft, and then deliver it to you either in the destination airport or deliver it to you in your the final destination. So this whole process is gonna help to create a better experience for the passenger and more efficient system for the airline and airport as well.
This reimagined ground transportation could offer additional passenger services that create new revenue streams for the airport and airlines as well. These days, we are using different apps, for example, for ordering our food, ordering our drink through the Starbucks app, through the, Uber Eats or DoorDash. So what if you just bring that experience to the passenger that are traveling from the
home to airport? Just imagine that you're sitting in a car and you're going to the airport, and you can just go ahead and select the food that you would like to have And let's say that I'm gonna go there in the Terminal A, Gate B, and your food is gonna be ready for you to pick up. So you don't have to go through all those line lines that we have now on the concession of the airport
or different restaurant that they have. So you everything is gonna be more con convenient and consistent for you, and, also, it's gonna be a new revenue for the airport. We've talked about convenience and efficiency, but we wondered how passengers might feel about privacy. Hamid explained that beginning your security screening in the car would not feel much different than using technology most of us are already accustomed to. Today, we use our phone to just
do almost everything. For example, your face recognition, your iPhone, to open your bank account, to access to all the secure information that you have. So the system and the technology is there. It's just we never use that for this sort of experience. What if we just start to bring that system into that autonomous vehicle that you have and you start to go with the basic identification identity verification that you have inside the car? For example, as soon as you see the
car, they're gonna go through your biometrics. For example, scan your face or scan your thumb and make sure that you are the person that you're gonna be traveling. And this is gonna be the first phase of the security processing, a security checking process for the whole journey. The process would essentially change the location of your first security
screening and use technology to automate it. It would also open up the possibility of performing health screenings before you get to the airport, much like having your temperature taken before visiting loved ones in a nursing home or taking a COVID test before entering a new country. Such a system might help prevent a future pandemic from spreading across the globe. After the pandemic situation, everywhere you walk, they just start to
build your temperature. They wanna make sure that you are in a healthy situation. What if we expand it to the the time that you actually get in the car to go to the airport? So if there's any situation, for example, you have a higher temperature than normal, they can just notify you that you are not actually allowed even get in the airport boundaries. So we are minimizing and containing any kind of the future exposure of the people who have some health issue.
With the concept of moving portions of the check-in, luggage, and security screening process to inside the vehicle bringing you to the airport, think about how that could change the design of the airport itself. Right now when you arrive at an airport, you're greeted by a long stretch of counters and kiosks for each airline with space for long lines to queue as passengers wait to
check-in and check their luggage. That's usually followed by a space devoted to even longer lines to pass through security before you get to some of the retail and restaurants where you often encounter another long line. Finally, you make your way to your gate where you sit bunched together with other passengers who'll
be on your flight. I think within our very conceptual rethinking of it, in some of the ways that we've designed it is that it's completely almost brand new, sort of ground up rethinking of the airport where it's that central core, which used to be for people, is now for product and goods. Right? So there is that sort of flip that we've broken people to be into smaller pools so that we don't have to have that greater exposure to larger numbers.
So we sort of inverted the current process of how the architecture may support what the inflow of people may look like. So a bit of that is taking into the idea of retail and that sort of remote warehouse, remote services. Potentially, instead of having, shops peppered throughout the airport, we could have a consolidated core and then a distribution organization. So it could change the way that even the architecture is configured.
