The Mobile Lounge Edition

On Saarinen, airport economies, and future-willing design.

Noah here. What do the St. Louis Arch, the tulip chair, and the weird Washington-Dulles Airport people mover bus-a-ma-thingies have in common?

All were born from the mind of Finnish-American architect and industrial designer Eero Saarinen.

If you’ve ever flown through that airport, you’ve likely had the good (?) fortune of getting to ride in these very odd mobile living rooms, lovingly known also as “mobile lounges.” Designed at the beginning of the jet age, they were meant to reduce the walking required by passengers, bringing you straight to the door of your plane. The airport, and its mobile lounges, even got the full Charles & Ray Eames video treatment—a funny estranged cousin of the iconic Powers of Ten video.

Why is this interesting?

With a newly announced Dulles renovation on the horizon, these carpeted bus-rooms are likely driving their final miles. There are two things I will miss about these strange machines.

First, they were the first things that really made me observe just how much stuff only exists at an airport. It’s such an odd space, obviously fronted by jets and the different devices it takes to keep them operating. But when you really start to look out the window, you’ll notice that almost everything that occupies the runways of an airport exists nowhere else. From those funny almost-armored cars that pull the giant carts of luggage, to the less common jet stairs, which are also vehicles themselves. Everything needs to move and exists at funny proportions. Walking through the terminals, we tend not to spend much time thinking about just how high off the ground they’re raised. It’s all a specific and very odd world, and I love to imagine the specific economy that exists within their fences.

The second thing about the mobile lounge is that they had a strong point of view about the future. It’s not the future that happened, but it’s always fun to witness evidence of those ideas. One of the ways I like to describe Hong Kong—one of my favorite cities—is that it’s a vision for the future that still might arrive. The Central Mid-Levels Escalator that starts at Queen’s Road and rises through Hong Kong’s hills opened in 1993, and gives off strong vibes that whoever built it was sure this was a thing that would exist everywhere someday. Who am I to say it won’t?

While I don’t love these “lounges” as much as I like the Mid-Levels Escalator, I do appreciate that both bring a real point of view to the world. And I’ll always appreciate that those people movers reframed something ordinary for me. (NB)