Case study · Baxter House · Austin, TX

Hawaiian Airlines.

A traveling brand activation announcing Hawaiian Airlines’ new direct flights, built for its first stop: one weekend on the sidewalk at the Domain in Austin. Baxter House — my shop — designed, drew, built, and installed everything on that sidewalk.

Sheet no. A-208 Case study — Hawaiian Airlines

SiteThe Domain — Austin, TX

ClientHawaiian Airlines

AgencyUnit 9

Production designerRon Beach Jr

Shop + buildBaxter House

Drawn byStephen Fay

Arch12′ H × 16′ W × 4′ D

StatusBuilt · toured 2022–

Hawaiian Airlines · Traveling activation Sidewalk Activation at the Domain, Austin Baxter House · The Domain, Austin · 2022 Fig. 0 — as built

Revisions — how the piece got built

Mark	Issue	Description
	Concept	Ron Beach Jr’s proof-of-concept renders — roughly fixing shape, colour, and size to build from.
	Drawn	Shop drawings and a 3D model — mine. Sheets SH-100A + SH-104, the greenlit build.
	Engineered	Arch broken into four transportable sections; everything else onto a rolling base that doubles as the tool cart.
	Interactive	Three airline windows — diorama, monitor, automatic open/close; AV triggered with the Houdini team.
	Install	Shop build from Sep 21; on-site install Sep 29 in a one-hour street window, 150 yards from the truck.
	As built	Event Sep 30 – Oct 1, 2022 at the Domain — first stop of a traveling activation.

Brief

A-208 · 1.0

Hawaiian Airlines was opening new direct routes and wanted a traveling activation to announce them. The Domain in Austin was the first stop: one weekend on a retail sidewalk with a walk-up multimedia arch, and a scavenger hunt across the district with Hawaiian vacations to win.

Everything on that sidewalk was ours to design, draw, build, and stand up.

Baxter House was my own design-build shop: I held the lease, owned the tools, and brought on carpenters and fabricators per job. Here the concept arrived as a set of client renders; the drawings, the model, and the build were mine.

Spec — as built

Year2022 (Sep–Oct)
Crew12
Transport24′ box truck
Install windowone hour
Carry to site150 yards
First stopThe Domain, Austin

General notes

Site conditions — the Domain

These notes govern section 2.0.

N1 · SettingRetail at street level, apartments above — an outdoor mall with sidewalks we can’t block and a neighborhood we needed to be careful not to disturb.

N2 · AccessOne 24-foot box truck, loaded and unloaded by hand off a lift gate. Nearest unload point: 150 yards from the install.

N3 · WindowNo impeding the sidewalk until 7 pm; no power tools after 8 pm. Net install window — one hour.

The one-hour install

A-208 · 2.0

On paper this was a set piece for a sidewalk. The real assignment was logistics. Read against notes N1–N3, the arch had one hard problem that had nothing to do with how it looked: it had to break down small enough to ride a single box truck, then unload and stand up inside one hour, 150 yards from where the truck could park.

The whole event had to fit one box truck, cross 150 yards of sidewalk, and stand up inside a single hour.

So the exterior arch comes apart in four sections, and everything else rides a rolling base that doubles as the tool and equipment cart — the object that carries the build across the Domain is the object it gets built from. On install night it went in on schedule: the usual hiccups but ultimately a success.

Load-in — 7 to 8 pm

Sidewalk clear until 7. No power tools after 8. One hour to walk a box truck’s worth of parts 150 yards and raise a 12-foot arch.

