机场一种文化景观?

2017-01-13 09:26作者索尼娅丁佩尔曼
风景园林 2016年8期
关键词:文化景观机场设计师

作者:索尼娅 · 丁佩尔曼

翻译:胡凯富 吴晓彤

Text: Sonja Dümpelmann

Translator: HU Kai-fu Wu Xiao-tong

机场一种文化景观?

作者:索尼娅 · 丁佩尔曼

翻译:胡凯富吴晓彤

Text: Sonja Dümpelmann

Translator:HU Kai-fuWu Xiao-tong

在20世纪,机场已被理解和设计为一种文化景观和独特环境。尽管机场在其演化过程中被各种批评家、建筑师和哲学家描述为是一种反景观,过时的“非场所”和反乌托邦,但总体上对机场和航空的理解已经与景观、环境、生态的概念紧密地交织在一起。机场被认为是一种文化景观和一种脆弱的容易被破坏的环境,这种观点引发且起因于对机场特定地点的景观设计,对野生动物的管理实践,在机场设计中纳入历史遗迹、以及以废旧机场的适应性再利用为目的的飞机跑道和其他特征的保护。尽管很多设计师把机场构想为新的标志性的高科技文化景观,其他设计师则认为机场破坏了现有的文化景观。机场作为文化景观的理念也因此总是与其周围的社会、经济和政治密切相关。这篇文章把机场作为景观的思想,融入到文化景观自身概念的变化解释中,这种理念在动力飞行诞生的那几年中,第一次在英美世界得到更广泛和准确的运用。

机场;文化景观;地理;风景园林;环境

1966年,美国艺术家罗伯特·史密斯主办了一个被认为是新型大地艺术运动的重点项目:达拉斯-沃斯堡国际机场的一系列艺术作品。①这个项目脱胎于史密斯就初步研究的磋商以及由曼哈顿建筑和工程公司(Tippetts-Abbett-McCarthy-Stratton)承担的概念规划。史密斯沉醉于巨大的机场规模和像纽约中央公园那么长的跑道。规划官员、建筑师和工程师都一再强调,如果把它放在曼哈顿岛上面,机场将超出岛屿的范围。1966至1967年间,史密斯产生的对场地雕刻干预的理念是为着陆和起飞的航测图设计的,不需要垂直状态。它们包括嵌入地表的含有成排的“黄色雾灯”的浅层玻璃盖盒;大型沥青混凝土广场和白色砾石小径;一个由三角形混凝土板组成大型螺旋(见航测图);提出“蜿蜒土丘”和 “砾石小径”的意见,即一种在跑道之间和围绕跑道的低矮的不规则曲线土丘图案。②

Translator:

HU Kai-fu, who was born in 1992 in Inner Mongolia, is a postgraduate student in Landscape Architecture, Beijing Forestry University. His research focuses on Landscape Planning and Theories.

Wu Xiao-tong, who was born in 1993 in Inner Mongolia, is a postgraduate student in Landscape Architecture, Beijing Forestry University. Her research focuses on Landscape Planning and Theories.

正如史密斯所说,以“一种新的方式定义航空集散站的界限”和“开创先例并创造通向机场景观美学的独特方法”。③这个“空中艺术”的灵感来自于航测图,他认为特定的场地条件和个人对场地的看法取代了17、18和19世纪自然主义艺术。在空中艺术中,史密斯认为“景观看起来更像是一个三维地图而非一个质朴的花园”。④这个机场项目让他正面交锋与其同事托尼·史密斯所说的“创造世界……在传统之外”是一个“没有文化先例的人造景观”。⑤然而,史密斯不是第一个,也不是最后一个这样断言的人。

在20世纪20年代的商业飞行兴起时期,景观设计师与建筑师就认为机场是一种需要被设计的景观。第二次世界大战之后,在许多废弃的军用机场被决定利用时,以及第一个像达拉斯-沃斯堡这样的机场被设想和计划时,机场景观的创造再次获得资金支持。机场景观设计十分专注于视觉模式的设计;这种视觉为导向的文化景观研究在当时一开始是受到地理学家的批判的。

最近,已故的文化地理学者丹尼斯·科斯格罗夫将希思罗机场与格鲁吉亚庄园的景观进行了对比分析。科斯格罗通过两场地比较,不仅是为展现18世纪的园林与20世纪的喷气机机场之间相似的形态——相似的规模和绵延的草坪;同时指出,这两块场地作为促进土地发展的经济引擎,各自都发挥了重要作用。科斯格罗夫认为,从理论上,研究机场能“将景观恢复为一个综合体、一个灵活的概念”,这种景观还包括社会、政治和经济领域(在18世纪的英国,花园景观作为经济引擎,是绅士们聚集并且从某种程度上看可以生产出资本的地方;同样地,如果没有伦敦希斯罗机场,英国的经济将受到极大限制 )。科斯格罗夫认为不管是希思罗机场,还是大多数普通的机场都是一种文化景观。20世纪90年代,正当科斯格罗夫写作之时,许多地理学家已经开始将文化景观看作是权力关系的体现,也是社会、经济和政治结构方面文化特征的表达方式和组成力量。他们的研究开始更加注重形成文化景观的过程,而不是文化景观产生的视觉效果。

最近,许多前军事机场和商业机场已更多的在字面上作为新的城市公园与社区的文化景观。在一些案例中,这些新的城市公园甚至能够重建或恢复现存的文化景观,如柏林的约翰内斯塔尔前机场(图1)和加布里埃莱·基弗在柏林西部设计的加图机场。在很多其他的案例中,新的景观设计中也涵盖着古建筑、跑道和一些其他的设计元素。例如,柏林滕珀尔霍夫(图2),紧邻法兰克福市的前莫里斯·罗斯机场和在厄瓜多尔的前基多国际机场的公园设计。那些结合不同场地随着时间推移而累积形成的景观层进行设计的项目,表示对将当代文化景观作为文本与文化表征媒介的当代认识。

