Airports as ArtPorts
Where art and travel converge: Düsseldorf Airport redefines the guest experience
Düsseldorf Airport has a vision to be a ‘destination of excellence’, one which offers travellers far more than the traditional airport experience. Its innovative Art Walk exhibition is an example of that mission, as the airport company supports local artists while simultaneously balancing commercial interests. The airport also strives hard to inject local flavour, literally and figuratively, into its food & beverage offer and, increasingly, its retail proposition.
The Moodie Davitt Report Founder & Chairman Martin Moodie speaks to Head of Commercial Operations Pia Klauck and Media Manager Tankred Stachelhaus to discuss how Düsseldorf Airport is determined not only to serve its passengers but to surprise and even challenge them.
Düsseldorf Airport is far more than a transportation hub. In fact, thanks to a far-sighted management policy, it has been transformed into a vibrant cultural platform, redefining the traditional airport experience through initiatives such as the innovative Art Walk exhibition. Vacant spaces have been turned into compelling art installations and galleries that celebrate the North-Rhine Westphalia region’s rich heritage, surprising and engaging travellers as they move through the terminal.
The recently introduced Art Walk is a daring realisation of a vision to balance commercial space with an authentic cultural experience.
Düsseldorf Airport Head of Commercial Operations Pia Klauck and Media Manager Tankred Stachelhaus say the exhibition embodies the airport’s deep-rooted commitment to embracing local artistry while balancing commercial interests.
Klauck shares how the airport has embraced its regional identity, using art to create connections between travellers and the city’s dynamic art scene. Tankred, with his background as an art critic, brought a keen curatorial eye to the project, ensuring the installations are not just decorative but meaningful, sometimes controversial expressions of the artists’ interpretations of travel and public spaces.
Düsseldorf Airport’s community-centric mindset led to the inception of Art Walk, which goes beyond aesthetics to provoke conversations about the wider role of airports as spaces for more than just transactional platforms. Klauck also notes the airport’s commercial philosophy shifted during the pandemic, focusing on incorporating smaller, regional brands alongside global partners.
Art Walk not only enriches the traveller experience but also reflects the airport’s strategic vision to be a “destination of excellence”. By integrating bold and sometimes controversial artworks into its landscape, Düsseldorf Airport fosters meaningful conversations and connections, positioning itself as not simply a transit hub but a gateway to the soul of the city and the Rhine-Ruhr region.
It also demonstrates how transportation spaces can transcend their conventional roles, offering travellers unexpected moments of inspiration and a deeper connection to the destinations they visit.
Permanent artworks in and around Düsseldorf Airport include Max Kratz’s Pylon, moved from fairgrounds to the airport in 1994 and its landmark ever since. Kratz created the shiny 36m-high, 30-tonne ‘victory’ sign as a representation of optimism, new beginnings and modernity.
Q&A
Martin Moodie: Pia, you’re clearly not afraid of having empty spaces as contract tenures end and commercial operators come and go. In fact, you embrace those spaces and do bold things with them as we see with the Art Walk exhibition and with the introduction of additional local and regional brands. Tell me more about that philosophy.
Pia Klauck: Yes, that’s correct. Especially in recent years [through the pandemic] there was always the attitude of “Oh, life is bad,” and at some point, we said, “No, we're not taking it anymore.”
Our philosophy – being embedded in this huge catchment area with 18.5 million people living within 100km of the airport – is that the region is so important to us, and we are so important to the region.
At some point, we embraced that and decided, “No, we don’t want to only play with the big players.” Of course, we have Heinemann, Avolta and Lagardère, which are important players because we’re still a commercial airport. But we believe our customers also expect a more regional approach.
Tankred and I had always talked about our connection to the city and being an artsy city. This is the core of the city and we wanted to do something about it and with it.
With that in mind, we saw an opportunity. At Düsseldorf Airport, we have very strong landside space. We have three individual piers that stand by themselves but are connected by a very strong landside.
The landside business in travel retail is always difficult. For the big operators, it’s challenging.
For us, it was always important to have a differentiator, for example smaller regional concepts that we wanted to bring into the airport. This makes way more sense landside for us because. it’s usually easier for brands to set up by themselves, especially if they’re a smaller company wanting to enter the airport.
The airport is a big infrastructure with security and all those factors. During the pandemic we did OK and brought everyone through it but smaller brands and local brands were hit left and right by the aftermath. Suddenly, we had something like eight free spaces to fill. We didn’t want to change our approach, in that we wanted to differentiate through smaller brands. But smaller brands were very much more hesitant to come to the airport, because they’re like, “Oh, the risk is so big.”
But airports are always built for eternity – that’s something. So, we had to change our processes to allow smaller brands in without them requiring significant investments. We have our pop-up stores... stores that are basically already fitted out, and brands just move in and put in their products and banners. We tried to make it as easy as possible with our processes... we also had to be quicker.
This was a big shift for us. The mentality changed, because we used to be very strict – very German – about timelines and processes. We had to change that. That was a big boat to turn around.
The artwork was a big challenge. You can’t just push it into a store and be done. There are fire regulations, basic questions like who is turning on the lights, who is turning them off, and so on. There are so many things you don’t consider before doing it.