Although necessary, security screening ranks among the passengers' least favorite parts of the airport experience. Sally described a new process that could build upon the screening during your ride to the airport. The main idea for security was very much, again, rooted in those three pillars that we talked about, The integration of autonomous systems or other technologies that are already in existence that could be borrowed by the aviation industry to create new efficiencies, as well as
the health and wellness. So I would say that the major play of it was introducing the technologies like the micro millimeter scanning, like the CT scanning that allows for dynamic screening. I think dynamic screening is the first game changing piece that allows for there to be the elimination of those static points, those single points of screening. So once that is eliminated, then you can start playing into the sort of health and wellness aspect of it. What is the spacing of of
people that will be safe, right? Six feet is what we know of for for COVID nineteen, but what would it be in the future? So there's a spacing, there's the pacing, and there's the movement of people. Picture a security screening that doesn't involve waiting in line, wondering how long you'll be bunched up next to strangers. So with the dynamic screening, I think something that was interesting is just the psychology of how people think and how people behave and how can architecture play a stronger
role in sort of choreographing that. And so an idea of it is people will be a lot more willing to say walk ten minutes than to stand for ten minutes. So there is that sort of subjective bias that we have within our heads of if you're walking from Concourse A to Concourse B, you're much more willing to do that than to stand for a very long time. Instead, security could occur while you walk down a hallway or stand on a moving platform without having to take off your shoes or
unpack your carry on. And so that security screening process is playing off of that psychology, is that if you're moving people in a dynamic people mover that is full of stimulus in terms of sites to the outdoors, maybe art, very dynamic screens that are showing different ads. That's something that could really provide a comfort and a sort of entertainment of the security process without having to feel like you're actually
being formally securely screened. So playing that idea of movement and dynamism within the security screening process was something that we played with as an idea of how to better that experience and eliminate those sort of anxiety and stressor points. Spreading out travelers and reducing anxiety could improve travelers' health and wellness. The new technology could also provide further health screening as well.
I think that one thing that we were looking at as well is that within entertainment and retail industries, there's already this use of dynamic scanning, as you just mentioned, facial recognition, and things like that. And even within health care, there is the element of identifying health risks as well. There's abnormal heart rates or higher temperatures or abnormal respiration, things like that. And even the idea of behaviors as well.
If there's some sort of body language metric that could be used to identify people who are about to have a seizure or about to have a stroke. So there's a lot of opportunity within the technology of facial or body recognition that sets up a lot safer environments for people. That redesigned security screening system also connects to the third pillar of their design concept,
creating new revenue streams. Because there's this identity recognition piece of it, there could be a lot of opportunity to cater the ad spaces so that it's not physical storefront that you would have digital storefront that then allows for the digital pieces to be able to flex and change in a real time manner to adapt to whoever is passing by in that moment. And so there is the adaptability for the revenue streams to expand beyond the vendors that are physically within the airport space.
Sally said rethinking what an airport could look like went beyond new technology. Her team also looked at the role something as simple as furniture could play in the air travel experience. Harkening to some of our experiences within workplace design and also health care. Furniture came to be a piece of sort of human scaled architecture that could start playing a stronger role in how we're able to modulate or reconfigure aviation spaces so that they can flex to varying needs. Could they be for,
smaller pods, larger pods? Could they be for laying down or sitting up? There could be ways in which the furniture could start to softly enforce proper distancing or even safe distancing without having to compromise quality of environment as well as customer comfort. When thinking about wellness, they explored some bolder ideas too. We first started the project looking at the history of airports and how they came to look the
way that they are. And a major component of the enclosure is the fumes from the aircrafts. And so having the aircrafts at a remote jetway, it opens up the opportunity to reclaim some of that outdoor space for the passengers. And so allowing the ability to access outdoor space, whether it's for we could expand it, right, and have it before, like, a quick run. That could be a health care component. That could be fitness classes. You know, that could be how
we spend your layover. But there are opportunities to provide outdoor space to not only increase health and wellness, but could also be a potential expansion of revenue. The idea of having outdoor recreation space at an airport may sound pretty foreign to US flyers, but there are already trendsetting airports in other parts of the world. The main one, obviously, is the one Singapore that everybody knows as as sort of the pinnacle
poster child of hospitality meets aviation. So there's a lot of plantings, waterfalls, greens, all those sorts of things that provide for there to be a very peaceful and relaxing environment. Some of the airports that were mentioned also were some of them in Switzerland that had the ability to have outdoor spaces during good weather, that they're able to sit
outside, enjoy a cup of coffee. So the travel experience starts to really become one with hospitality, which when you enter hospitality, it starts to introduce different service and revenue streams that come within those types of industries. So there's a little bit of a twofold benefit to that. Suddenly, a layover sounds a lot more appealing when you're not spending your time waiting in lines, looking for a restaurant with open seating, or searching for an outlet to plug in
your phone. The most extreme one that I've seen that I was flying back from Dominique Republic to States, and they had the launch that has a pool on it. So I saw the people, they were swimming in the pool. And I think that was a very cool experience that you're swimming and look at all the planes. So if you have a couple hours you have to spend, I think that's probably gonna be a very good experience for
you. Many of these ideas related back to the original design competition and trying to improve passenger health and wellness. Just lowered anxiety as well as just the access to outdoor fresh air is something that's really nice for someone who's been cooped up in a metal tube for several hours. Just nice to stretch your legs, breathe some fresh air, and just really relax before your next flight. Offering these kinds of amenities could also serve as an attraction for a city's airport.
