Airports are essentially machines for processing people, airplanes, automobiles, cargo, and luggage—all of which move in different ways, and which need to be connected at certain points and separated by rigid security at others. Just getting all the parts to work together seems overwhelming—indeed, it did overwhelm British Airways last month at Heathrow, outside London, when Terminal 5, an eight-billion-dollar structure that was supposed to transform Heathrow from a congested tangle into a place that would thrill passengers with the joy of air travel, all but shut down on its opening day, when a computerized baggage system malfunctioned.

Airports, in short, are a logistical nightmare, and this is surely the reason that most of them today are such depersonalized wastelands. With all those moving parts to organize, the last thing that cash-starved airlines and airport authorities want to think about is aesthetic appeal. Most airports built in the last generation, at least in the United States, have followed a simple, established pattern, along the lines of the huge ones in Atlanta and Denver. Gates, arranged in long, boxy concourses set way out in the field, are linked to central terminals by underground trains. Driverless trains enhance the sense that the whole thing is less a piece of architecture than one big machine. Within the concourse, you walk, sometimes as much as a half mile, or ten city blocks, between gates. It is an efficient layout for airport operations, as long as you don’t consider passenger pleasure to be a part of airport operations.