1 羊群在旧的约翰内斯塔尔机场内吃草(摄影师:索尼娅·丁佩尔曼)Sheep grazing on the former airfield Johannisthal, Berlin, Germany. (Photograph: Sonja Dümpelmann)

2 德国柏林的滕珀尔霍夫前机场跑道(摄影师:索尼娅·丁佩尔曼)A runway of the former airport Tempelhof, Berlin, Germany. (Photograph: Sonja Dümpelmann)

3 1902年10月24日奥维尔·莱特和威尔伯·莱特在基蒂霍克试飞(美国国会图书馆)Orville Wright, Wilbur Wright flying at Kitty Hawk, October 24, 1902. (Library of Congress)

机场景观的历史贯穿整个20世纪,并在进入21世纪之后,机场显露出其在自然与科技、工程与设计之间摇摆的场地特征。正如之前受到人类支配的自然景观一样,在Sauerian看来,机场当然是一种文化景观。⑥机场是当地人与全球沟通的纽带。作为全球经济化的动力和产品,机场及其景观是乘客离开和进入空域和地域的定位点。

1 降落场地

4 地图显示哈佛的航空领域,1911年HUD3123箱1(哈佛大学档案馆)Map showing Harvard Aviation Field, 1911. HUD 3123 Box 1(Harvard University Archives)

5 20世纪20年代德国埃森的飞机场鸟瞰图,出自斯特德曼·沙姆韦·汉克斯,《国际机场》。(纽约:罗纳德新闻公司,1929年)Aerial view of Essen airfield, Germany, 1920s. Stedman Shumway Hanks, International Airports (New York: The Ronald press company, 1929).

载人热气球首次升空的场地,通常会选在精心设计花园或者城市公园之中。在工业化城市的密集城区中,花园和公园是唯一足够大的开放空间。花园和热气球以及热气球航行通常被看作是一种奇观,并且在某些情况下,热气球能够提供使花园图像完整的元素。正如1783年,科学家Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier和侯爵François d' Arlandes登上了Mongolfier制造的首个热气球,并在巴黎外的the Chateau de la Muette公园进行热气球试飞。

许多关于动力飞行的早期尝试都是在可提供适宜自然条件的环境中进行的,包括风能和软质着陆区,例如在北卡罗莱纳州海岸在基蒂霍克附近的那个地方,威尔伯和奥维尔·莱特在1902年和1903年在那里尝试了他们第一次短途飞行,此后他们搬入俄亥俄州代顿市附近的养牛牧场,那是他们的第一个飞机场(图3)。尽管牛可以被驱使到牧场最南部,但对于他们首次沿着椭圆飞行的轨迹而言,位于场地中央的荆棘树迟早都会成为在轨迹方向上的一种障碍。

然而,科技与自然最终在多层面中出现矛盾,这在1911年哈佛航空场地(今Squantum Point公园)的地图中得到预示,这个航空场地在1910年哈佛航空学会召开的哈佛波士顿航空会议中第一次得到使用。⑦对于那些来比赛的飞行员来说,1.5英里(2.41km)的航程会完成5个转折点架线塔标记在地上。在地图上,架线塔被由点划线准确的连接,排除掉自然陆地信息如一条小溪和其蜿蜒的岸线(图4)。其中负责首次航行的人是雅培劳伦斯·罗奇,哈佛航空学会第一任会长,哈佛大学气象学教授,他将航空与环境科学的研究紧密结合,特别是在大气学方面。

第一个被选为建设机场的场地,是由于它自然条件有利于飞机起飞和降落。正如工程师阿奇博尔德·布莱克在1929年报告的,理想的“自然”条件为开阔地的平坦地形,自然排水的土壤,紧密生长的全年生长的草,较低或者均匀分布的降雨量,并且能避免大雾和大风天气。⑧因此,第一个机场为铺满草的平地,大约750-1 000m,并在其周边配备了体量较小的建筑(图5)。他们的特点是一个直径为45m的白色圆圈和旁边巨大的字母名。通常由坐落于中心的发烟罐指示风向。由于飞机向着更大、更重和更有动力的需求发展,早期机场最终配备了混凝土、沥青跑道以及完善的地下排水系统(图6),成为了或多或少遵循综合设计理念的机场。

机场基础设施愈加从自然条件中脱离出来,由放牧羊群和夯实土地的“宜人的田园风光”,转变成为一种场地,在这里“人类必须采用自己带来的机器以及材料整顿简朴的自然,用道路在土壤表面留下疤痕,设计笔直的精心安排的跑道,砍伐树木和去除那些可能危害到飞机空中航行的障碍物。”正如一位评论家在1945年评论的,“现代化的机场必须是人造的”⑨。唯一由自然决定的事情便是主跑道的方向、长度和强度,主跑道需要平行于盛行风并依赖于海拔高度,因为海拔高度会造成大气密度的不同。在20世纪20年代时,机场作为文化景观的概念已经出现,因为当时许多景观设计师已经意识到机场设计给他们提供了工作机会。

2 机场景观与风景

6 机场工程的典型机场排水规划,。出自霍华德·奥克利·夏普,《机场工程》。(纽约:J. Wiley Sons出版,INC.,1944)Exemplary airport drainage plan. Howard Oakley Sharp, Airport Engineering (New York: J. Wiley & sons, inc.,1944).

7 恩斯特·赫明豪森在美国堪萨斯城设计的费尔法克斯机场,出自《美国的美国景观设计师3》,第一期(1930年7月):15-18.Ernst Herminghaus’s design for Fairfax Airport, Kansas City, U.S. American Landscape Architect 3, no. 1 (July 1930): 15-18.