In some cases, when airports were able to provide different types of venues like that that are almost like attractors, people will purposefully route their flights to fly through a certain airport knowing that it provides certain things. So, again, more revenue for that airport. So it's, again, there's a little bit of a twofold play that there could be a lot of benefits. Brainstorming for the original design competition even produced some ideas that look far more futuristic.
One of our other thoughts, which is maybe a a three point o of the project, is the concept of land. And so in the future, we all understand that urban sprawl is a concern. There's less space in our cities. So what would the airport of the future look like if the major implication of space really comes down to that sort of tarmac space of how much runway an airplane needs to land and take off as we know it. Who knows what airplanes
will look like in the future? But as we know it, that's sort of a very large piece of land. With there being less land in the future for the airport, could airports maybe go vertical? Could they maybe go into some other configuration? So some of our earlier sketches had shown almost a Ferris wheel of sorts, and so that kind of was something that I think is a back burner idea that I would think the three of us would like to continue in the future. But the future really
is completely unknown at this point. So given the trends of what we do see, global warming, rising sea levels, there could be a lot of more opportunity to rethink the airport itself. Sally, Hamed, and Tyler discussed some big ideas for how airports and air travel could look in the future. The natural question that follows is, where do
you start? I think the purposeful intention for what we're trying to do is to design a sort of kit of parts that is able to be adopted and adapted to existing airports, understanding that not every opportunity we get could be a ground up construction. It may be a retrofit. It may be an addition. So coming up with different design strategies that could be implemented in a scaled or varied fashion that would allow for airports of the present or the future
to be able to adopt these ideas. The most obvious barrier, government regulation of air travel and security. We talked a lot about TSA and the impacts and just the regulation that this particular industry has, which we all know is is a lot and for good reasons. So this is definitely an industry that tends to be very slow moving, turning the cruise ship or the oil tanker, if you will. And we're recognizing that reality. I think Sally had mentioned that this is meant to be a a system.
Right? And so I think the first steps to implementing any of these ideas is to really break this down and identify some key, you know, critical components that may start to be tested in an airport environment. We're not gonna sell the whole idea, but maybe we could sell a particular piece of this to an airport or an airport operator that wants to start venturing out a little bit further and start thinking a little more progressively and challenging, you know, what could that travel process
be for their particular airport. TSA and the federal policies and aviation experts, like, all those types of people would have to have a proper buy in to these ideas. But I guess the optimism of the matter is that talking to some of our aviation folks who are obviously in the day to day and have all the conversations with the people in the aviation industry, they're optimistic with our ability to start folding a lot of this in because it's scalable and could be something that's
implemented in pieces. Perhaps it will be easier to gain traction in other parts of the world before seeing some of the more transformational ideas in The US. Most of these constraints are very specific to the industry in The
US. For example, if you look at the different magazine that talking about the airport and aviation industry, passenger terminal expo magazine, a lot of this conversation that we are sharing in our presentation, some of them actually started to implement those in the some market, for example, in Europe and Asia. As Sally mentioned, they're bringing the the conversation of the bringing nature to the airport, which we know that there is some all this pushback from the airports in
The US. I wanna make sure the security is a huge deal. So any access from the outside should be very limited. But we know that that's not the case for some markets in the Asia or some markets in Europe that already have the system that they're proposed to pick you up from the home and bring you to the airport, and they take care of the luggage without you. You are not even aware of that. So the market is very different from here in The
United States. But we are hoping that this conversation and, the overall experience for the passenger and, also the efficiency and optimization of the system and also the revenue can be a good driver for The US market to start to move toward that aspect as well. The research for the one flight away concept began during 2020 in the early days of COVID. As Sally, Hamed, and Tyler took their first flights in almost two years late in 2021, they couldn't help but view their surroundings differently.
