The art of arrival and departure

ARTWALK

Buildings have a profound impact on most of us. We are contemptuous of government buildings, but the officials who work in them are much less so.

Conventional art museums "" from our own National Gallery in Delhi to the Hermitage "" have been housed in palaces, considered synonymous with their special and valued "place".

The role of the visual structure has never before been as important as it is today. Architects are the new celebrities, displacing artists every now and then. Architects make structures, spaces that everyone can see or think about and some can experience.

They urge those who enter their works to re-negotiate how spaces can be contoured, sculpted, addressed, and brought to the fore. The best of them do the stuff people have been doing for centuries, and with a flair. Remember Daniel Libeskind? The German genius who made the Holocaust Museum in Berlin and was selected for the Ground Zero Memorial?

All these thoughts were rushing through my mind as I experienced walking, waiting, eating, and lounging around at Bilbao's new-ish airport. Built by home-grown architect Santiago Calatrava and completed in 2000, this building both rivals Gehry's Guggenheim and is unfairly overshadowed by it.

The airport building from afar is like the front of a sleep plane "" two long, white wings and a body that you can see very little of. From a distance, it is like a species of some kink of an ivory bird, very taut and stretched.

Unlike other airports, it does not sit heavy, burdened by a sense of self-importance. It's not tall, nor huge or loaded with labyrinths. Its structural lightness and delicacy suggests that the task of flying out of the Basque, security, check-in et al seem like a little errand, something like stepping into a mall with a dash of paperwork.

You simply glide into the structure and get going. Minus global warming, air travel is no big deal anymore. For this reason, the building is a tribute to our globalised world.

Calatrava also creates internal spaces to constantly interact with the outside, making the traveller a participant in a 24x7 performance.

The gates have huge glass walls, so everyone can look out at the air strip good and clear, and natural light comes streaming in from everywhere. It's Calatrava demystifying not only travel but also the idea of distant lands at all.

By linking you to the light and the external environment, and in a place where you will be linked to the air in many ways, Calatrava is compelling you to rid yourself of a small black box to think out of. Instead, the process of checking in or claiming your bags also becomes one where you experience yourself as a throbbing mini-pulse embedded in a wider ecology.

But he doesn't do just that. At the baggage claim, the white curved walls are like cuddly cocoons shells. They are some kind of fresh-from-nature structures, inviting and relaxing.

Later, the wing like multi-flight-feathered walls are unobtrusive but you still can't help engaging with them. The experience is the opposite of being off-hand global "" you are at home in a strange, un-sloppy way.

A lot of public art now has similar offerings, except that such art, with an element of activism or performance, usually ends and can be summed up in a few lines. Arriving at and departing from the Bilbao airport is a similar experience.

By pushing you to these two limits, Calatrava does exactly what good art ought to do. He tips you over into a large pool of experiences and ideas. He stretches your mind and compels you to take notice of built space on your own terms.