Deep within Terminal 6 at LAX, Los Angeles, California, 2015
Finding peace in an airport terminal is fine if you’re attuned to the Zen of queuing. Luckily for the more restless among us, when personal space is being compacted and everyone is trying to avoid awkward eye contact because of a treacherous phone claiming citizenry of one’s territory, one can always look up.
This retrofitted lighting track literally has rough edges, but for a piece installed a good six feet from my outstretched arm, the overall aesthetic benefit outranks my personal metalworking preferences. In fact, the slight lack of finesse (as more polish would infer a big-brand design solution) makes me feel closer to its designer and fabricator, and their thought processes.
Several factors point to it being bespoke. Designed in sympathy with the overhang of the outside window awning, its external boundaries parallel the edges of the circulation space below. Its alignment is also dictated by the steel that supported the bulkhead of the previous installation, a terrible sports bar whose demise I applaud, not least because through its replacement I feel an affinity with someone like me: the light’s makers, whoever and wherever they are.
