The airport, once a place of spectacle, has become a place to be endured. Have we fallen out of love with airports? asks
GEMMA TIPTON
THEY OUGHT to be the most romantic places on Earth: charged with the energy of meetings and partings, gateways to exotic adventure and destinations both known and unknown. Airports are, instead, some of the most banal and frustrating spaces on earth. Non-places, caught between being somewhere and nowhere, they seem increasingly devoid of nationality and even humanity. Where has the romance of earlier eras for flying gone? And is architecture, terrorism or commerce to blame?
Think of that final airfield scene in Casablanca, the misted lights and drone of propellers as Bogart and Bergman are about to be separated. Back then, and before the war, airports were places of adventure and entertainment. Many (London's Hendon, for example) were designed in the style of racecourses, and would be thronged with spectators. At Glendale in California they built permanent grandstands with a view of the landing field, and some airports charged admission. The airport was a place of spectacle and some, including Dublin airport in the early days, held dances in their halls at night.
But as air travel became an instrument of mass transport rather than a pastime for the rich, airports became more about processing people as rapidly as possible than providing an experience to justify the price of a ticket. Air travel became all about speed.
Architects became excited about airports as they moved into the mainstream. In Vers un Architecture, Le Corbusier compared the hangars at Orly airport to the nave of Notre Dame. "The airplane is the symbol of the new age . . . The airplane arouses our energies and our faith," he wrote.
Artists and architects, including Walter Gropius, Kasimir Malevich, El Lissitzky and Frank Lloyd Wright's son, Lloyd Wright, all got involved in the conversation as to what this new aerial perspective meant, both for cities and for their new gateways: the airports.
More recently, the architectural critic and historian Hugh Pearman said: "Airports come second only to art galleries and museums in the pantheon of projects that the world's greatest architects most aspire to."
Biplanes became post-war bombers, adapted to civilian use, which in turn became jets. Today, the airside of airports has become defined by the specific size and shape of the ubiquitous Boeing 747 and, more recently, the enormous Airbus A380. Everything about the airside of airports is shaped to their specific use, in a way that would have made Louis Sullivan (he who declared "form follows function") weep for joy.
From the old-style curve of the terminal building, designed to welcome travellers at the front while accommodating more space for planes at the back, to the skywalk that first appeared at Delano & Aldrich's La Guardia airport in New York, to today's piers: moving people and their luggage on to planes has developed into a sophisticated system that we only really notice when it breaks down.
Frank Gehry has claimed to have a longing to design an airport on his own (having collaborated with William Pereira on Los Angeles airport): "I got intrigued by the impossible complexity of it," he said. "The whole dynamic of the airport gets more and more complicated, especially with security. That kind of complexity fascinated me because you can try and find beauty in it. And because it's harder to do.
"Complexity is one issue; another is size. I prefer smaller airports because they are more manageable and feel more personal, but in the world's major cities, or at transit hubs such as Dallas and Detroit, you can't get away from size."
At Dublin airport, long distance is made less daunting, but is irritatingly lengthened, by the curved walkway to the new pier (formerly Pier D). At Stansted they use a shuttle train, while at Madrid's excellent Barajas (by Richard Rogers), colour gives a feeling of progression, interest and arrival.
Two of the biggest conceits in airport design are a sense of futurism, and the idea of the aeroplane itself. Norman Foster (Stansted and Beijing airports) acknowledges this, saying of the Boeing 747, "With about 3,000sq ft of floor space, 15 lavatories, three kitchens and a capacity for up to 377 guests, this is surely a true building . . . [ It] is genuinely architectural, both in its design and its thinking."
Eero Saarinen's Dulles airport, and also his TWA terminal at JFK (which Irishman Kevin Roche concluded after Saarinen's death) take the swooping curve of a plane's wing as a central motif. A contemporary example is Santiago Calatrava's Bilbao airport.
As the wonder is taken from air travel by the dulling effect of routine and by the security systems imposed as a result of terrorist threats, airports are increasingly places to be endured. Equally, as cities compete for tourists and business travellers, a world-class airport with a strong architectural vision can tip the balance in a particular destination's favour. But even good design can be vitiated by poor implementation, as is the case with Charles de Gaulle in Paris (see panel).
There are other reasons why we find today's airports so alienating. Security considerations mean all aspects of an airport must be openly on view, so airports can have none of those smaller private spaces that we need to make us feel comfortable. Dramas of leaving and meeting, travel anxieties, the stresses of departure and delay must be played out in full public glare.
There is also an element of processing that takes place as we are progressed from queue to queue to plane, so that even as we enter the precincts of the airport as individuals with strong feelings about what we will and will not do, by the time we are taking our seats and buckling in, we are docile, biddable lambs. Both architecture and systems play their part in this.
There is also the ever-present sense, even if unacknowledged, that however routine flight has become, it still somehow defies the laws of gravity, and challenges fate.
And finally, what of shopping? Denizens of the departure lounge are a marketing person's dream captive audience. Heathrow's Terminal 5 has more than 100 retail outlets on the "other side" of security. Wondering why this feels unsettling, philosopher Alain de Botton writes: "The issue seems to centre on an incongruity between shopping and flying, connected in some sense to the desire to maintain dignity in the face of death . . . Notions of the divine, the eternal and the significant accompany covertly to our craft," says de Botton, wondering how the still-sublime qualities of flight may sit comfortably with clutches of duty free bags.
As both place and non-place; a social space and a space where individualism is lost; entrance and departure point; technical machine and shopping plaza: the successful airport combines many often contradictory functions. The outline of architecture gives no clue to how successful it will be in fulfilling these functions, so how well Terminal 2, when it opens in Dublin in November, operates will only be seen as it is used.
Driving under its connecting section may feel like driving between a pair of legs, but that will probably be as romantic as it will get. We can but hope it will be endurable.
" The whole dynamic of the airport gets more and more complicated . . . That kind of complexity fascinated me because you can try and find beauty in it
Four of the best, one of the worst
Barajas, Madrid
Deservedly won the Stirling Prize. Makes size manageable with its clever use of colour.
Schipol, Amsterdam
In the 1920s you were greeted with a glass of gin, to calm your post-flight nerves. Today it absorbs a dizzying number of people and flights. Plus the train station is directly below.
Changi, Singapore
Winner of airport of the year across a number of polls. Skidmore, Owings & Merrill's brilliant use of light and internal gardens humanises the vast space. Also includes rest areas and swimming pool.
Sligo Airport
Small is beautiful: not for its architecture, but because you feel as if you're landing on a beach. Similarly with Leeds Bradford, where the aircraft swoops in across the moors.
Charles de Gaulle, Paris
Routinely voted worst airport. Long, long taxis to runways, confusing layout and a system of making you queue as many times as possible. Five queues for one flight are not unheard of.
