DUAL MERIDIAN
Master planning project for a Concourse Core at Denver International Airport
Denver, Colorado
In 1994 the City of Denver opened the first new airport built in the United States in over 20 years. "Dual Meridian" was commissioned for the Center of Concourse A, the International Concourse. This multi-faceted piece pays homage to the architecture of the Concourse Core space by celebrating its public function and by recalling its heritage. As a hall of transportation the 8-story Central Core harks by to the grand, vaulted spaces of turn of the century transportation halls and train sheds. "Dual Meridian" reaches up into the volume of this space with a 66’ parabolic titanium arch. The arch connects two intermediary platforms of space, describing a line drawn in space and suggesting an orbit over evolving modes of transportation.
This transportation site called for a design that appealed on several levels for people undergoing the variety of experiences that are unique to airports. The artwork is site responsive in the way that it acknowledges and engages its audience. Appreciating the experience of airline passengers, it engages people by focusing their attention on the delight and miracle of transportation rather than on its present day manifestations.
On a conceptual level the sculptural installation resonates with the immediate experiences and concerns of travelers. Its formal elements refer to transportation technology, and it expresses these dimensions of travel by embodying the evolution of transportation. While the West side of the artwork uses recycled rail and indigenous Colorado stone to reflect on an iron-age sensibility about travel, the East side presents a tile mosaic of the world and futuristic fiberglass forms to reveal the space-age spectacle of flight. Bridging these sensibilities is the titanium arch; a distant orbit or vapor trail from some future mode of transportation. Upon this arch is attached the brilliant red "kite", a vehicle from the future, or maybe just an artful signifier for the romance of travel and the dream of flight.
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