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 but the tiki bar.

Sheet no. A-202 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 A lei you can walk through 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, still touring into 2023.

Brief

A-202 · 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 three things to do — a tiki bar, 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 — except the tiki bar, which was a last-minute party rental.

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 you can’t block and a neighbourhood you can’t wake.

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-202 · 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, every beat hit.

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.

In the shop: a large semicircular plywood panel primed white lies flat on the concrete floor with three oval airplane-window openings cut into it, two crew members standing over it, a pickup backed up to the open roll-up door beyond. — 2.1 · Shop build The window face, cut flat — three portholes before the arch takes shape Baxter House shop · Sep 21, 2022 · Fig. 2-A

A curved arch segment finished in metallic purple, its wooden rib framework visible along the underside, standing in the fenced shop yard under a bright sky. — 2.2 · Shop build One of four arch sections, painted and curing in the yard Metallic purple outer band · Sep 26, 2022 · 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-202 · 3.0

What all that engineering protected 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 · partners P1–P2 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.

Partners

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

P2Tiki bar. A last-minute party rental — the one thing on the sidewalk I didn’t build.

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

The window seat

A-202 · 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 — the window that opens itself

Each window runs on an automatic open/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-202 · 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.
Tiki barParty rentalLast-minute; the one piece not fabricated.

The drawing is a promise; the build keeps it.