Conny Bakker: Virtual Airport, NL

Three months ago the Japan Airlines Foundation, which is a corporate association established by Japan Airlines, asked us to develop a number of design scenarios for a virtual airport. Four design teams, one each in Tokyo, New York, London and Amsterdam, developed four virtual airports, based on the airports in their home towns: Narita, John F. Kennedy, Heathrow and Schiphol. What we will show you here is a summary of the presentations we gave to the Japan Airlines Foundation during their conference in Tokyo two weeks ago.

So this whole session is about Europe at Speed, but actually we are talking Asia I think. First Mr Tadanori Nagasawa here at the table, who is associate professor of Art and Design at the University of Tohoku, will present a design scenario based on the concept of an intelligent agent, which the design team developed into a 'virtual purser' as you will see. And this virtual purser is there to look after your personal travel needs alone.

Next, Gillian Crampton Smith, who is professor at the Royal College of Art in London, and who had the computer-related design course, will present a museum in the air. In the design scenario she presents, the traveler is exposed to new forms of information, which enhances his travel experience and understanding of the place and time he is in at any moment.

And last Mr Thomas Klinkowstein, professor at the Pratt Institute's New Media Course in New York, will look at the virtual airport through the lens of a total branding concept. John F. Kennedy is transformed into a super brand. The virtual airport website he presents is the departure point for an exotic 21st century life attitude.

But first of all I will present the Amsterdam team's virtual airport, which was developed in collaboration with Ragu Kolli, Kristi van Riet and John Thackara. We focused on making the virtual airport a personal airport and we used a travel diary to symbolize this idea. The travel diary functions as your personal interface to the Schiphol information networks. We chose a diary because it is a metaphor for something personal.

By entering a code, somebody - in this case we used Anton Geesink as a good Japanese-Dutch link - can make this diary his own personal diary, so that now he has his own private Schiphol Airport. Anton Geesink may now access different travel services of which I will show you first the total travel service.

Anton Geesink can use this total travel service to plan a future trip. Here is the globe with the major cities of the world in red. Instead of typing where you want to go in the form, which is usual on the net, you click on the country you want to visit, for instance India. A map of India appears, as you can see.

Now maps have been around for a long time and they give rich and analogue information people can easily understand. Next you click on the destination, Bombay, and drag your destination to the date in your diary when you want to arrive. Again no need to type anything. The system now gives you a choice of three different flight options to Bombay on November 14. Mr Geesink can compare prices, clicks on the ticket he wants to purchase, buys the ticket electronically. Now this ticket remains virtual all the time. Mr Geesink simply logs in when he reaches the plane. For Geesink and others, traveling will become a much smoother and more personal experience this way.

We also developed some other services, for instance the multimedia travel diary, which we called airbites, which allows you to record your travel history and build up a sort of relationship with your website and your own travel log, and mind travel, which is a service which keeps you in touch with your family and colleagues while travelling. But in the context of this session Europe at Speed I would also like to show you a service called "slow motion", which is an attempt to slow Europe down a bit.

We think that Schiphol Virtual Airport might as well develop new travel services, for instance airship travel. Using the concept of fast information but slow matter, this scenario shows how we might travel slowly in eco-friendly airships, but be totally connected during our journey by high bandwidth communications. I cannot show you more because of the time, but we think that overall this whole concept of having your own private airport on the web will help the traveller make his travel experience a more personal, more relaxing and much more enjoyable experience.