Airports - Observer Article
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www.jgballard.com Browse our network... Sign up for jgballard.com's free newsletter! Join! Going somewhere? AIRPORTS By J.G. Ballard [The Observer 14/9/97] Airports and airfields have always held a special magic, gateways to the infinite possibilities that only the sky can offer. In 1946, when I first came to England, a dark and derelict shell of a country, I used to dream of the runways of Wake Island and Midway, stepping stones that would carry me back across the Pacific to the China of my childhood. At school in Cambridge, and later as a medical student at King's college, I would flee all that fossilised Gothic self-immersion and ride a borrowed motorcycle to the American airbases at Mildenhall and Lakenheath, happy to stare through the wire at the lines of silver bombers and transport planes. Airports then were places where America arrived to greet us, where the world of tomorrow touched down in Europe. Sadly, Britain faltered on the way to its own future, half- heartedly erecting a shabby urban limbo of under- serviced municipal towers and wind-swept shopping precincts. Together they provided the nostalgia- worshippers with all the ammunition needed to launch their postmodernist counter-attack. The pitched roof seemed to rule the Eighties, a vernacular dialect unable to distinguish a town hall from a supermarket or fire station, too many temples to tweeness that resemble offerings on the altar of Prince Charles's uneasy conscience. Airports, thankfully. are designed around the needs of their collaborating technologies, and seem to be almost the only form of public architecture free from the pressures of kitsch and nostalgia. As far as I know, there are no half-timbered terminal buildings or pebble- dashed control towers. For the past 35 years I have lived in the Thames Valley town of Shepperton, a suburb not of London but of London Airport. The catchment area of Heathrow extends for at least 10 miles to its south and west, a zone of motorway intersections, dual carriageways, science parks, marinas and industrial estates, watched by police Super-Cannes Amazon.co.uk Amazon.com Crash Amazon.co.uk Amazon.com Crash - The Cronenberg DVD Amazon.com Empire Of The Sun Amazon.co.uk Amazon.com
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Transcript of Airports - Observer Article
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AIRPORTSBy J.G. Ballard
[The Observer 14/9/97]
Airports and airfields have always held a special magic,gateways to the infinite possibilities that only the skycan offer. In 1946, when I first came to England, a darkand derelict shell of a country, I used to dream of therunways of Wake Island and Midway, stepping stonesthat would carry me back across the Pacific to the Chinaof my childhood. At school in Cambridge, and later as amedical student at King's college, I would flee all thatfossilised Gothic self-immersion and ride a borrowedmotorcycle to the American airbases at Mildenhall andLakenheath, happy to stare through the wire at the linesof silver bombers and transport planes. Airports thenwere places where America arrived to greet us, wherethe world of tomorrow touched down in Europe.
Sadly, Britain faltered on the way to its own future, half-heartedly erecting a shabby urban limbo of under-serviced municipal towers and wind-swept shoppingprecincts. Together they provided the nostalgia-worshippers with all the ammunition needed to launchtheir postmodernist counter-attack. The pitched roofseemed to rule the Eighties, a vernacular dialect unableto distinguish a town hall from a supermarket or firestation, too many temples to tweeness that resembleofferings on the altar of Prince Charles's uneasyconscience.
Airports, thankfully. are designed around the needs oftheir collaborating technologies, and seem to be almostthe only form of public architecture free from thepressures of kitsch and nostalgia. As far as I know, thereare no half-timbered terminal buildings or pebble-dashed control towers.
For the past 35 years I have lived in the Thames Valleytown of Shepperton, a suburb not of London but ofLondon Airport. The catchment area of Heathrow extendsfor at least 10 miles to its south and west, a zone ofmotorway intersections, dual carriageways, scienceparks, marinas and industrial estates, watched by police
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CCTV speed-check cameras, a landscape which mostpeople affect to loathe but which I regard as the mostadvanced and admirable in the British Isles, andparadigm of the best that the future offers us.
I welcome its transience, alienation and discontinuities,and its unashamed response to the pressures of speed,disposibility and the instant impulse. Here, under theflight paths of Heathrow, everything is designed for thenext five minutes. Its centrepiece, and for me the mostinspiring in England today, is Michael Manser's superbHeathrow Hilton, near Terminal Four. Its vast atriumresembles a planetarium in the way that it salutes theskies above its roof.
