Air­ports are mega-places where mil­lions of peo­ple move and cul­tures meet. They are places whose iden­tity is multi-lay­ered: On the one hand, the his­tory and the de­sign con­cept of the re­spec­tive coun­try can be read, al­most cliché-like lo­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics are con­densed and re­flect the po­si­tion­ing of a coun­try in the global struc­ture. On the other hand, air­ports rep­re­sent hy­per­mod­ern, func­tional en­vi­ron­ments in which processes are in­ter­na­tion­ally stan­dard­ized and max­i­mally ef­fi­cient with a fo­cus on en­ter­tain­ment and con­sump­tion.

This book re­flects on the cen­te­nary of civil avi­a­tion from the per­spec­tive of pas­sen­ger in­for­ma­tion and air­port iden­tity. Air­ports and Air­lines have to in­te­grate new con­cepts and tech­nolo­gies to sig­nif­i­cantly re­duce the in­dus­try’s car­bon foot­print while si­mul­ta­ne­ously en­sur­ing trav­eller safety. The tran­si­tion to a new era of avi­a­tion is hap­pen­ing now, and there is no doubt in our minds that de­sign, in­for­ma­tion de­sign and wayfind­ing will con­tinue to be es­sen­tial tools in this fun­da­men­tal trans­for­ma­tion. An­other mo­ti­va­tion for pub­lish­ing a book at this mo­ment.

The Berlin Bran­den­burg Air­port is one of the largest and most com­plex trans­port in­fra­struc­ture pro­jects in Ger­many. The build­ing was de­signed by the renowned ar­chi­tects gmp and JSK In­ter­na­tional. Moni­teurs was al­ready ac­tively in­volved in the pro­ject at the com­pe­ti­tion phase for the com­mu­ni­ca­tions de­sign, and by de­grees was com­mis­sioned to de­sign the ori­en­ta­tion sys­tem for the air­port in­clud­ing its sur­round­ings. A key de­sign fea­ture is the colour red, un­usual for air­ports. This gives clear sig­nals for ori­en­ta­tion, and also har­monises with the ar­chi­tec­ture, with its warm tones of wood and nat­ural stone. At the same time, it is mod­elled on the ap­pear­ance of its home states of Berlin and Bran­den­burg. In many places, the signs are di­rectly em­bed­ded into the ar­chi­tec­tural pan­els – some flow around the cor­ner, and this con­cept is wo­ven into the prod­uct de­sign of the signs out­side the build­ing.

Moni­teurs de­signed the first iBook of the en­gi­neer­ing con­sul­tants schlaich berg­er­mann part­ner with the is­sue “move­able struc­tures”. The dig­i­tal medium pre­sents highly com­plex pro­jects, like the three-span fold­ing bridge Kieler Hörn or the BC Place Sta­dium in Van­cou­ver, in a vi­talised way with films, slideshows, im­ages, text and mu­sic. The styl­ish book in­cludes ten in­for­mal in­ter­views with the as­so­ci­ates, who talk about the for­ward-look­ing tech­nol­ogy and in­ven­tive ge­nius be­hind the pro­jects.