I think in our research, we discovered where the dirtiest places were. And so that does change how you, approach those parts of the travel process for sure. But, I mean, the the more you see it, the more you wish you could, you know, roll your sleeves up and and start, you know, making change happen. We were curious. What were the dirtiest places in the airport? Well, according to different surveys, it was one was either the touch kiosks where everybody touches
Oh. Or two, the security bins as well as the boarding gates, the seats. Those were the the three. They were actually saying that they are dirtier than the bathrooms because the bathrooms actually get clean and sanitized pretty frequently because of them being bathed. But because they're maybe not so obviously dirty things that they're not clean and sanitized in the same manner that the bathroom is not. Like.
I just wanna add here one more thing that what we learned when we talked to one of our aviation guys that actually the dirtiest place is a jet weight because no one cleans the jet weight forever because they're so costly, and it's gonna be a lot of operation impact. But, apparently, the carpet that you see on the jet way that you are walking from the gate to the plane, that's probably the dirtiest place you can find in the whole area. So no no five second rule if you
drop a crowd's or something. No. No. Absolutely not. Let it go. Let it go forever. Returning to the air also left them with more philosophical observations about the industry. Having flown a couple times since COVID, I've been surprised at honestly how little has maybe that's a bit of a unconscious plug for our project here. But the solutions, though, are fine. Just realizing how much, you know, systematically has truly changed about the airport, and and I really haven't seen much. You know,
the solutions are okay. We clean more. We ask everybody to wear a mask. We x off every other seat, so we distance. And though those things are important and are a good starting point, we've now been doing this for over a year, coming up on probably two years. And I think it's a testament to how slow moving the industry truly is, but it was a surprise to me of how little that I've seen has actually changed about how the airport function. It seemed exactly the same pre COVID, but everyone has a
mask on. So it means that the industry, we believe that they didn't learn the lesson that they used to. Or in fact, because that lesson needs to be a lot of significant changes, maybe it takes longer time to adopt and implement any solution for the future. But it seems that we just happy now that we can just go back again to the normal, which, quote, unquote, that normal is
very different now. I mean, who knows that what's gonna happen on the next pandemic situation or next any kind of the global situation that we're gonna face and what's gonna be the impact. It seemed that that lesson is not learned, and we are hoping that in the future, there's gonna be more conversation about that. Just thinking a little bit out of the box for the whole system to make sure that we are providing a more resilient
system for the aviation industry. Sally said she comes away from the project with a recognition of the role design can play in dealing with some of society's greatest challenges. Like many issues that we're currently dealing with, right, there's climate crisis and social disparity and all these really major things that clearly show that it's gonna require holistic, multidisciplinary collaboration.
And I think that as a designer, it's a really exciting time in a way, just knowing that we're about to enter a new phase of design where there may be typologies of architecture that may not yet exist. And I think that it's understanding that and rethinking about ways to creatively come up with solutions and combinations of things that's
really exciting. Perhaps the biggest takeaway is the importance of learning something from what we've all gone through over the last two years and using that to make a positive impact. It seems that that pandemic exposed a lot of holes in the system, and we are hoping that the people who have the knowledge and the power and the controlling the industry, they start to look at more fundamentally and more holistic
approach to the aviation industry. We wanna make sure that at the end, any system that we are providing should be human centered. Make sure that we are providing a better experience for all the travelers. I'm gonna actually take the words of one of our fellow panelists that we shared the stage with for the conference, but his words continue to echo in mine. But he said that it was a tragic sort of thing that we have to continue to go through this now, you know, almost two years later.
But the biggest tragedy would be if we didn't take something away from this moment, if we learned no lessons, and if we just vaccinated ourselves out of this problem, that we didn't glean from it the opportunities to make really massive, big change for the better. And so I think that's the takeaway for sure that I had from this entire experience that there's nothing would teach lessons of this scale and this magnitude in life and hopefully not for another many, many years that we learn
another major lesson like this. But I think that if we don't learn the lesson, that would be the biggest tragedy. So I'm hoping that we can continue as designers and and shapers of the world, make a difference and and take advantage of this terrible moment to make change for the better. For more information on this podcast, visit hdrinc.com/speakingofdesign. You'll find links to pictures, articles, and more information about this project.
If you like what you heard, be sure to rate us or leave feedback on iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.