COORDINATION Berlin

Experience Centre Frankfurt Airport – A Choreography of Flight Paths

Exhibition Design For The New Visitor Centre in Terminal 1

The new experience centre at Frankfurt Airport allows fascinating insights into the workings of one of the most important global airports. COORDINATION has conceived and implemented an interactive permanent exhibition in cooperation with Fraport AG and Art+Com Studios. The 1200 square meter space is interwoven by multimedia installations and full of impressive technical innovations for visitors to explore.

COORDINATION was excited to take on the task of making those aspects of the airport visible and tangible that a passenger cannot normally see, but which make Germany's largest airport so fascinating.

While developing the concept, a huge array of impressive details that lie beyond the public routes through terminals manifested themselves: from the immense dimensions of the airport grounds and the large amount of aircraft traffic to the innovative technology and complex logistics behind the scenes and not forgetting the people who keep this gigantic organism running 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

Visitors can now experience all this interactively through a variety of highlights in the exhibition. The central exhibit is an expansive model of Frankfurt Airport, which vividly links the processes on the ground with what is happening in the sky above: a large scale light installation shows arriving and departing aircrafts moving along curved lines of light as dynamic dots. This pulsating choreography of light runs through the entire experience centre over a total length of 330 meters. It is a very aesthetic, almost dance-like visualisation of the actual flight paths. This abstract work of light art forms the heart of the visitor centre and is unparalleled anywhere in the world.

For Jochen Gringmuth, one of the founders of COORDINATION, depicting the size of the airport not only on the ground but also in the air above, is the underlying concept behind the main exhibit: “To illustrate the coordinated arrival and departure of the aircrafts and to give a physical presence to what is otherwise only visible as the snapshot of a moment or a virtual visualisation was the defining design idea for us."

The model with its topography of runways, runway markings, airport buildings and motorways allows a unique overview of the airport on over 50 square meters. Beyond the directly visible buildings, visitors can “scan” the inside of the model with the help of augmented reality tablets and dive into hidden layers of information.

The view from the facade out onto the active airfield connects the exhibition with the reality of the airport. Via “Smart Windows” with a touch function visitors can view the apron area and see additional information on the activities taking place thanks to a real-time connection to the actual airport information system. In this way, visitors can understand “live” processes such as aircraft handling by accessing the dynamically changing information on all the items in view.

In the "Motion Ride", visitors actively embark on a rapid ride along the baggage conveyor belt network deep within the airport. With the help of 360 ° virtual realitity headsets and seated on a dynamic motion platform, visitors experience one of the centrepieces of the airport from the perspective of a piece of luggage.

The "Marshaller Game" requires sensitivity and coordination as the visitors slip into the role of marshaller themselves. With bright orange marshalling wands in hand, visitors are invited to guide an approaching aircraft to the correct parking position at the gate. This immersve experience is visualized live on a large screen wall and operated by an AI-controlled motion tracking system.

Technically the most complex digital exhibit in the visitor centre is the installation "The Globe", a worldwide first. All gobal flights can be followed in real-time on the floor-to-ceiling interactive screen. The viewer can use gesture control to make the globe rotate and thus head towards or zoom in on every point on earth. The global air traffic flows are impressively illustrated as they move towards the Frankfurt hub.

The experience centre in Terminal 1 at Frankfurt Airport is one of the most complex projects that COORDINATION has implemented in recent years. The new visitor centre was realised under the particularly demanding conditions of Germany's most important airport. In addition to the complex design it had to meet the highest requirements in terms of AV technology, fire safety, smoke extraction, aviation security, data protection, airport IT and building automation.

After more than five years of planning, implementation in the midst of a global pandemic and in detailed cooperation with the client Fraport AG, this unique exhibition can now finally be experienced and explored.