建筑师和设计师们很快的发现机场是一个综合设计,包括飞行区的设计、航站楼、机库和周围的开放空间与种植设计。如果运用美国城市美化运动的思想,机场甚至可以被理解为是一个类似于延伸的17世纪法国园林那么复杂的设计问题。许多设计师都将其设想如大地景观和城市来规划。

在20世纪20年代末期,工程师们用不同航道模式的设计标准进行实验,以能够满足不同机场发展的需要组合。 另一方面,建筑师和景观设计师也将这些跑道的设计植入到更大的景观层面。美国建筑师弗兰西斯·基利制定了一个有远见的机场设计方案,将宏伟的圆形停机坪设在仿照 17世纪法国园林的大型观赏花园中。

美国景观设计师出身的规划师约翰·诺伦提出了一个典型的机场规划,包括四角机场和与之配套的卫星城镇,其中根据patte d'oie的街道布局类似于17世纪凡尔赛的城镇和花园的整体效果。

在20世纪50年代末期,喷气式飞机场之一的纽约国际机场(今天的JFK机场),实施了所谓的国际化公园设计,事实上是以17世纪法国园林为蓝本的套用。220英亩(89hm2)的国际公园围绕在停车场、通道和候机楼中,沿着国际候机楼与加热制冷厂之间形成的轴线展开。公园包括种植池以及3个圆形喷泉,它们的尺度以及沿轴线的位置造成了一种强迫性的透视效果。

在20世纪20年代末开始,像早期候机楼和建筑内饰的设计那样,人们越来越关心外部空间的造型。为了平息乘客的紧张情绪,并使乘客感到安心舒适,候机厅的设计常常设计得像包含靠背座椅、沙发和壁炉的私人客厅。同样,室外空间的设计往往表达出本地现代主义的风格,设计者希望其产生相同效果,并确保和指引乘客达到各自想去的地方。

机场的景观设计能够形成对地方、区域甚至国家的认同感,并在机场日益标准化的技术环境中,机场景观通常被认为是地域形象的象征。从20世纪20年代起,很多设计师认为与现代主义和地方特征性相比,机场应该是一种综合的景观,也是近来称为“全球本土化”的思想的表现。尽管机场景观在地面设计已经验丰富,但它也需要适应垂直方向的视觉效果。

如果建筑师能够自由的使用装饰艺术和乡土风格进行实验,像终端建筑中西班牙殖民地复兴那样,景观设计师就能够将第一个商业机场作为实验场地,以探索与现代主义和地方主义都有关的新表现形式。新的交通方式将提供新的设计机会,来挑战传统形式和观点。上述观点表明,这为景观设计师带来提供新垂直景观的机会。1930年,恩斯特·赫明豪森在美国创造了少数早期的现代主义景观设计之一的美国堪萨斯城的费尔法克斯机场(图7)。他发现黄色和橙色在空中最容易被察觉到,但它们的细节在高空高速运动下仍很难被观察到,因此他提议种植大片色彩鲜艳的植物。他设计的航站楼前区域采用对称布局的几何形式,在空中都能被轻松辨认。⑩

8 该规划包括俄亥俄州托莱多市莫米河上的湾景公园内新机场,出自《美国公园和休闲》(5月 - 1930年6月):266. The plan to include a new airport in Bay View Park on the Maumee River Toledo, Ohio, U.S. Parks & Recreation (May-June 1930): 266.

9 丹尼尔·厄本·基利在1969年4月为得克萨斯州的达拉斯/沃斯堡国际机场设计的景观。感谢弗朗西斯勒布图书馆提供资料,哈佛大学设计研究生院。Daniel Urban Kiley, landscape design for Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, Texas, April 1969. Courtesy of the Frances Loeb Library. Harvard University Graduate School of Design.

不同于这种从空中轻易辨识的标志和图形的设计,德国景观设计师赫尔曼·马特恩在20世纪30年代的斯图加特新机场设计中,试图使机场建筑与地面得联系更加紧密。他通过种植设计进一步强调了建筑师恩斯特·扎格比尔的设计意图(一定程度上由于对空袭的担忧)即机场建筑与景观相适宜,并设计了能够使建筑融入到周围景色中的轮廓。长而蜿蜒的游客露台的清晰轮廓和纪念性框架被灌木打断并得到 “软化”处理。依据该地区的乡村特色选择树木、灌木种类,并采用不规则种植方式。无论是从地方主义思想角度还是预防空袭措施角度出发,景观设计会将机场融入到周边环境中。在第二次世界大战期间,整个机场都被转化为伪造的文化景观。在各种化学应用、涂料和陪衬物的帮助下,他们被伪装成农田、果园和偏远住宅区。

在动力飞行的前几年,一些景观设计师和规划师将机场与城市公共公园联系起来,认为机场是公园系统的一部分。以至于,在20世纪20年代的美国,在不同专业团队和市政机构引领下,一些景观设计师参与到有关于机场选址和管理的激烈辩论中。虽然机场在概念上被理解为开放空间,但景观设计师们并不完全同意这种看法。有些人认为机场兼具娱乐和商业设施,应该被纳入公园体系并由公园部门管理。另一些人认为,把休闲公园的功能和空中交通相结合存在危险,并认为它们是相矛盾的。虽然存在不同观点,但在一些小型机场建设中,最后仍实现了机场真的建造配套的高尔夫球场和公园。

俄亥俄州的托莱多市,不顾那些认为飞机会对公园游客带来安全隐患的质疑,将机场纳入到该市的公园规划系统中,将其位置就选在位于莫米河河口(图8)以北的城市湾景观公园里。

3 将机场视为环境

10 丹尼尔·厄本·基利在1969年4月规划的得克萨斯州达拉斯/沃斯堡国际机场的铅笔稿与钢笔鸟瞰图。感谢弗朗西斯·勒布图书馆提供资料,哈佛大学设计研究生院。Daniel Urban Kiley, bird’s-eye view of planned Dallas/ Fort Worth International Airport, Texas, April 1969. Pencil and black ink on trace paper. Courtesy of the Frances Loeb Library. Harvard University Graduate School of Design.