Install night on the Domain sidewalk: the rainbow arch stands assembled against a lit storefront, metallic purple outer band and red inner band around a magenta face with three empty oval porthole cutouts, two stepladders beside it and a crew member walking past. — 2.1 · Install night Four sections joined on the sidewalk The Domain · Sep 29, 2022, 8:02 pm · Fig. 2-A

The assembled arch seen across a boxwood hedge at night, storefront glass lit behind it; a crew member looks out through the right-hand porthole, an extension cord coiled on the pavement beside the base. — 2.2 · Install night Half an hour later: seams closed The Domain · Sep 29, 2022, 8:30 pm · Fig. 2-B

2.3 · Drawn record Sheets SH-100A + SH-104 — the shop drawings I built this from, drawn from my 3D model. Drawing PDFs; not rendered on this sheet.

The experience

A-208 · 3.0

What all that engineering produced was a small daydream. The arch is a rainbow you walk up to; its innermost ring holds three airplane windows. Open one and you’re looking at Hawai‘i through a plane porthole, and the short presentation inside ends with a clue.

The clue starts the scavenger hunt — free-standing rebus signs I built, printed, and planted around the Domain — with Hawaiian vacations as the prizes. Arch, window, clue, hunt: one loop, running all weekend.

The loop

Arch → window → AV → clue → scavenger hunt → Hawaiian-vacation prizes.

3.0 · As built One structure, three windows, one scavenger hunt Keynotes 3.1–3.3 · partner P1 Fig. 3-A

Keynotes — 3.0

Mine — Baxter House

3.1The rainbow arch. 12′ × 16′ × 4′, in four transportable sections — the walk-up multimedia piece.

3.2Three airline windows. Diorama, monitor, and the automatic open/close mechanism — see section 4.0.

3.3Scavenger-hunt signs. Free-standing rebus clues, built and planted around the district.

Partner

P1Houdini. The interactive audio and video inside the windows, triggered on open.

A tropical botanical mural backs the setup. Everything else on this sheet is Baxter House.

The window seat

A-208 · 4.0

Looking out at Hawai‘i.

The centre of the whole piece is three airplane windows. Open one and a physical diorama frames a monitor, so the glass reads as a real window seat with Hawai‘i on the other side of it. The window, the diorama, and the mechanism that opens and closes it on a cycle were my build; the picture and sound were Houdini’s.

Drawn + built

I drew this project and I built it. The window that opens itself is where those two jobs met: a mechanism on my drawings, cueing someone else’s AV in the room.

Detail D1 — airline windows

Each window runs on an automatic close mechanism. On open it cues the Houdini team’s audio and video; on close it resets. Making that trigger reliable so the AV started clean on every cycle, all weekend was the coordination task between my build and their gear.

Cross-reference: Houdini, section 5.0 credits — interactive audio + video.

Evening at the Domain: a line of visitors lean in to look through the three oval windows on the pink face of the arch, a Hawaiian Airlines staffer in an aloha-print shirt beside them, a retail storefront to the right. — D1 · In use Visitors line up to look through the windows The Domain · Oct 1, 2022 Fig. 4-A · as built

A side view of the arch showing its depth as a half-tunnel; several people bend to peer into the windows, one holding a phone up to the glass, with the botanical mural banner and a storefront behind. — 4.0 · In use Leaning in for the view — the arch on the Domain sidewalk Oct 1, 2022 Fig. 4-B · as built

Credits

A-208 · 5.0

What this sheet proves is the part the photos can’t show: the engineering that let a twelve-foot arch ride one truck and stand up in an hour, and the drawings under all of it — mine, start to finish. A concept came in as renders; everything between that and the built piece on the sidewalk was Baxter House.

As-built record

The photographs on this sheet are mine, shot across the build and the two event days at the Domain.

Hawaiian AirlinesClientThe activation — new direct-flight routes to announce.
Unit 9AgencyBrought the project to Baxter House.
Ron Beach JrProduction designerConcept renders — shape, colour, and scale to build from.
Stephen Fay — Baxter HouseDesign + fabricationShop drawings and 3D model; the arch, the windows and their mechanism, the scavenger-hunt signs; the install. Crew of 12.
HoudiniInteractive AVAudio and video inside the windows, triggered on open.

The drawing is a promise; the build keeps it.