So we changed. We had to be quicker. We now have teams focusing more on short-term leases, working closely with the promotions teams at the airport, and other teams working on long-term contracts with the big players. We kind of always did this on the side, but now it’s established in our structure.
Gereon Krebber’s Derelikt sculptures echo damaged buildings, their uniform grid structure jagged and partially destroyed
It’s interesting how you balance the commercial aspect because, as you say, you’ve got a business to run. You’re a sizable airport, so you need the big operators, but there are softer touches to an airport and art is part of that. It’s part of your character and your representation of the city, region and country. How do you approach that balance?
Pia Klauck: Don’t get me wrong, we are still a commercial airport... so we have to make money. But there needs to be a differentiation between making money and, as Tankred says, “Aiming for attention”.
That’s what makes the balance because you want to create an experience, and sometimes that means dedicating a space that could make money into a point of experience to draw people in. Then have them spend money in the store next door because you’ve drawn their attention.
This is always going to be a tension. This will always be a discussion we have, but we’ve decided to find room within the terminal for this. It doesn’t always need to be about the space. Space is one thing, but we’re also discussing how to incorporate art in the future, even if the space is taken, through installations, for example.
Tankred Stachelhaus: We have a vision. We want to be a destination of excellence, that’s our goal. We want to strengthen the airport’s excellence, be a leader in sustainability, and have closer bonds with employees and the region. That last one is our focus this year.
Düsseldorf is an art city. The artist Joseph Beuys and visual artist Gerhard Richter, who is the most expensive artist in the world, were professors at the Düsseldorf Art Academy. It’s a very vital art scene, and we took that close bond with the city and made it a focus at the airport. The artists want to come here. They see the opportunity to showcase their work here.
Heinz Mack’s kinetic light sculpture Helios was based on an earlier version, with metal strips rotating to create light reflections that move up and down
I’ve said it before, and I’m not the only one: airports are invariably the first and last place people see in a city. And with that comes a social and civic responsibility.
Art in airports is not a revenue generator at all. It’s about identity. It reinforces what airports are. They’re not just about getting people on and off planes or selling things to them or feeding them. They’re about emotions. Airports are amazing crossroads of humanity, and art is a lovely part of that.
On that note, Pia, tell us about Art Walk. Interestingly, you didn’t go for a safe art exhibition simply showcasing all the lovely things about travel.
Pia Klauck: Yes, that was a big conversation. At some point, we asked ourselves, “Do we want to be a gallery?” We had these ideas in the past, but we thought, “No, that's just so lame. What does it stand for? What does it mean? How do we want to use the spaces that we have?”
You can always put pretty pictures on a wall, have great lighting and so on, but we decided that if we’re going to be a connector to the region and to the Düsseldorf art scene, it needs to be bigger.
So, we wanted the bigger names and maybe the controversial ones as well, artists with different views on travelling and air traffic. We’re deeply connected to the city, and we know a lot of people who are similarly connected. Tankred knew the right people to talk to. It was a joint effort. I think there was a project team of 15 people trying to realise it.
I’m not a huge art person. I see a picture and think, oh that’s a pretty picture. But from the very beginning, it was very clear this wasn’t about pretty pictures. It was connection, it was about travel. It was about the connection between travel and art. And that is the differentiator. We didn’t want to just make use of space to make it look pretty; we wanted everyone to see that an empty space is being used for something meaningful. We made art out of that empty space. That was very important to us.
When it comes to the artists, we have a highly respected representation of many different artists and styles. Some are more sculptural, but each has its own interpretation, good and bad. There’s so much controversy about airports, so why hide it? Let’s have that conversation. We want to have these conversations. Tankred is the art expert. He taught us a lot about art, and I learned a lot from him.
Let’s be honest, there was controversy. Some of the art makes you think, OK, this isn’t just about flying and freedom. We had discussions about whether this was feasible for an airport, should we do this as an airport, and we decided we would.
Tankred Stachelhaus: In my former life, I was an art critic for the newspaper. So I had some connections in this area, worked for some magazines, and wrote art critiques and interviews.
I had the vision that we wouldn’t just decorate some empty shops. We wanted to make a statement, to respect the art scene, and to create something relevant and strong. We gave the artists all the freedom they needed. One piece, by Gereon Krebber, was a sculpture he had already created, but he chose to show it here, which was a strong decision. To some people, it looked like bombed houses. This piece represents our position as the port of the world. We are a gateway to the world, and within these empty shops this piece makes you think about the world. It wasn’t the artist’s intention; he sees it as a symbol and a ceramic craftwork.
Another artist, Paul Schwer, created a kind of environment for this particular art. He put the installation together. You can see it from the shopping mall to the apron. It’s a strong work.
(Continued on page 11)
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The Moodie Davitt eZine
Issue 340 | 4 November 2024
The Moodie Davitt eZine is published 14 times per year by The Moodie Davitt Report (MA Travel Retail). © All material is copyright and cannot be reproduced without the permission of the Publisher. To find out more visit www.moodiedavittreport.com and to subscribe, please e-mail kristyn@moodiedavittreport.com