尽管许多早期机场设计都只关注了机场的场地选址,但是工程师、规划师和设计师们很快意识到,机场的安全问题和飞机技术需要机场周边区域的空域内都没有障碍。事实上,早在20世纪30年代,机场规划就不仅仅是涉及到国家的机场和空中航线系统,而开始被认为是更大范围的、与机场相关的环境中心。那个时候噪音污染已经成为一个话题,显然,机场周边用地性质需要得到管理以防止飞机起降空域内物理危害和障碍物的产生。从机场边界开始一直延伸到跑道末端为中心的半径2英里(3.22km)的范围内,建筑高度均受到机场分区的限制。

1960年, 美国首个喷气机机场开始建设,建筑师和建筑评论家批判说机场是会废弃的⑪,它是一个“城市附属的寄生虫”⑫,像荒地一样缺乏视觉冲击力。在这些评论家的眼里,机场是和公园景观完全对立的。著名的建筑评论家刘易斯·芒福德用讽刺、干涩的文字这样的解释为“公园和场地已被附上新价值”。他认为目前的公园意味着“铺满沥青的荒地,仅仅作为机动车的临时停车空间”,而“场地”意味着“另一种人造沙漠,水泥条带被镶嵌在贫瘠的土地上,随着噪声震动,奉献于飞机起落”。芒福德认为,大量的停车空间和机场都是废弃场地,并且它们“是以牺牲大城市周围的公园用地为代价建设的”。如果再这样发展下去,其结果必然会是 “遍布硬质铺装的荒原,不适于人类居住,不会比月球好到哪里”。⑬

因此,当史密森被邀请去为世界上最大飞机场的达拉斯/沃斯堡提供咨询时,很多机场好像成为反乌托邦式的景观。机场建设开始受制于环境影响评估。在1968年,美国佛罗里达州进行的第一次环境影响评价阻止了大赛普里斯沼泽中建设飞机场的计划,原因是机场建设会对沼泽地造成巨大破坏。

当前的机场设计理念是要整合环境和航空规划, 兼并区域规划。除了要减轻噪音、水和空气的污染,还有对土地利用、水文和野生动物的影响之外,对机场视觉环境的关注也增加了。

景观设计师丹尼尔·基利设计的美国建设的两个早期喷气式飞机场设计方案,已为此类机场处理方式开创先河。他设计的新杜勒斯国际机场(1958 - 1962)方案在很大程度上得到了贯彻实施。该机场位于弗吉尼亚的尚蒂伊,位于华盛顿特区的外围。相比之下,他在1962年为达拉斯/沃斯堡国际机场所做的设计大多都没真正实施。即使比史密斯超前的想法更现实一些,也仍然由于其不朽和宏大而不能被完全理解,他把机场中央高速公路的脊柱安全岛设计成为具有纪念价值的倒影水池的倾斜轴线(图9-10)。由于基利着迷于17世纪法国花园,并对大型机场设计驾轻就熟,因此他很容易的完成了新的喷气式飞机场的景观改造。在杜勒斯和达拉斯/沃斯堡国际机场的设计中,他采用大量的植物种植来平衡航站楼和通道,另一方面也是进一步强调巨大规模的元素。植物和水景要素是他设计的一部分,烘托机场景观并将航站楼、入口道路和停车场等融入到更大规模的景观中。

在达拉斯/沃斯堡的设计中,矩形水池被两排树木围绕。网格区块内的种植树木在穿过高速公路的滑行道桥梁的垂直位置上。各种形状的水域位于中央公路侧面的每个终端环线的中心,包括行列式、环形式和网格式,每一圈都不一样。基利在纵贯高速路脊柱的两端安全岛上都覆盖了观花树木。这与基利设计的杜勒斯国际机场相似,在杜勒斯国际机场的规划中,位于引道和艾罗·沙里宁设计的标志性候机楼,其两侧的乔木和灌木都繁花盛开或果实累累,迎接着旅客的到来。高速路的南出口两侧种植对称的常绿植物,相反,在它各端边缘处的大矩形区域内则种植树苗为机场日后使用做准备。建造70km2的机场,基利的景观设计必须考虑到机场未来的扩建——正如在1973年机场投入运营时规划师们宣布的那样——机场最终要为航天飞机的升降也提供空间。⑭基利把芒福德曾经认为是荒地的机场转变成为具有功能标志性的、吸引人流观赏的景观,尽管这项具有里程碑意义的设计只有部分得以实现,在20世纪50、60年代首架超音速喷气式飞机着陆时,这些设计证明了将机场作为综合性景观与环境的理解认同者渐增。

自20世纪90年代起,由于地缘政治的变化和大规模航空旅行的增多,很多以前用于军事和贸易的停机场和航空港变成了公共的城市公园。这些过去曾经位于城市边缘地带的老旧机场,如今在城市化地区成为新的大型公共开放空间。在20世纪20年代,美国规划师和设计师已经预言,那些曾被认为是过时的、通常建设在公共绿地旁或内部的机场,有可能重新变回“永久性的公共开放空间”。/如此说来,今天的许多机场“兜了一圈回到了原地”。在这个过程中,机场不仅被很多它们的设计师理解为人文景观,并且它们的设计和处理措施还反应了各自在不同时代的文化景观方面的学术论述观点,正如那些英美的地理学者实践的一般。

In 1966, the American artist Robert Smithson developed what has been considered the key project in the nascent earth art movement: a series of art works for the site of Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.①The project grew out of Smithson’s consultation on the preliminary studies and concept plans for the airport undertaken by the Manhattan-based architectural and engineering firm Tippetts-Abbett-McCarthy-Stratton. Smithson was fascinated with the airport's monumental scale and the extent of its runways that, as he pointed out, spanned the length of New York City's Central Park. As the planning officials, architects and engineers did not fail to emphasize, the airport would expand well beyond Manhattan Island if laid on top of it. The ideas Smithson developed for sculptural interventions on the site between 1966 and 1967, were designed for the aerial view from landing and departing airplanes and none required verticality. They included large shallow horizontal glass-covered boxes embedded in the earth that contained rows of "yellow fog lights;" patterns of large square asphalt pavements and a web of white gravel paths; a vast spiral consisting of triangular concrete panels laid out on the ground (Aerial Map); and a proposal for Wandering Earth Mounds and Gravel Paths (1967), a pattern of low amoebashaped earth mounds between and surrounding the runways.②

Smithson strove, as he explained, to "define the limits of the air terminal site in a new way" and to "set a precedent and create an original approach to the aesthetics of airport landscaping."③This "aerial art" inspired by the aerial view, the idiosyncratic site conditions and individual site perceptions in his eyes replaced the "naturalism of seventeenth-, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century art". In "aerial art," Smithson contended, "the landscape began to look more like a three dimensional map rather than a rustic garden."④The airport project confronted him with what his colleague Tony Smith has called a "created world . . . without tradition" and with an "artificial landscape without cultural precedent."⑤However, Smithson was not the first, nor was he the last to make this claim.

