An Incomplete Architectural Report on Airport Chapels
Andrew Kovacs
“We have all seen such spaces... chapels, meditation spaces, reflection rooms, prayer rooms, interfaith centers, etc. Like a Gideons Bible in every hotel room, it seems that today every world-class airport in the United States has at least one.”
The International Islamic Center at John F. Kennedy Airport (JFK) in New York is perched on the fourth floor, southeast corner, of Terminal 4 in the “Pre-Security” zone. A fake walled-in archway follows the geometry of the Center and bifurcates the space in two: one side for men, one side for women. And while the partition evenly divides the room, bands of carpet, oriented towards Mecca, intersect with the geometry of a container clearly designed for some other generic purpose. Carpets help transcend the inherent placelessness of the airport to orient a devotee’s faith. Here one finds a room for “connecting” with a higher power that tries to detach itself from its surrounding and reestablish its coordinates in the world: a summoning, rather than an immersion, of a genius loci.
We have all seen such spaces—or at least seen signage annotating their existence at airports. They go by various names: chapels, meditation spaces, reflection rooms, prayer rooms, interfaith centers, etc. Like a Gideons Bible in every hotel room, it seems that today every world-class airport in the United States has at least one. JFK and DFW each have 4 separate chapels for different religions, while both ORD and ATL have 2 separate chapels. At least 15 airports have chaplains but no physical space, transforming entire airports into ghost chapels, and some 10 airports have chaplains as well as physical spaces; however, exact numbers are not readily available in the United States making this report an incomplete survey rather than a final word. Culled from numerous websites and image banks, 27 plans of airport chapels across the United States have been constructed. The pervasiveness of chapels throughout airports, and in some cases, the deliberate naming of such spaces away from explicit religious affiliation into vaguer terms such as “meditation” and “reflection,” demonstrate a willingness to create a pluralistic space within the airport, either before or after security checkpoints. Such egalitarianism is translated into an aesthetic. Whether willfully employed or not, someone has designed these spaces, but it is difficult to tell who and it is unclear to what degree architects were involved.
Although airport chapels lack a visible architectural signature, they do not lack architectural expression. Typically, these spaces are not freestanding small structures within the confines of the larger structure of the airport, but rather occupy a generic space seemingly dedicated to a commercial airport function. Not quite Junkspace (you know it when you see it) or the makeshift spaces of everyday architecture, these otherwise uniform spaces are shaped by specific modes of inhabitation and the plurality of events and uses to which they are subjected. Through such improvised inhabitation, each chapel emerges with its own individual qualities and micro-specificities, often juxtaposed against the extreme blandness of the container. In many ways these spaces are continually in a state of flux. As Deacon Lewis Rose, the President of the International Association of Civil Aviation Chaplains (IACAC) noted in his June 2014 letter to members: “One of the most common things that we experience in airports is that of being and working in a building site.”1 The result is a set of idiosyncratic spaces that that not only mark their surroundings, but adjust to them as well.
The Airside Reflection Room at McNamara Terminal at Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport (DTW) is accessible through an elevator, but only after security on level 2 and just above the Fox Sports Bar.2 Such directions, listed on a website, demonstrate the potential difficulty in not only accessing a reflection room, but also discovering such a space. Once inside the Airside Reflection Room, the space is bare and open, almost like a deserted floor in an office building. Yet on each of its four walls are explicit markers of the cardinal directions (North, South, East, and West) as clearly labeled signs. Two sets of different types of chairs line the walls on opposite sides of the space, ostensibly waiting to be placed in a convivial layout. A casually-placed prayer rug sits in the opposite to a slightly overflowing box of stuff. This haphazard layout, with its movable furniture and plethora of stuff, is amplified by a rotated compass, which confirms what the cardinal directions on the wall already state. All of these elements suggest a room that is flexible and continually changing its configuration for different religious services and needs throughout the day. In a way, this layout foregrounds how little architecture is needed to define contemplative spaces.
At the “southern end of concourse B, across from the ticket counter for Delta Airlines” at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA), one will see a sign with the word “chapel” and an arrow pointing to a room as a reaffirming declaration of the purpose for which the space is intended. The chapel is centered on a square in the floor that contains a rotated graphic of a compass to establish the cardinal directions. Wooden floorboards, equally offset out from the centralized square, inscribe rings of thin squares. Two sets of chairs sit on opposite sides of the compass while a bench wraps the perimeter of the room, all reinforcing the central organization of the interfaith chapel. A square centrally located, as opposed to the Bible sitting on a stand ahead of the graphic square compass in the floor or the neatly stacked set of Islamic prayer rugs in the opposite corner, organizes the space. As the sticker dryly notes, “Use the telephone to reach the chaplain.”
These examples reveal the airport chapel as a curious species within architecture’s long relationship to sacred spaces. These spaces are not grand or monumental. They do not inspire deference, awe, or fear of religion like Philip Johnson’s Glass Cathedral or a Hagia Sophia. Rather, these consecrated chambers are bland and become strange through their different modes of furnishing and inhabiting the interior. In the case of the airport chapel, it is difficult to imagine the power of religion amplified by architecture, or vice versa. Modern architects with very diverse bodies of work, such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, Louis Kahn, Eero Saarinen, and Johnson all designed sacred spaces in very different capacities. Yet the jet-setting architects of today’s global elite seemed to have passed right by these spaces in transit (perhaps like the rest of us), forfeiting a potential architectural opportunity. What contemporary architects have missed in airport chapels is an undervalued asset with potential to become valuable.
Unlike the VIP airport lounge, the airport chapel is inclusive rather than exclusive. Unlike the clichéd notion of “non-place” that airports have become so associated with, the airport chapel attempts to offer some designation of genius loci. Unlike the repetitive takeover of commercial spaces and the subsequent aesthetic of sameness, airport chapels are aesthetically idiosyncratic. Although the use of these spaces is primarily devoted to travelers, employees at the airport as well as visitors to the airport are able to benefit from the religious hospitality and services that they offer. And while these spaces are meant for quick stays rather than prolonged ones, such activities still require a space and merit the attention of designers. It’s worth considering why these spaces are overlooked, lodged into residual areas, and tucked away on the fourth floor of a terminal in the pre-security zone. One reason might be that the local and state governments that by and large manage airports are reluctant to endorse any particular religion. In fact, as columnist Scott McCartney has noted, because some airports will not fund chaplains or provide spaces for religious worship, local fundraisers are held by carious religious groups to pay for religious services and counseling at airports. Whether it is due to a lack of funding, the aim to maximize consumer space, or a desire to suppress all forms of fear and anxiety, the airport chapel presents spatial and social challenges to architects interested in new collective spaces for the twenty-first century.