PERSONAL SECURITY: THE DOOR AS SATUR SYMBOL, AGAIN. Security systems no longer rely on the brute force of a heavy door but on a combination of indelible biometric data and ephemeral digital records. Doors that know you in advance, likely to be phased in soon at airports around the world, do not have to unleash their full arsenal of defensive measures, and so
UNIVERSIDAD POLITÉCNICA DE MADRID ESCUELA TÉCNICA SUPERIOR DE ARQUITECTURA
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can maintain the feeling –increasingly important for our sense of status- of un-
federico soriano Textos 2014-2015
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hindered, seamless global travel. Anyone who complains about excessive, blind, routinized airport security is now confronted with a (false) choice: either accept the democratic inconvenience of universal checks posedly risky travellers. The door, elsewhere drained of the ornamentation, finery, and weightiness that used to convey meaning about the people who could pass through it, re-emerges at the airport as a viciously precise instrument conferring status and rank. “Todays checkpoint was designed 40 years ago to stop hijackers carryng metal. Today, everybody is equally challenged to prove themselves innocent. My
Door (Extracts)
vision for the checkpoint of the future combines technology and intelligence to
REM KOOLHAAS
end this one-sizes-fits-all approach. Passengers will walk through tunnels of tech-
Elements of Architecture.- 14 International Arc. Exhibition. Biennale di Venezia
nology appropriate to the risk-level identified with background screening without stopping, stripping or unpacking”. (Giovani Bisignani, IATA’s Director General and CEO, at Wings Club, New York, March 31, 2011)
2011. Prototype of IATA’s futuristic vision of a “Checkpoint of the future”, dividing travelers into three tunnels according to risk: enhaced , normal, known. In the “enhanced” tunnel, travelers would have to pause in front of a sequence of surveillance devices, while “known” travelers face a tunnel equipped only with an iris scanner at the beginning, to verify their identity...
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Airport: stretched door 1970-2020 As logical entrance and exit points to the city for millions of travelers, airports represent the modern equivalent of the city gate, bearing all its symbolic weight. In the Jet Age 1960s, airports are built as glamorous places; even through the 1970s, after the first modern hijackings, security involves relatively light-weight X-ray equipment. In the U.S., 9/11 provokes a dramatic explosion of ever-more demanding procedures, with each subsequent terror scare provoking new rituals: the removal of shoes, bans liquids, full body scans. “While security represented 5-8 percent of airport operating costs a decade ago”, notes the International Air Transport Association, “the figure has increased to as much as 35 percent at some airports today and there can be no confidence that this trend will change…” Today, the Transportation Safety Authority boasts no less than 20 separate checks on travellers. Screenings, searches, and scannings are only the most obvious manifestations of the procedure that extends well before and well after arrival. The airport becomes an endless door stretching out ahead of travellers…
“From 2020 and beyond it is envisaged that the passenger will be able to flow through the security checkpoint without interruption unless the advanced technology identifies a potential threat. A passenger will have a level of security screening based on information from states of departure and arrival through bilateral risk assessments in real-time. In terms of the passenger experience, there will no longer be the burden of divesting by default, and there are expected to be little to no queues as a result of the enhanced speed at which screening can oc1973 Security Check in at Columbia Metropolitan Airport in South Carolina. Scanning of all passengers becomes mandatory in the U.S. at the start of 1973
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ties, means that the airport security zone actually starts in your house. ACI unveils
20 layers of u.s. airport security
a blueprint for the three phases of implementation…” 2011 20 layers of airport security, implemented by the TSA. “We use layers of security to ensure the security of the traveling public and the Nation’s transportation system. Because of their visibility to the public, we are most associated with the airport checkpoints that our Transportation Security Officers operate. These checkpoints, however, constitute only security layer of the many in place to analysis, checking passenger manifest against watch lists, random canine team searchers at airports, federal air marshals, federal flight deck officers and more security measures both visible and invisible to the public. Each one of these layers alone is capable of stopping a terrorist attack. In combination their security value is multiplied, creating a much stronger, formidable system. A terrorist who has to overcome multiple security layers in order to carry out an attack is more likely to be pre-empted, deterred, or to fail during the attempt”. (About TSA: Layers of Security”, Transportation Security Authority, www.tsa.gov/).
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TXL: Berlin Tegel Thinness 1975 The unique “drive gate” terminal, designed by Gerkan, Marg and Partners (GMP), is the epitome of convenient, short walking distance between landside and airside. Cars emerge inside the ring shaped terminal to drop off passengers, who face just 25-meter walk across a corridor to their gate, where check in and security are integrated. The 21st century’s more demanding security screening requirements and the need for more shopping render the narrow geometry of Tegel’s terminal inefficient with regard to operating costs and revenue generation. The increased costs to operate the plethora of security checkpoints and the inability to concentrate passengers flows to a centralized shopping area result in significant functional and financial limitations; Tegel is declared obsolete even though it continues to handle nearly 20 million passengers per year.
