Airport Designs For The Jet Age

A stunning look at the profound impact of the jet plane on the mid-century aesthetic, from Disneyland to Life magazine Vanessa R. Schwartz engagingly presents the jet plane’s power to define a new age at a critical moment in the mid-20th century, arguing that the craft’s speed and smooth ride allowed people to imagine themselves living in the future. Exploring realms as diverse as airport architecture, theme park design, film, and photography, Schwartz argues that the jet created an aesthetic that circulated on the ground below. Visual and media culture, including Eero Saarinen’s airports, David Bailey’s photographs of the jet set, and Ernst Haas’s experiments in color photojournalism glamorized the imagery of motion. Drawing on unprecedented access to the archives of The Walt Disney Studios, Schwartz also examines the period’s most successful example of fluid motion meeting media culture: Disneyland. The park’s dedication to “people-moving” defined Walt Disney’s vision, shaping the very identity of the place. The jet age aesthetic laid the groundwork for our contemporary media culture, in which motion is so fluid that we can surf the internet while going nowhere at all.

This book explores the relationship between cities and their commercial airports. These vital transportation facilities are locally owned and managed and civic leaders and boosters have made them central to often expansive economic development dreams, including the construction of architecturally significant buildings. However, other metropolitan residents have paid a high price for the expansion of air transportation, as battles over jet aircraft noise resulted not only in quieter jet engine technologies, but profound changes in the metropolitan landscape with the clearance of both urban and suburban neighborhoods. And in the wake of 9/11, the US commercial airport has emerged as the place where Americans most fully experience the security regime introduced after those terrorist attacks.

This is the first book to comprehensively cover the evolution of airport design, from the start of commercial aviation in 1919 to the present day. Many books have been written about airport design at a particular moment in history, but none have rigorously considered why, where, when and how the ideas we now take for granted originated. This book traces the history of airport design considering the philosophies adopted by designers, the functional layouts they have developed and the resultant form of the airport through a series of 40 case studies divided into 7 eras of approximately 20 years each. The themes include: The philosophies underpinning airport design The evolution of design responses How airports have avoided obsolescence Identification of the key turning points The evolution of master plans and terminal concepts in response to increasing traffic volumes The future of airports in terms of environmental sustainability and the Covid-19 hiatus The case studies are international, covering the USA, Germany, the UK, France, the Netherlands, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, South Korea, Thailand, Spain, United Arab Emirates, China, Turkey, Mexico, Australia and Poland. They are illustrated with full colour, many of which have not been published before and form part of an incredible graphic package. This book is essential reading for architects, engineers, planners and environmentalists alike.

In this third edition the chapters have been enhanced to reflect changes in technology and the way the air transport industry runs. Key topics that are newly addressed include low cost airline operations, security issues and EASA regulations on airports. A new chapter covering extended details about wildlife control has been added to the volume.