Dulles Airport: the Pendulum
Project Location: Dulles International Airport, Chantilly, VA
Client: Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority
Airports are a place where time is ambiguous and travel across multiple time zones further blurs that sense of time and order. The Pendulum Project offers travelers a sense of arrival to a locale and destination while highlighting the cyclical nature of global travel. The arts project creates a multilayered visual experience that encourages both brisk movement along the corridor and moments of interest adjacent to the carousels, allowing for families and individuals to experience the piece at multiple velocities and durations of time.
The Pendulum Project juxtaposes transformations in global and local time, while highlighting the light conditions that shape our experience of place. A series of folded and digital lenticular resin walls define the sculpture that wraps the existing concrete wall structure of the building. The lenticular technology allows for contrasting images to change and move as it is viewed from various angles. One view of this lenticular sculpture utilizes global satellite images, showing the transformation of light as the earth orbits the sun. The other view underscores the local seasonal transformations with the annual cycles of nature defined through images of the native hardwood forests in the region. The piece allows for a reading of linear and cyclical time in both global and local landscapes, while encouraging viewers to move around the sculpture.