Even though many people won’t pay much attention to it, I think it’s hard to ignore the often colourful and uniquely designed carpets in airports in Southeast Asia. It became a thing to photograph the carpets and let my Instagram followers guess which country I arrived in when I travelled regularly in 2019.
In The Design of Changi Airport Carpets, Ong Sim Lian, who heads Changi Airport’s design management team, says that the philosophy is to create a stress-free experience for the passengers. Carpet absorbs sound, and the design of the carpet is inspired by nature.
British author and journalist George Pendle writes in Airport Carpets for Icon that “airport carpets reflect the country that stretches out beyond the luggage carousels, often depicting the highlights and history of the surrounding nation.”
According to Pendle, Singapore’s Changi Airport’s “vertiginous monochrome wonder seems to mimic what one would see if you fell out of a window in the city’s brightly lit Downtown Core.” His approach to airport carpets gets poetic:
“If airports can be seen as temples to travel, gateways to other worlds, then airport carpets are the vast prayer mats upon which we all genuflect. Why else, when we enter airport security, are we forced to take off our shoes?”
Heathrow Airport and neo-liberalism
Pendle mentions London’s Heathrow airport as a less attractive gateway to England. “The torn, gum-covered, sub-neo-constructivist carpet immediately suggests one is entering a city of delays and obstructions.” It’s this airport, however, that has set the tone for the neo-liberal world we currently live in.
Prof. James Vernon of the University of California, Berkley writes in Heathrow Airport and the Birth of Neoliberalism that “some of the forms of privatization, deregulation and outsourcing that came to be associated with neoliberalism from the 1980s were a feature at Heathrow from the 1960s.” He mentions how the airport transitioned from “a cathedral for the labor of unionized, white, working men” to precarious and cheap forms of outsourced labor at the airport due to racial and gendered politics.
“Paradoxically, as the airport became dependent upon the cheap labor of predominantly South Asian women and Commonwealth citizens of color, it also became the frontline of a hostile immigration regime that sought to exclude them and insulate Britain from the obligations of empire”
A non-space of anonymity
A recent research into airport development in the Global South explains how airports are often driven by economic benefits and attracting tourism and international trade, rather than focusing on air mobility for local populations. Contested Airport Land focuses on how the land that is needed for an airport often comes with forced displacement, human-wildlife conflicts, or inter-ethnic violence.
It reminds me of the plans for an airport in Northern Bali. The South of the island is already suffering from overtourism. Will an airport in the undeveloped north benefit the Balinese, or will it mostly benefit investors and the capitalistic system, in which the citizens get to experience the downsides of the growth in the form of traffic congestion and polluted air?
The airport space might be attractive, designed as a “tropical resort feel” like Terminal 3 of Changi Airport, but an airport is also an in-between zone where borders blur. French anthropologist Marc Augé called it a “non-place”, a space that lacks identity, history, and relational significance. A space of solitude and anonymity, where individuals lose their sense of self, becoming passengers identified primarily by their travel documents.
And what if your travel document restricts you from going places? Or a false document is made to traffic you to places you don’t want to go? An airport carpet suddenly raises many more questions. Armida Mathivannan’s reflections in her Medium blog more than transit: how airports expose the world’s deepest inequalities (she doesn’t capitalize), are worth ending with:
“i notice everything at airports. who throws their trash carelessly and who is paid to clean it up. who is interrogating and who is being interrogated. which passports glide through security with ease and which are held back for extra checks. who browses luxury boutiques without a second thought and who quietly eats a packed meal from home. who is greeted with open arms and who steps into the unknown, alone. who lounges in first-class comfort and who curls up on an uncomfortable bench for the night. who carries nothing but a sleek carry-on and who is weighed down by bags filled with everything they own.”
It’s going to take time to get used to writing daily. This is the second blog post in a series that should go up to a thousand. Bear with me. Collecting a lot of information in a little bit of time, something I’m quite good at, immediately reveals the challenge: how not to spend hours and hours of editing, losing sight of the whole idea of why I’m doing this in the first place. I write more regularly to share lingering thoughts and ideas, and practice the art of researching, editing, and writing in my style.
Inclusive Journalism 
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