At the beginning of commercial flight in the 1920s, landscape architects and architects had understood the airport as a landscape that needed to be designed. The creation of an airport landscape again gained currency after the Second World War when the use of many abandoned military airfields had to be determined, and when the first jetports-like the one at Dallas-Fort Worthwere conceived and planned. Airport landscape designs were preoccupied with visual patterns; and it was the visual orientation of cultural landscape studies that geographers were beginning to criticize at the time.

More recently, in 1999, the late cultural geographer Denis Cosgrove compared HeathrowAirport to the landscape of a Georgian Estate. Cosgrove used this comparison not only to lay out some morphological parallels between the eighteenth-century landscape garden and the twentieth-century jetport-the size, the open stretches of grass; but also to point out their respective importance as economic engines for land development. On a theoretical level then, studying an airport could, Cosgrove argued, "recover landscape as a synthetic idea, a flexible concept", and this landscape included social, political and economic worlds (landscape gardens in eighteenthcentury England were economic engines, they were the places where the gentry amassed and in part, at least, produced their capital; similarly, the economy of Britain would be strongly curtailed if it weren't for Heathrow airport). Cosgrove was proposing that Heathrow, or airports in general are a cultural landscape. In the 1990s, when Cosgrove was writing, many geographers had begun to see cultural landscapes as the embodiments of relationships of power and as expressions of and constituent forces within social, economic and political structures characterizing cultures. Their studies began to focus more on the processes that shaped cultural landscapes rather than the visual outcomes of them.

Lately, many former military and commercial airfields and airports have appeared more literally as the cultural landscapes of new urban parks and neighborhoods. In some cases, these new urban parks even recreate or restore existing cultural landscapes, as in the case at the former airfield of Johannisthal in Berlin (figure 1), and in Büro Gabriele Kiefer's design for the airfield Gatow west of Berlin. In many other cases, the new landscapes incorporate old buildings, runways, and other objects in their design. Examples are Berlin Tempelhof (figure 2), the former Maurice Rose Airfield near Frankfurt, and the park design for the former international airport in Quito, Ecuador. These projects that work with the layers of landscape that have accumulated on the respective sites over time, are expressive of contemporary understandings of cultural landscapes as text and as media of cultural expression.

The genealogy of airport landscape throughout the twentieth and into the twentyfirst century reveals the airport as a site with an oscillating relationship between nature and technology, engineering and design. As formerly natural landscapes that have been acted upon by humans, airports are, of course, in the Sauerian sense, cultural landscapes.⑥They sit at the nexus between the local and the global. As both, motor and product of a global economy, the airport and its landscape is the location where air passengers leave and enter the airspace and are grounded.

1 Airfields

The first manned balloons that took off into the air very often began their journeys in elaborately designed gardens, or public urban parks. In the dense urban neighborhoods of the industrializing cities, gardens and parks were the only open spaces that were big enough. Often both, the gardens and the balloons, as well as the balloon flight, were spectacles, and in some cases the balloons even provided an element that completed the garden picture, as in the case of the first Mongolfier's balloon that was flown by François d’Arlandes and Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and took off from the gardens of the Chateau de la Muette just outside Paris in 1783.

Many early attempts at powered flight were undertaken in environments that provided suitable natural conditions including wind and soft landing areas such as the ones on the North Carolina coast near Kitty Hawk where Wilbur and Orville Wright undertook their first short flights in 1902 and 1903 before they moved to a cow pasture-the first flying field-near Dayton, Ohio (figure 3). While the cows could be driven into the southern end of the pasture, the obstacle that remained was a thorn tree in the middle of the field that was sooner or later found to be an important point of orientation for their first flying maneuvers along the oval flight path.

That technology and nature would, however, ultimately come into conflict on multiple levels, was foreshadowed in the simple 1911 map drawing of the Harvard Aviation Field (today Squantum Point Park) that was used for the first time for the 1910 Harvard-Boston Aviation meet convened by the Harvard Aeronautical Society.⑦The one and a half-mile-long course for the pilots who gathered to compete was marked on the ground by 5 pylons signifying the turning points. On the map, the pylons were connected by precise, straight dash-dotted lines that disregarded the natural land formation including a creek and the sinuous coastline (figure 4). Amongst the men responsible for the first aviation meets was Abbott Lawrence Rotch, Harvard Professor of Meteorology and the first President of the Harvard Aeronautical Society who combined in his persona the close connection between aviation and the scientific exploration of the environment, in particular the atmosphere.

The first sites for airfields were chosen because they seemed naturally prone to allow for the easy take-off and landing of aircraft. As the engineer Archibald Black reported in 1929, the desirable “natural” conditions were level terrain on open ground, naturally draining soil, “close growth of tough all-year grass”, low or evenly distributed precipitation, and freedom from fog and gusty winds.⑧Thus, the first airfields were flat and grassy, measured circa 750 by 1000 meters, and were outfitted on their periphery with simple lightweight buildings (figure 5). They were marked by a white circle 45 meters in diameter and by the place name in giant letters. Often a centrally located smoke pot indicated the wind direction. The development of larger, heavier and more powerful aircraft demanded that the early manufactured airfields would finally be equipped with concrete and asphalt runways and extensive subsurface drainage systems (figure 6), and turned into airports that were built more or less following comprehensive designs

The airport infrastructure became increasingly independent from the natural conditions, passing from “pleasant pastoral scenes” where herds sheep had kept the grass short and the ground compacted, to a site where “Men must bring to the site machines and materials to rectify the frugalities of Nature, and scar the surface with broad, straight deep-laid runways, fell trees and other obstructions that might endanger the fastmoving vehicles of the air." As one commentator remarked in 1945, “Modern airports must be manmade."⑨The only thing left, to be determined by nature was the orientation, length and strength of the main runway that was to be paralleling the prevailing wind and also depended on the elevation above sea level that resulted in varying atmospheric density. The conception of the airport as a cultural landscape already began in the 1920s when landscape architects realized the opportunity that airport design provided them.

