“In un mondo pieno di caos e imperfezioni, il terminal mi parve un rifugio prezioso e affascinante, pieno di logica ed eleganza…se mi avessero chiesto di portare un marziano a visitare un luogo che racchiudesse efficacemente tutto lo spettro dei temi che percorrono la nostra civiltà… mi sarei senz’altro diretto verso gli atri delle partenze e degli arrivi.”

"Passenger terminals are morphing into shopping malls as well as artistic and recreational venues. No longer restricted to offering  magazine stands, fast-food outlets, and duty-free shops, airport terminals now house brand-name boutiques, specialty stores, and  upscale restaurants. Larger airports in Asia and Europe are going further, incorporating gallerias, shopping streets, and gourmet and  culinary clusters, as well as meeting, entertainment, arts, and cultural venues.  

 In the cloudless dawn, a sequence of planes, each visible as a single diamond, had lined up at different heights, like pupils in a school photo, on their final approach to the north runway. Their wings unfolded themselves into elaborate and unlikely arrangements of irregularly sized steel grey panels. Having avoided the earth for so long, wheels that had last touched the ground in San Francisco or Mumbai hesitated and slowed almost to a standstill as they arched and prepared to greet the rubber-stained English tarmac with a burst of smoke that made manifest their planes' speed and weight.  With the aggressive whistling of their engines, the airborne visitors appeared to be rebuking this domestic English morning for its somnolence. They were like a delivery person who cannot resist pushing a little too insistently and vengefully on the door bell of a still-slumbering household. All around them, the M4 corridor was waking up reluctantly. There were kettles being switched on in Reading, suits being ironed in Slough, children unfurling themselves beneath their Thomas the Tank Engine duvets in Staines.

             After all, we all do the same things. We wait, worry, ask ourselves how the trip will go on while clothing ourselves, buying things and feeding ourselves in exactly the same way. The no man’s land of a ‘transit lounge’ is in reality everyone’s land.........

See video"Il Genio di Leonardo", esposizione itinerante che ha toccato le grandi capitali del mondo. La Mostra sarà ospitata al Terminal 1 dell'Aeroporto Leonardo da Vinci di Roma-Fiumicino, a partire dal 12 ottobre.

Airports are gateways to the cities they're in, and finally they're starting to do them proud. Anyone who has traveled back and forth for school or work with some regularity over the last ten years knows that, until very recently, airport food consisted of an Au Bon Pain sandwich, a Starbucks muffin, something sweet from Cinnabon, or a beer at some strange version of a bar you might have found in that airport’s city.