Jacob Hashimoto

The threads connecting Nashville InternaAonal Airport’s arAsAc redesign reflect the state’s peaceful rolling hillsides, its tranquil glimmering rivers and, of course, popular country music. There’s even a reference book outlining Tennessee’s most beauAful features for the designers and architects recreaAng the expanding 1987-era terminal. The terminal centerpiece will be a $900,000 shimmering hanging sculpture made of 8,000 fiberglass rods that mimic the many colors of the Tennessee sky and clouds.

“Placemaking and calming," BNA President Doug Kreulen said, of the aestheAc inspiraAon. "We have a design guide that shows the state from the coast of Memphis to the Smokies to the Cumberland. We're proud of what we're doing."

The sculpture will hang from a new, taller wooden roof held firm with massive steel beams that have already been installed. It will fan out over escalators and a suspended walkway that will accommodate passengers entering from the parking garage. The airport is booming with more business than ever before, following the intense year-long business lull due to COVID-19 protocols.

"We're at 18 million passengers and going to 30 million passengers by 2041," Kreulen said. ArAst Jacob Hashimoto is now compleAng the massive hanging sculpture, which he describes as a "sweeping, cloud-like suspended landscape that dri`s elegantly out of the space as it traverses the central escalators."

Hashimoto was chosen over 70 other arAsts who bid on the project. It will be the largest sculpture in the state, Kreulen said.

"The ambiAon of the artwork is to be beauAful, sublime, and meditaAve," Hashimoto said, in a statement. "It will recognize and celebrate a sense of place, both ecologically and culturally. It will be, I hope, a capAvaAng, courageous, and spectacularly poeAc gesture that can offer a quiet moment of grace, a moment of reflecAon and recogniAon for those who are beginning a journey or those who are coming back home."