2 Airport Landscapes and Sceneries

Architects and designers were quick to understand airports as a comprehensive design problem that included the design of the airfield, the terminal buildings, and hangars, as well as the surrounding open space and planting design. Applying ideas of the American City Beautiful movement airports were even understood to be a design problem that resembled the complexity of expansive seventeenth-century French gardens. Many designers conceived of airports as landscapes and cities.

In the late 1920s engineers experimented with the modular design of different runway patterns that could be assembled depending on the airports’ growth requirements. Architects and landscape architects on the other hand, were embedding these runway designs into the larger landscape. The American architect Francis Keally developed a visionary airport design that positioned a monumental circular landing field into a large ornamental garden that was modeled on seventeenth-century French gardens.

The American landscape architect-turned city planner John Nolen proposed a prototypical airport plan in which the quadrangular airfield and its accompanying satellite town with a street layout based upon a patte d’oie resembled the seventeenth-century ensemble of the gardens and town of Versailles.

One of the later jetports, New York International Airport (today JFK Airport), in the late 1950s implemented a design for its so-called International Park that was indeed modeled on seventeenth-century French gardens. Surrounded by parking lots, approach roads and terminal buildings, the 220-acre International Park stretched along an axis between the International Terminals building and the transparent Heating and Refrigerator Plant. It included planting beds and three circular fountains that due to their varying sizes and positions along the axis created a forced perspective.

Like the designs for the early terminal buildings and their interiors, beginning in the late 1920s, increasing care was taken of the design of the outside spaces. To calm passengers' nerves and make them feel at ease and comfortable, the waiting rooms were often designed to resemble private living rooms including armchairs, couches and fireplaces. Similarly, the designs for the outdoor spaces were often expressions of vernacular modernism, conceived to achieve the same effect, and to ground and orientate the passengers in the respective location.

Airport landscape designs fostered a local, regional, and even national identity, often acting as vernacular counterpoints within the increasingly standardized technological airport environment. Many designers from the 1920s onwards therefore conceived of the airport as a hybrid landscape with contrasting modernist and vernacular character traits and as an expression of what more recently has been called “glocalism.” While the airport landscape had to be designed to be experienced on the ground, it also had to accommodate the verticalview.

If architects experimented freely with the use of art deco and vernacular styles like Spanish colonial revival in terminal architecture, landscape architects similarly used the first commercial airports as experimentation grounds for new formal expressions that related to both modernist and regionalist agendas. The new means of transportation provided new design opportunities to challenge accustomed forms and perspectives. It gave landscape architects the chance to provide a new vertical scenery for the view from above. In 1930, Ernst Herminghaus created one of the few early modernist landscape designs in the United States for Fairfax Airport in Kansas City (figure 7).Based upon his observation that yellow and orange were the colors most easily detected from the air, and that details were not perceptible to the aerial viewer at high speeds, he proposed planting brightly colored masses of plants. His design for the area in front of the terminal building was based on symmetrically laid out geometrical forms and could be easily identified from the air.⑩

In contrast to iconic and geometrical designs easily recognized from the air, the German landscape architect Hermann Mattern in his design for Stuttgart’s new airport in the 1930s attempted to tighten the airport buildings' connection to the ground. His planting design further stressed the architect Ernst Sagebiel’s design intent-- partly based upon the concern for air raid protection--to fit the airport’s architecture into the landscape and to design a silhouette that would dissolve into the surrounding scenery. The clean-cut and monumental ledges of the long curved visitor terrace were broken up and thereby "softened"by interspersed shrub plantings. The selection and irregular planting of tree and shrub species adhered to the rural character of the region. Both regionalist ideas and air raid protection measures led to a landscape design that attempted to blend the airport into the surrounding landscape. During World War Two, entire airports were turned into fake cultural landscapes. With the help of various chemical applications, paint, and staffage, they were camouflaged as agricultural fields, orchards, and suburban neighborhoods.

In the early years of powered flight some landscape architects and planners associated airports with public urban parks and considered the airport a part of the park system. So much so, that in the United States in the 1920s, some landscape architects engaged in a lively debate about the siting and management of airports that was led by different professional groups and municipal agencies. Although airports were conceptually understood as open space, not even landscape architects agreed amongst themselves. Some considered airports both recreational and commercial facilities and argued that they should be integrated into the park system and administered by the park departments. Others drew attention to the dangers of combining recreational park use and air traffic, and pointed out that they were incompatible. Although this opinion finally prevailed some small airports were indeed built in conjunction with golf courses and public parks.

Toledo, Ohio, disregarded the skeptical voices that warned against the security hazard that airplanes would provide to park visitors, and included an airport into its park system plan, locating it in the city’s Bay View Park north of the mouth of the Maumee River (figure 8).

3 The Airport as Environment

Although many of these early elaborations concentrated on the actual airport site, engineers, planners and designers realized quickly that security and aircraft technology required unobstructed airspace in the zones adjacent to the airport. In fact, airports as early as the 1930s began to be conceived of as the centers of a much larger airport-related environment, not only in terms of the larger national airport and airway system. Already then, noise pollution became a topic and it became apparent that land use surrounding airports had to be regulated to prevent the creation of physical hazards and obstructions in the airspace of the approach and landing paths of planes. Airport zoning was to determine the height of structures, beginning at the airport boundary and extending to a radius of 2 miles from the ends of the runways.