By comparison with London Airport, London itself seemshopelessly antiquated. Its hundreds of miles of gentrifiedstucco are an aching hangover from the nineteenthcentury that should have been bulldozed decades ago.London may well be the only world capital - with thepossible exception of Moscow - that has gone from thenineteenth century to the twenty-first withoutexperiencing all the possibilities and excitements of thetwentieth in any meaningful way. Visiting London, Ialways have the sense of a city devised as an instrumentof political control, like the class system that preservesEngland from revolution. The labyrinth of districts andboroughs, the endless columned porticos that onceguarded the modest terraced cottages of Victorianclerks, together make clear that London is a place whereeveryone knows his place.
By contrast, at an airport such as Heathrow theindividual is defined, not by the tangible groundmortgaged into his soul for the next 40 years, but theindeterminate flicker of flight numbers trembling on anannunciator screen. We are no longer citizens with civicobligations, but passengers for whom all destinations aretheoretically open, our lightness of baggage mandatedby the system. Airports have become a new kind ofdiscontinuous city, whose vast populations, measured byannual passenger throughputs, are entirely transient,purposeful and, for the most part, happy. An easycamaraderie rules the departure lounges, along with thevirtual abolition of nationality - whether we are Scots orJapanese is far less important than where we are going.I've long suspected that people are only truly happy andaware of a real purpose to their lives when they handover their tickets at the check-in.
Above all, airports are places of good news. I miss thedays when celebrities were photographed as theystepped through airliner doors. The headiest ozone ofglamour and optimism crossed the Atlantic in theConstellations and Stratocruisers of the Fifties asHollywood stars, Presidents and tycoons waved from thesteps, bringing their confidence and likeability to thisnorthern European corner of the depressed world.
I suspect that the airport will be the true city of the nextcentury. The great airports are already suburbs of an
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invisible world capital, a virtual metropolis whosefaubourgs are named Heathrow, Kennedy, Charles deGaulle, Nagoya, a centripetal city whose populationforever circles its notional centre, and will never need togain access to its dark heart. A mastery of thediscontinuities of metropolitan life has always beenessential to the successful urban dweller - we live in astreet where we know none of our neighbours, and ourclose friends live equally isolated lives within 50 squaremiles around us. We work in a district five miles away,shop in another and see films and plays in a third. Afailure to master these discontinuities, whether social orgenetic in origin, leaves some ethnic groups at adisadvantage, forced into enclaves that seem toreconstitute mental maps of ancestral villages.
But the modern airport defuses these tensions, andoffers its passengers the pleasures and socialreassurance of the boarding lounge. Its instantlysummoned village life span is long enough to calm us,and short enough not to be a burden. The concourses arethe ramblas and agoras of the future city, time-freezezones where all the clocks of the world are displayed, anatlas of arrivals and destinations forever updating itself,where briefly we become true world citizens. Air travelmay well be the most important civic duty that wedischarge today, erasing class and national distinctionsand subsuming them within the unitary global culture ofthe departure lounge.
In addition to the airport itself, I value the benevolentsocial and architectural influence that a huge transitfacility such as Heathrow casts on the urban landscapearound it. I have learnt to like the intricate network ofperimeter roads, the car-rental offices, air freight depotsand travel clinics, the light industrial and motelarchitecture that unvaryingly surrounds every majorairport in the world.
Together they constitute the reality of our lives, ratherthan some mythical domain of village greens, cathedralcloses and manorial vistas. Much as I admire, say, SyonHouse, now home to a huge garden centre and a venuefor business entertaining, I feel more at home drivingthrough an office park like the New Square complex atBedfont, its hi-tech corporate hangars only a javelin'sthrow from the Heathrow perimeter road, and surelyinfluenced by the proximity of all those 747 tailplanesthat cruise the tarmac like the fins of amiable sharks.Even the old terminal buildings - One, Two and Three -have a certain period charm. Together, they and themain control tower represent the last survival of theFestival of Britain. I look forward to their replacement indue course, and to terminal Five, and beyond that toterminals Six and Seven, and the transformation ofBritain into the ultimate departure lounge. After all, wehave every reason to leave.
This article first appeared in September's Blueprintmagazine and is included in the book 'Airport', publishedto coincide with the exhibition at the Photographers'
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Gallery, 5 Great Newport Street, London WC2
[This article originally appeared on the webpagewww.terminal1.demon.co.uk/JGBallard.htm which hasbeen subsequently deleted]
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