Olakh

Transportation · Airport terminal

2023 · sP+a

With Aum Gohil, Rivka Roy, and Rohan Mangalpally

Olakh, the Marathi word for identity, reimagines the Pre-Embarkation Security Check (PESC) zone of Mumbai Airport's Terminal 2. Questioning what our identity is, it draws on the local landscapes of India and three ideas, dharti (land), kapda (cloth), and makaan (home). Together they invite the people of Bombay to form a personal association with art and the environment around them.

Terminal 2's peacock-inspired columns already give the hall a strong identity, yet a passenger's relationship with the space is only a visual one, with the roof overhead. Set side by side, the existing hall and the proposal show the shift. Working in the interstitial space between floor and roof, with the terminal's own patterns and columns as its canvas, the design engages passengers with the whole space, the floor, the roof, and the void between them.

The intervention is set out in layers between the floor and the 11 m void below the roof. The mounds rise within a 1.2 m embed zone and a further 1.8 m is kept clear above them, preserving the 3 m clear height that security requires. The sequence on the right is the logic used to model the column, rebuilt in Grasshopper from images of the existing column, from its fanning lines to the folded mesh and the cells that became the kinetic panels.

Zone 1 is the queue, Zone 2 security check-in, Zone 3 pre-immigration, and Zone 4 staff and VIP security at either end. Today the queue is efficient but utilitarian, a monotonous, herd-like pattern. Long waits breed boredom and impatience, anxiety builds before screening, and nothing tells passengers how long it will take. The proposal adds live wait times for every lane, displayed overhead at the head of the queue.

Along the queue, low mounds bring dharti into the terminal. Each is tied to a landscape of India, from the tea plantations of Munnar and the Narmada at Bhedaghat to Mumbai's salt pans and flower market, chilli drying in Nandurbar, the dunes of Rajasthan, and a wheat mound. Their cells hold seeds, and scanning a mound with a phone reveals the landscape those seeds come from and the significance of each species to its native region.

01 The mound geometry begins with points extracted from the terminal's peacock-inspired ceiling, the same pattern its columns carry. 02 That roof language is projected onto the mound's surface. 03 The length of the existing queue manager sets the mound's extent. A subtle nudge in the ground, it draws attention without disrupting the process, and starts conversations between passengers waiting in line.

Screening is functional but often feels daunting and unwelcoming. The proposal keeps its function intact and gives every lane a gateway, makaan, as a portal to the places travellers are going. The women's frisking booths sit within the gateway's side bays, and its central doorway is the passage for male passengers, so each lane keeps its separate flows within one form.

Digital projections dress the booths in the façades of India's heritage, paying homage to the country's history and turning the security check into a positive experience for every passenger. The booths are designed to take on new screening technology as it arrives, for faster and more efficient checks.

Kapda, cloth, is taken up in the roof. In homage to India's textile industry, the ceiling is reimagined as kinetic panels that behave like cloth, draping as fabric does when hung from two sides, coming down and retracting back. A motor raises and lowers each panel while a rotary actuator folds and tilts it, and once retracted the panels disappear, leaving the terminal's roof language intact.

The roof's movement is choreographed into different configurations, from flush alignment to expanded formations, a dance of light and shadow that responds to the needs of the terminal. The mounds are imagined the same way, as a kinetic installation. The proposal becomes a dialogue between the static and the dynamic, between the grounded identity of the region and the fluid identity of those passing through the country's gateway.

Drawings and views

• Existing and proposed, split down the middle, with the hall as it is on the left and the kinetic panels on the right
• Roof, void, clearance, embed, and floor, with the logic used to model the column
• The screening hall, with a gateway at each lane and panels lowered from the ceiling
• The kinetic panel, with its motor, wiring, rotary actuator, and movement along three axes
• Dharti, kapda, and makaan (land, cloth, and home)
• The PESC zone, with the queue, security check-in, pre-immigration, and staff and VIP security
• Mounds along the queue lanes, each tied to a landscape of India
• Mound derivation, 01 to 03, from ceiling pattern to mound surface and queue
• Zone 01, with mounds along the queue and each lane's wait time overhead
• Zone 01, with mounds along the queue and each lane's wait time overhead
• A gateway at every screening lane, and the routes through it
• The gateway, with projected heritage façades, women's frisking booths, and the men's passage
• In motion, the ceiling mechanism on the left and the mounds as a kinetic installation on the right
• In motion, the ceiling mechanism on the left and the mounds as a kinetic installation on the right
• In motion, the ceiling mechanism on the left and the mounds as a kinetic installation on the right
• In motion, the ceiling mechanism on the left and the mounds as a kinetic installation on the right
• Panels lowered over Zone 01 in the evening
• Panels lowered over Zone 01 in the evening