By 1960, when the construction of the first jetports in the United States had begun, architects and architectural critics were criticizing airports as obsolete,⑪a "parasite appendix [of cities],"⑫as lacking visual stimulus, and as wasteland. Airports appeared in these critics’ eyes as the complete opposite of parks and landscapes. To this effect, eminent architecture critic Lewis Mumford explained in ironic and dry prose that the words "park and field have taken on new meanings."According to him, park now meant a "desert of asphalt, designed as a temporary storage space for motor cars" whereas "field" meant "another kind of artificial desert, a barren area planted in great concrete strips, vibrating with noise, dedicated to the arrival anddeparture of planes." For Mumford, parking lots and airports were wasteland that grew “at the expense of parkland around every big city". If this development continued, he argued, the result would be a "universal paved desert, unfit for human habitation, no better than the surface of the moon."⑬

Thus, when Smithson was invited to consult on what was announced to become the largest jet airport in the world—Dallas/Fort Worth--, airports appeared to many as dystopian landscapes. The construction of airports began to be subject to environmental impact assessments. In the United States, in 1968 the first environmental impact assessment that was undertaken in the state of Florida prevented the construction of a jetport in the Big Cypress Swamp that would have destroyed much of the Everglades.

The intention now was to integrate environmental and aviation planning, as well as regional planning. Besides the alleviation of noise, water, and air pollution, and the impacts on land use, hydrology, and wildlife, concern for the airports’ visual environment increased as well.

Landscape architect Daniel U. Kiley had set some precedents for this kind of airport treatment in the designs that he prepared for two of the first jet airports that were built in the United States. His design for the new Dulles International Airport in Chantilly, Virginia, outside of Washington, D. C. (1958-1962) was to a large extent carried out. In contrast, most of his 1969 design for Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport was not implemented. More realistic than Smithson's preceding ideas, yet still too monumental and grand to be realized in its entirety, Kiley’s landscape design turned the median of the airport’s central highway spine into a sloping axis of monumental reflecting pools (figure 9 and figure 10). Fascinated by French seventeenthcentury gardens and adept at working on the large scale of the airport, Kiley easily adapted to the new jetport landscapes. At both Dulles and Dallas/ Fort Worth International he used massed plantings both as counterweights to the terminal buildings and access roads, and as elements that further emphasized the vast scale. Plantings and water features were parts of his designs that celebrated the airport landscape and embedded the terminal buildings, access roads, and parking lots into the larger landscape.

At Dallas/Fort Worth the designed rectangular pools are surrounded by double rows of trees. Gridded blocks of trees are planted at the locations of the taxiway bridges that run perpendicularly across the highway. Variously shaped water basins are located in the center of each terminal loop that flank the central highway spine, and the accompanying planting designs consisting of rows, circles, and gridded groves of trees vary from loop to loop. Similar to his design for Dulles International where passengers were welcomed by trees and shrubs blossoming or producing fruit in bright colors that flank the approach roads and Eero Saarinen’s iconic terminal building, Kiley covered the medians of the northsouth highway spine at either end with flowering trees. The southern entrance of the highway spine is bracketed by blocks of evergreens, whereas large rectangular areas at its sides on either end are used to grow nursery stock, preparing the airport for the future. Like the airport that was built on 70 square kilometers, Kiley’s landscape designs were developed with expansion in mind, an expansion that--as the planners announced at the airport’s opening in 1973—would ultimately also encompass the accommodation of space shuttle.⑭Although Kiley’s monumental designs to turn what Mumford had described as wasteland into functional iconic and attractive landscapes were only partly realized, they testify to an increasing understanding of the airport as a comprehensive landscape and environment in the 1950s and 1960s when the first supersonic jet aircraft connected continents.

Since the 1990s changing geopolitics and the increasing mass air travel have resulted in many former military and commercial airfields and airports being turned into public urban parks. Often located on what used to be the periphery of cities the former airfields are today providing large new public open space in urbanized areas. Planners and designers in the United States anticipated already in the 1920s that outdated obsolescent airports, often built near or on former parkland could be turned back into "permanent public open space."/Thus, many airports today have come full circle. Throughout this process, airports have not only been understood as cultural landscapes by many of their designers, but their designs and treatment at various times also reflect the respective scholarly discourse on cultural landscapes as practiced by Anglo-American geographers.

注释(Notes):

①本文基于索尼娅·丁佩尔曼的著作《想象的飞行:航空、景观、设计》(夏洛茨维尔:弗吉尼亚大学出版社)。参阅于史密斯的“空中艺术”和苏赞安·贝特格的首本土方工程著作《六十年代的艺术与景观》(伯克利,洛杉矶,伦敦:加州大学出版社,2002年大学),45-101。

This essay is based upon Sonja Dümpelmann, Flights of Imagination: Aviation, Landscape, Design (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2014). For Smithson’s “aerial art” and the first earth works see Suzaan Boettger, Earthworks: Art and the Landscape of the Sixties (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 2002), 45-101.

②为了使他的航空艺术更容易被参观者和乘客所接受,史密斯计划建造一个电视摄影以将室外空中艺术图像传输到室内的候机厅。

To make his aerial art accessible also to passengers and visitors in the terminal, Smithson planned to set up TV cameras that would transmit images of the aerial art outdoors to the indoors of the terminal.

③罗伯特·史密森《在沃斯堡达拉斯区域航空集散站(1966-67)边缘建设大地艺术和景观地标的提议 》,出自书籍《罗伯特·史密森:文集》,该书由杰克·弗拉姆编辑(伯克利:加州大学出版社,1996年),354-355(354)。

Robert Smithson, “Proposal for Earthworks and Landmarks to be Built on the Fringes of the Fort Worth-Dallas Regional Air Terminal Site (1966-67),” in Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings, ed. by Jack Flam, Jack (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 354-355 (354).

④罗伯特·史密森《空中艺术》,国际工作室177(1969年4月):180-181(180)。

Robert Smithson, “Aerial Art,” Studio International 177 (April 1969): 180-181 (180).

⑤小塞缪尔·瓦格斯塔夫《与托尼·史密斯的谈话》,艺术论坛5,第4期(12月1966):14-19。

Samuel Wagstaff Jr., “Talking with Tony Smith,” Artforum 5, no. 4 (Dec. 1966): 14-19.

