CONCEPT

MERIDIAN anchors the East and West Ends of the Charlotte Douglas International Airport Terminal lobby with a self-illuminating, algorithmically driven set of twin sculptures, offering reflections on the personal and collective ways we navigate our place in the world.

DESIGN

The sculptures’ form traverses a layered ‘DNA’ of orbital spatial relationships, from the airport flight patterns globally to the arching pathways of the interior and exterior architectures.

The cycle of departure and return is featured in the spiraling motion, accentuated by the movement of the integrated, programmable lighting moving through each sculpture.

MERIDIAN premiers’ Roney Studio’s fabrication innovations in combining multi-axis freeform bent perforated stainless-steel tube with embedded LED systems to create a dynamic, time-based emblem for Airport visitors.

COMMUNITY

Danielle Roney’s process involved a 2-year engagement initiative in which community participants were invited to contribute their geographical histories to MERIDIAN, tracing hundreds of individual data sets across the embedded LED systems. Articulating movements across the sculptures, these illuminated pathways highlight how we come together to create communities.

Community engagement was also extended to a include the development an All Ages READING LIST based on MERIDIAN’s central themes of Journey and Discovery.