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Posts Tagged ‘Passengers’

Creature Comforts: ARK Luxury Terminal for Animal Passengers

30 Jul

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Offices & Commercial. ]

ark daycare facility

Swimming pools, private suites, flat-screen televisions, medical facilities and luxury lounges – all these amenities cannot be yours, but can be enjoyed by your pets (or pigs or horses) at the new AFK airport terminal just for animals.

ark pet car

Opening next year alongside JFK international airport, over 70,000 animals of all kinds are expected to pass through ARK annually. This 50,000,000-dollar, 178,000-square-foot space will be the “world’s only privately owned animal terminal and USDA-approved, full-service, 24-hour, airport quarantine facility for import and export of horses, pets, birds and livestock.” 

ark livestock horse travel

Your best (canine) friend can enjoy more comforts than you can imagine, including pawdicures, massage therapy and even a swimming pool shaped like a dog bone, while you close feline companion climbs through dedicated jungle gyms or cat TV. Horses will enjoy food, water and rest while basking in daylit stalls that can be individually climate-controlled. You can also watch (and envy) your critters, large or small, via remote webcams on demand.

ark horse stalls individual

All animals have access to a veterinary hospital equipped for general health, emergency care, advanced diagnostics and with surgery suites, providing healthcare but also helping to streamline checks and certifications required for overseas travel.

ark horse transport

The ARK will replace VetPort, a small 10,000-square-foot onsite facility (effectively a glorified kennel) with meager amenities that still requires a separate offsite quarantine system located miles away.

ark animal airport terminal

If this sounds like a luxury affair from a front-of-house perspective, consider all of the work architecture firm Gensler has put in to make the place function, like cleaning up 5,000 pounds of waste produced by up to 180 head of cattle per day. Clever architectural solutions are needed to deal with the sheer volume of animals passing through as well as their species-specific needs.

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Long distance bus transportation has been in decline for decades, leaving countless abandoned bus stations to watch time and potential passengers pass them by.
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Futuristic Shenzen Airport Shaped Like a Manta Ray

Designed to mimic the natural shape of a manta ray (but also clearly reminiscent of an airplane), the new expansion of the Shenzen Bao’an International …
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Building for Billionaires: Luxury Tower with Car Elevators

If you’re rich enough to live in the Porsche Design Tower, you’re rich enough to have a mega-expensive car or two worth hauling up to your …
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Non-Stop Rail: 2 Future Trains Pick Up Passengers in Motion

16 Jan

[ By WebUrbanist in Conceptual & Futuristic & Technology. ]

bullet train moving alongside

Saving time, energy and bridging the gap between high-speed rail and local-only service, these proposed solutions (each in their own unique way) let people board and disembark at their leisure while the main train speeds along. In on case, passengers wait inside an ancillary car that hooks into a passing bullet train – in the other, they step seamlessly across a dock when changing between slower and faster trains.

gif rail

First, the overhead-car approach (illustrated above) from China, a country that has long been on the cutting-edge of record-fast rail travel, pioneering magnetic levitation trains and incredibly fast cross-country routes with few stops in between. One simply steps into the upper cabin and then walks down into the main train once the two sync up.  A second approach, proposed by PriestmanGoode and shown below, involves synchronizing two trains alongside one another then allowing each to dock with the other in transit.

transfer train passenger idea

Aside from being more energy-efficient, a lot of other standard frustrations of train travel are rendered obsolete by one or both approaches, like queuing up, pushing and shoving for quick entrances and exits at the right stop (an issue you will know is serious if you have ever ridden Chinese trains or subways). In the case of Moving Platforms from PG, train transfers in general could be made faster and smoother without requiring stops along the way.

parallel docking bullet train

At this stage, the concepts look promising but some technical questions still need to be resolved, including whether using wheels makes the most sense (in the Chinese variant) and the speed reduction required on the part of the passing train to make the two meet smoothly (in either case). Both, however, address a huge pain point in transportation as well as energy efficiency: slowing, stopping and waiting for and between public transit rides. Eventually, one could imagine an omni-directional maglev system taking people directly from buildings to their trains without needing to stop or transfer along the way.

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Mad Locomotives: Steaming Hot Prototype & Concept Trains

These ambitious concept trains move beyond the dream of steam to a new world of locomotive power. Clear the track, the train is back!
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High-Speed Art: Murals Spray-Painted for Train Passengers

Made to been seen at high speeds, these colorful patterns intentionally form a sequential whole when experienced by commuters in adjacent railway cars. …
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High-Speed Art: Murals Spray-Painted for Train Passengers

23 May

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Street Art & Graffiti. ]

mural art purple field

Made to been seen at high speeds, these colorful patterns intentionally form a sequential whole when experienced by commuters in adjacent railway cars.

mural art train view

mural art with train

Katharina Grosse (with photos by Steve Weinik for the City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program) conceived of this seven-section series, dubbed Psycholustro, as a way to engage everyday travelers with a project that addresses their in-motion perspective and the passage of time.

mural up tunnel view

mural green painted section

Grosse, a German artist based out of Berlin, targeted different sites with different bright colors, in some cases covering up existing graffiti on buildings or walls (with the expectation of re-tagging by other artists).

mural green white detai

mural striped closeup shot

Lime green lights up an abandoned warehouse while bright orange highlights multiple structures and exposed rocks.

mural art purple orcks

mural art purple ties

In a potentially controversial move, however, a purple area covers not only piles of rocks but also sections of nature, including grasses, shrubs and trees.

mural art scene

mural art spray paint

Grosse describes her project as something that “shifts your notion of size through movement” seeming huge from up close but to scale when you pass it by from your seat on a train.

mural art wall close up

mural art fast speed

mural art orange building

Stephen Gardner, an Amtrak vice president, explains the project’s impetus: “There are some things that we can do better than other competing modes of transport, and that is to provide the traveler with a deeper engagement with the diverse landscape. One of our taglines is, “Enjoy the Journey.’”

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Confetti + Walls + Tape = Sticky Spray-Paint Alternative

What is infinitely more fun than spray-painting a wall? Throwing confetti, of course! This fun art exhibit lets spectators participate in the graffiti creation.
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