⑥参阅卡尔·苏尔的文章《景观的形态学》,加利福尼亚大学地理科学出版社2,第2期(1925):19-54。

See Carl O. Sauer, “The Morphology of Landscape,”University of California Publications in Geography 2, no. 2 (1925): 19-54.

⑦HUD3123,第1盒,哈佛航空学会记录

HUD 3123, Box 1, Records of the Harvard Aeronautical Society

⑧阿奇博尔德·布莱克《民用机场和航空公司》(纽约:西蒙斯-博德曼出版公司,1929),29-30。另请参阅阿奇博尔德·布莱克“机场航站楼工程”,园林13,第4期(1923):225-238。

Archibald Black, Civil Airports and Airways (New York: Simmons-Boardman Publishing Company, 1929), 29-30. Also see Archibald Black, “Air Terminal Engineering,”Landscape Architecture 13, no. 4 (1923): 225-238.

⑨维尔利《明日的民航客机,航空公司和机场》(伦敦:试点出版社有限公司,1945年),247。

S. E. Veale, To-morrow’s Airliners, Airways and Airports (London: Pilot Press Ltd., 1945), 247.

⑩参阅恩斯特·赫明豪森在《美国景观设计师3》中的文章《机场设计中的景观艺术》,第一期(1930):15-18; 索尼娅·丁佩尔曼在《文化艺术园》的文章《 回顾1920-1960的观点:隐藏与发现的景观》。格特和斯蒂芬妮编辑(柏林:迪特里希-雷默出版社),239-264;索尼娅·丁佩尔曼在的文章“科学与美学间:热爱飞行的景观设计师”在《景观的旅程》29,2(2010):161-178。

See Ernst Herminghaus, “Landscape Art in Airport Design,” American Landscape Architect 3, no. 1 (1930): 15-18; Sonja Dümpelmann, “Der Blick von oben: versteckte und entdeckte Landschaft zwischen 1920 und 1960,” in Kunst Garten Kultur, ed. Gert Gröning and Stefanie Hennecke (Berlin: Dietrich-Reimer-Verlag), 239-264; Sonja Duempelmann, “Between Science and Aesthetics: Aspects of ‘Air-minded’ Landscape Architecture.” Landscape Journal 29, 2 (2010): 161-178.

⑪参阅雷纳·班哈姆的文章《过时的机场》发表于建筑评论132,第788期(1962):252-253。

See Reyner Banham, “The Obsolescent Airport,” The Architectural Review 132, no. 788 (1962): 252-253.

⑫保罗·索莱里在《航空环境的总体规划》的文章《城市作为一种机场》,安杰洛,威克多和詹姆斯编辑(图森:亚利桑那大学出版社,1970年),11-13。

Paolo Soleri, “The City as the Airport,” in Master Planning the Aviation Environment, ed. Angelo J. Cerchione, Victor E. Rothe, James Vercellino (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1970), 11-13.

⑬刘易斯·芒福德在《空间生活:景观设计及其相关艺术专业》的文章《 开放空间的社会功能》。西尔维娅·克劳编辑(阿姆斯特丹:Djambatan,1961年),24,26(22-37);刘易斯·芒福德的文章《自由的社会功能》发表于建造师58(1960年4月):322-328(324,328)。

Lewis Mumford, “The Social Function of Open Spaces”in Space for Living: Landscape Architecture and the Allied Arts and Professions, ed. Silvia Crowe (Amsterdam: Djambatan, 1961), 24, 26 (22-37); Lewis Mumford, “Die soziale Funktion der Freiräume,” Baumeister 58 (April 1960): 322-328 (324, 328).

⑭美国国家航空航天博物馆档案馆,F4-824000-01《德州,达拉斯·沃思堡IAP》小册子中名为“1973年达拉斯/沃斯堡机场的启用,”146。

National Air and Space Museum Archives, F4-824000-01“Texas, Dallas-Fort Worth IAP.” Brochure entitled “Dallas/ Fort Worth Airport Opening 1973,” 146.

/参阅纽约及其周边规划的区域规划委员会。第一卷:地图集与说明(费城:Wm. F. Fell Co. Printers, 1929), 371.

See Committee on Regional Plan of New York and Its Environs, Regional Plan of New York and its Environs, vol. 1: Atlas and Description (Philadelphia: Wm. F. Fell Co. Printers, 1929), 371.

Airport A Cultural Landscape?

During the twentieth century the airport has come to be understood and designed as a cultural landscape and distinct environment. The understanding of airports and aviation in general has been closely intertwined with notions of landscape, environment and ecology, even if the airport has during its evolution been described by various critics, architects, and philosophers as an anti-landscape, as obsolescent, a “non-place,” and dystopia. The recognition of the airport as both a cultural landscape and a vulnerable environment has led to and resulted from site-specific airport landscape designs, wildlife management practices, the inclusion of historic sites into airport designs, and the conservation of runways and other features for the adaptive reuse of decommissioned airports. While many designers conceived of airports as new iconic techno-cultural landscapes, others perceived them as destructive to the already existing cultural landscapes. The meanings of the airport as cultural landscape are therefore also always closely related to the social and economic politics surrounding it. This article contextualizes the idea of the airport as landscape within the changing interpretations of the concept of cultural landscape itself, a concept that first became more widely used in the Anglo-American world precisely during the years of the birth of powered flight.

Airport, Cultural Landscape, Geography, Landscape Architecture, Environment

TU986

A

1673-1530(2016)08-0069-12

10.14085/j.fjyl.2016.08.0069.12

2016-04-26

2016-07-23

索尼娅 · 丁佩尔曼/女/风景园林历史学者/副教授/美国哈佛大学设计研究生院风景园林系/研究方向:风景园林历史与理论

Author:

Sonja Dümpelmann is a landscape historian and an associate professor at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University. Her research focuses on 19thand 20th-century landscape history.

胡凯富/男/内蒙古人/汉族/ 1992年生/北京林业大学风景园林学硕士研究生/研究方向:风景园林规划设计与理论吴晓彤/女/内蒙古人/汉族/1993年生/北京林业大学风景园林学硕士研究生/研究方向:风景园林规划设计与理论

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