CHECKPOINT THERAPY Where some see only endless layers of tedium and security state paranoia, others see a business opportunity. Yoga studios, helpful dogs, and other soothing amenities multiply to ease the stress of airport security. SMART SECURITY: 2014-2020 The dream of no having to “divest” your shoes, belts, liquids, and laptops at airport checkpoints means a surrender to enhance surveillance technology coming online in the next six years, according to the blue print of the Airports Council International (ACI), representing airport operators in 177 countries and the International Air Transport Association (IATA). “Smart Security” though is no longer simply focused on the “checkpoint”. By 200, the “bilateral agreement for 25 meters: seamless transition from curb to airplane.
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risk assessment”, in which countries share information about passenger identi9
Trays for personal belongings are larger, and clad with soothing nature imagery. Ads for SpringHill Marriot, which paid for the makeover, compete with airport signage.
BER: Branderburg Willy Brandt Thickness 2016? After years of construction and logistics delays –leading to the firing of designers, Gerkan, Marg & Partner and the bankruptcy of their partners, JSK Architekten –Berlin is waiting to see the opening of the new BER Airport, meant to replace Tegel and Schönefeld. BER will initially accommodate 27 million passengers per year, who will pass through three levels and traverse up to 500 meters distance before boarding the plane. Processing and security areas within BER include a vast departure hall with 10 check in areas and a total of 118 desks, 36 security lines and a central baggage reclaim hall with eight carousels. 150 shops, restaurants, and service facilities and a 9,000 m2 airside marketplace are planned to maximize the concession revenues of the Flughafen Berlin Brandenburg GmbH.
EXPEDITED SECURITY The TSA’s solution to the morass of airport security: make people pay pleasantries –both with money and with personal data. For an $85 fee and assent to a digital backgroung check, travellers can enjoy the “TSA PreTM Experience”, allowing them to access a special expedited line in which they do not have to remove shoes, belts, coats, or their laptop from their bag. EYE=DOOR Layers of stratification multiply within highly mobile elite traveller, who is able and willing to pay, from the rest. Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport boasts that its Privium program, “for frequent fliers who want holdup-free travel”, will inject “the pleasure back to travelling”. For just €21 a year, Privium Basic members are guaranteed expedited border crossing if they submit to an iris scan. For €205 a year, Schiphol offers priority parking, a special lounge, business class check-in, and the use of special walkway circumventing the departure hall, taking them almost directly from parking garage to gate. 8
40.000 m2 departure hall. At least seven spaces have to be passed through for a passenger to reach their flight.
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THE PAT DOWN American Civil Liberties Union, “What to Expect When Getting a New TSA PatDown”, ACLU.org, November 21, 2010. “Based on the reports we have received, those who are subjected to the searches will very likely experience the following which appear to be “standard practice”: * Agents fingering your ankles and running their hands all the way up your legs, including the area between your inner thighs and crotch; * Agents patting your genital area through your clothing; * Agents rubbing and squeezing your arms, back, stomach, buttocks, and breasts with open hands through your clothing. Screeners often run their fingers along the underwire of women’s bras; * Agents running their fingers through your hair and the area around your neck and the collar of your shirt; * Agents running their fingers several inches down the waistband of your pants or skirt, often involving touching and/or exposing your bare stomach. You may also experience what some have reported: *Agents performing these searches in full view of other, gawking passengers,
LUXURY SECURITY In lieu of a fundamental change to the typically grueling system of airport
without informing travelers of their right to be screened in private;
security, “The Next Level”, a concept in Dallas sponsored by the Marriot-owned
* Agents touching your genitals through your clothing with shocking and even
Spring Hill Suites hotel, aims to at least make it a more comfortable experience.
painful force;
The Next Level aims to transform checkpoints into “a welcoming and aesthetically
* Agents pressing between the cheeks of your buttocks through you clothing;
appealing space designed to offer travelers a new level of comfort inside a secu-
* Agents repeatedly touching the same parts of your body, for no apparent reason;
rity checkpoint”. The checkpoint features leather couches, music, nature imagery,
* Agents with demeanors that range from embarrassed or apologetic, to coldly
and direct passage into Marriot hotel lobbies. Flat-panel screens deliver both use-
professional, to aggressive and hostile, to creepy;
ful information and advertisements. The scheme is a partnership with Securityt-
* Being delayed and forced to wait for extended periods of time;
Point, a company that sells ads inside x-ray trays. “We want to think about it as a
* You may be separated from your carry-on belongings, which are often left un-
service instead of a governmental gap nobody touches and everyone tolerates”,
guarded while the pat-down takes place. One woman reported being separated
says an airport official. (Scott McCartney, “A Kinder, Gentler Airport TSA Screen-
from her infant during the pat-down…”
ing Checkpoint”, The Wall Street Journal, October 16, 2013).
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