You probably haven’t heard of ‘desire lines,’ but they just reinvented this airport’s concourse

Inside Frankfurt Airport‘s new Terminal 3 building, there is a concourse that defies the standard logic of airport design. While the business model of most airports has made the airside space past security checkpoints into aggressive shopping malls interspersed with rows of gate seating, the German airport has made a sizeable chunk of its new terminal into a sinuous plaza worthy of a casual stroll. For those not running to make a connection or hopelessly searching for a place to sleep, this new concourse is a refreshingly unusual space for passing some time. That’s also what makes it, somewhat counterintuitively, a good place for shopping. [Photo: Taufik Kenan/courtesy LAVA] Designed by the Laboratory for Visionary Architecture (LAVA), the space was conceived as a public square that tames down the commercial imperative that guides most airport terminal design. “They literally force you into a maze and add another five to 10 minutes of walking time,” says LAVA cofounder Alexander Rieck. “We wanted to go the opposite way. We wanted to find out what makes a shopping experience an interesting experience.” [Photo: René Spalekc/spalek.com/ourtesy LAVA] The airport concourse design features a series of islands holding a cafe, lounge areas, and planters, all woven through with pathways and surrounded by shops. Rather than breaking up the internal space of the concourse, these elements have been designed to sit within the concourse in a way that would allow for both the traveler rushing to their gate and the window shopper leisurely perusing the high-end goods of the stores. [Image: courtesy LAVA] LAVA based the location and design of these elements on thousands of digital simulations of the ways people move through space. Analyzing these flows, the designers identified several “desire lines,” or common pathways people take through a space, depending on whether they’re in a hurry, killing time, hungry, in the market for a