Trigger
Point
Miguel Santos
Hondartza Fraga:
TXL (Tegel Express)
A collaborative project, be-tween Hondarzta Fraga and Miguel Santos, which focuses on the TXL Express (bus route) to consider the relation between the city of Berlin and one of its airports, Tegel. The closure of Tegel airport will have a variety of secondary consequences that are worth considering, and among them there is the end of the bus route connecting the airport and the centre of Berlin. The bus facilitates the arrival of the airport’s employees and contributes to an overall mobility within the city. The journey takes place immediately after or before a flying passenger’s use of the airport terminals, and crosses various neighbourhoods, lasting ap-proximately forty minutes. Its primary function is to connect the city with the airport, how-ever, that function has a dual role – arriving at or departing from the airport. The TXL express route was our starting point to focus
on different aspects of the dialogue between the airport and the city, such as place and mobility, time and routine, familiarity and transience, and it will perhaps evince other sides of the relation between the city and its airport. The process of developing this project was as important as its final form. The project was developed while on the TXL during a week’s stay in Berlin, in a role somewhere between passer-by and inhabitant, experiencing the everyday operations of the bus, filming, photographing and writing. The final work considers the different levels of interaction between the airport, the people and the city and how these might change once the airport closes.