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tapas bars. Before JetBlue, no one had attempted a white-tablecloth restaurant at JFK since the reviewed by Greg Lindsay –designed coffee shop in Saarin- en’s terminal. But as airport “dwell times” have soared since 9/11, sit-down meals have become Heirport viable again. Rockwell’s personal contributions are a chan- delier of flat-screens floating above a grandstand ’s TWA terminal has where idling departing passengers will be able to watch the eternal stream of new arrivals. Rockwell went all the way back to William Whyte’s pioneer- a new neighbor that embodies the ing studies of human traffic in public spaces to create the layout and placement of his grandstand, realities of 21st-century air travel. which doubles as a traffic funnel. Once past the Marketplace, the terminal is more prosaic—artfully, purposefully so. “Everything is done with an eye toward usefulness,” Hooper told me, like the special slurry of scuff-camouflaging terrazzo in the halls, or the virtually indestructible blue carpeting that just might outlast the terminal. The only razzle-dazzle is provided by workstations at each gate from which passengers will be able to order food for delivery—an eye-opening innovation with the potential to be a customer-service disaster at peak hours. But the most crucial feature of all, at least from the airline’s perspective, is one that will likely go unnoticed by most passengers. Small closets stocked with cleaning supplies have been placed at each gate; the faster JetBlue can wipe down its JetBlue’s new JFK terminal planes, the faster it can reload and get them back in tries not to overshadow the air, saving money lost to delays and increasing the Eero Saarinen landmark out front. below With 20 each flight’s efficiency.T he same impulse is behind security lanes, Terminal the terminal’s dual taxiways, allowing one plane 5’s checkpoint is the to slip into a gate while another is pulling out. largest in the world. These may sound like small things, but they’re the blocking-and-tackling on which a profitable air- line is built—just ask Southwest, JetBlue’s spiritual progenitor, which has turned a profit every quarter JETBLUE AIRWAYS TERMINAL 5 richer, and larger than we see it today.” People designed by I.M. Pei.) The fallopian tubes between since 1973. , NY listened, albeit only in the East. Saarinen’s Flight Center and its vanished departure JetBlue hasn’t been so lucky. Buffeted by histori- Designed by Gensler, Arup, and Rockwell Group This is no fault of Gensler’s, or of its partners on halls have been preserved, although they now end cally high oil prices, it posted a $7 million loss in www.gensler.com the project—the engineering wizards of Arup and awkwardly in stairwells stuck between the ticket the second quarter of 2008, as opposed to a $21 the consummate showman David Rockwell. The hall and baggage claim. million profit the year before.I t sold nearly a fifth trio executed their brief to the letter, construct- The vast majority of passengers will arrive by of itself to Lufthansa for $300 million, then chipped Pity the Gensler architects who were handed the ing a handsome, efficient, and value-engineered- car or cab, anyway, entering the hall with board- in almost a third of that to cover the cost of build- task of building JetBlue a new terminal at New within-an-inch-of-its-life steel box embodying the ing passes and carry-on luggage already in hand. ing its terminal. JFK’s owner, the Port Authority York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, when new realities of American air travel. It is the first As such, the ticket counters and kiosks have been of and New Jersey, covered the rest of the most iconic and beloved terminal of all time true post-9/11, post–cheap oil terminal, and its shunted to the sides, leaving the security check- the $743 million bill. This is all a way of saying no is practically sitting on its front lawn. For decades, priorities point toward a kinder, gentler experi- point to dominate the room. Gensler stacked 20 one will ever build a terminal quite like Saarinen’s Eero Saarinen’s 1962 TWA Flight Center was the ence than the toxic mix of frustration, despair, and lanes end-on-end to create the largest single check- again, at least on these shores, because no one standard against which the aesthetic merits of all rage that has prevailed for the last seven years. The point in the world. It’s a brute-force (but effective) can afford to. In the meantime, treat yourself to a other airports were judged. His swooping bird- partners have eschewed the “hardware” of monu- solution to lines elsewhere seen only at Disneyland. panini the next time you’re passing through. Your of-prey structure has since been trumped by Sir mentalism for the “software” of better food, bigger And in a pair of nods to the Transportation Safety flight probably isn’t leaving for another two hours. Norman Foster’s lofty cathedrals in Hong Kong and bathrooms, and public theater. The real question Administration’s shoe-phobia, the checkpoints’ Beijing—the world’s largest buildings under one is whether it can withstand the grind of 20 million floors have a rubbery, stocking-friendly texture, Greg Lindsay is a contributing editor at Fast Company. roof. Each of those terminals is designed to handle footfalls each year. Saarinen’s masterpiece couldn’t. while a 225-foot-long bench awaits half-undressed His book Aerotropolis, a critical look at air transport, more passengers in a year than the entirety of JFK, The new terminal’s low, sloping roofline keeps travelers on the opposite side. urbanism, and globalization, will be published in 2009 and each boasted price tags running into the bil- its head down in a show of deference to the lawn Once osmosis has carried them through the by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

lions. They are everything Gensler’s terminal is ornament out front. “We never wanted to compete security membrane, travelers enter David Rock- tel a not: monuments to national pride, the bellows of with Saarinen,” Gensler’s principal architect well’s domain, i.e., “the Marketplace.” “The nexus P worldwide commerce, and the heartthrobs of crit- William D. Hooper told me during a tour. (As if of the terminal,” in Rockwell’s words, is a hub of ics everywhere. “Our architecture,” Saarinen once that legacy weren’t intimidating enough, JetBlue’s shops and restaurants, including a truly ambitious rakash P said, “is too humble. It should be prouder, much previous center of operations—Terminal 6—was lineup of brasseries, trattorias, sushi joints, and