PRECEDENTS, SOURCES OF INSPIRATION, AND
OTHER MOTIVATING COMMENTS

...on Travel, Interchanges, and Airports

"Time spent in travel is the state of being here nor there and thus non productive."
-- Maggie Toy: "Editorial". In Architecture of Transportation. Architectural Design, 64:5/6, May-June 1994.

"Time spent traveling and changing from one mode of transport to another is my time - my life."
-- William Alsop, "Transport Interchanges." In Architecture of Transportation. Architectural Design, 64:5/6, May-June 1994.

"In my mind, transport interchanges are seldom places which celebrate arrival or departure, which for many, remain the domain of the transport terminus. The terminus is a Victorian word associated with railways, whereas the terminal is a 20th-century word associated with airports and the world of electronics. Both, of course, only exist because of the other end."
-- Ian Ritchie, "Termini." In Architecture of Transportation. Architectural Design, 64:5/6, May-June 1994.

"Chicago's O'Hare Airport serves 66.5 million passengers a year, but only a fraction have Chicago as its destination. O'Hare is perhaps the most metaphysically non-existant locale ever dreamt up. While the airport is physically 'there' (after all, it can be measure, surveyed, telephoned, and driven to) it somehow seems not to exist at all."
-- Douglas Coupland, "Hubs." In The Most Important Buildings of the twentieth-century: Airport. The Photgraphers' Gallery, 1997.

"I would like to get on and off various modes of transport where I want to. I propose a greater number of smaller dispersed airports. I demand a service. I demand greater democracy in terms of numbers of geographical locations served."
-- William Alsop, "Transport Interchanges." In Architecture of Transportation. Architectural Design, 64:5/6, May-June 1994.

"Today the strongest impression I have is that most major interchanges are now designed to make more money from retailing and advertising than they do from their 'primary' function."
-- Ian Ritchie, "Termini." In Architecture of Transportation. Architectural Design, 64:5/6, May-June 1994.